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If I can’t steelman my opponent’s view to their satisfaction it means I think I’m opposed to something which, in fact, I don’t understand.

skado 9 Aug 5
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I just looked "steelmanning" up and the results mention Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. Those would surely be too hard work as examples for beginners. I just want to unstraw the straw, preferably for people that don't convolute / package deal.

For a person who is sincere, I will strengthen their arguments. People who are sincere have often previously bought too far into the arguments they in their heart of hearts would like to argue against and I want to help them buy out of those better.

Those who aren't sincere, and those who are vicious, and those who prize ignorance, and point scorers and button pushers, and the deliberately shallow, on "all" sides, are toxic.

Most christians got gaslighted by churches which is why they are going backwards. Many people both sincere and insincere, wouldn't know what would be "to their satisfaction".

I want to tackle them on their real real basis and their real fake basis, not their fake real basis. This is how my unusually wide and deep background knowledge is of value to all that would be sincere.

I refuse to package deal and I repudiate accusations of button pushing. I refuse to grind the axe of any faction, organisation or prominent personality: I aim to disappoint all of those profoundly.

Any of many gods = job title
A lot of them are companions and for leg pulling.
Genuine demands on i actual adherents ii the general public vary infinitely both in claim and in objective effect (justifiable and not).

I hope to be posting in coming months about my amateur discoveries in logic.

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Hear Hear!! A productive conversation depends on both parties taking responsibility for what they may not know and be willing to hear the other's words. Even agreeing to disagree is better than name calling.

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To their satisfaction is subjective.. Maybe they don't want to admit they're wrong..

If you are truly stating their position and they won’t admit it, then the discussion can’t legitimately proceed beyond that point. A productive discussion depends on two good-faith participants. That’s why steelmanning is useful - it eliminates that kind of petty deceit. It keeps people from wasting their time talking past each other.

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one's satisfaction is sometimes only met by their own misunderstanding.

That’s true of course, but steelmanning just makes that apparent.

@skado I reckon it does.

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In theory, perhaps, but the glaringly apparent missing link, in my opinion, is that any method of debate will fail in swaying an opponents view to their satisfaction if they are unwilling to adjust to the evidence and change their worldview. People seem to have lost the desire for any semblance of utilizing debate to discover correctness and replaced it with a zero sum game of winning.

Steelmanning isn’t swaying the opponents view to their satisfaction. It’s stating their own view to their satisfaction. The point is to make sure you understand their view the way they do before arguing against it.

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Or that they have only the delusion that they have a intelligible view. They may not understand their own arguments, because they are not fully or well worked out.

That’s true of course, but if you truly understand their view better than they do, you should be able to prove you do by stating their poorly thought out view just as poorly as they do. If you can’t do that, there’s a possibility they’re actually saying something brilliant that you mistake for nonsense because you just don’t understand it.

@skado Yes if you can steelman them then that is one of the main benefits, but I would still hold that most times if you can not steelman them then it is probably because their views are incoherent to the point of illogic. The method I always use to steelman an argument, is the old one of working through the arguments, as if you were going to have to explain them to a class of students, so far it has not failed me.

That happens, but then the discussion should not proceed further, because if you can’t both steelman each other’s point, then you don’t have a bona fide discussion. That’s the value of steelmanning. It keeps you from wasting your time in discussions that can’t go anywhere.

@skado True. But I never regard any discussion as time wasted even if it does go nowhere, I still learn from misunderstandings.

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