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I really like these points on steelmanning. I guess generally I feel like there are two goals you might have in reading articles like this:
1) decide if there are good reasons to agree with the author’s point (i.e. self-driving cars are ethically problematic)
2) understand the author’s worldview (i.e. killing people in the trolley problem is bad)
These are both good goals and you have to read the article in different ways for each. Steelmanning is aimed at the first, not the second.
And the first is more practical to do in the short term. For instance, like 90% of what we read in my philosophy class is super deontological. If I had to read all of it as deontological, I guess there’s some small chance I’d come to understand their value system better and convert to deontology at some point. But in the meantime, I wouldn’t be able to believe anything they said, whereas by steelmanning them as consequentialist I can find some parts that make sense in my belief system.
worldoptimization has a good point. I think there are usually good reasons to agree with the author’s point, and good reasons not to; the question is of which outweigh the other.
I am not sure you have to read the article differently; however, since the second goal tends to support the first in many ways. Rather, it helps to understand the author’s worldview when reading ANYTHING because it will give us greater understanding and help keep our minds open, especially if the article discusses ideas that contradict our own.
See, a thing that’s interesting for this is that I’m pretty sure Jim’s objection to steelmanning is a result of his objection to Scott’s post about why people oppose homosexuality [content warning: neoreactionary], which is actually an objection to #1. Scott is saying, “Look, this particular dumb argument makes perfect sense if you just assume some people think such-and-such and other people are using arguments as soldiers” and Jim finds that totally offensive because he doesn’t think such-and-such at all.
So I think we’re steelmanning Jim’s opposition to steelmanning.
Ooh, this post is yielding all sorts of interesting examples of things I wanted to talk about but didn’t have examples for.
I think this is a good example of the limitations of the principle “don’t do things to people without their consent”1. Here Jim has said pretty clearly that he doesn’t want people to steelman his arguments. And here we are, taking one of his arguments and steelmanning it2. We are using something he made in a way he explicitly didn’t consent to.
But I’m pretty sure we’re not doing anything wrong. We are having new and interesting thoughts and discussing them in a way we likely wouldn’t have otherwise; we’re learning3. And I suppose I can see why that would be upsetting; I certainly wouldn’t be too happy if Jim read one of my arguments and then blogged something about how it gave him this great new argument for why homosexuality is bad.
That wouldn’t be a violation of my consent though, even if I told people not to use my arguments in ways incompatible with my beliefs4. I guess mostly I’m just saying that you don’t get to claim ownership of your arguments after making them. Especially as it would be bad to say that Jim believed [your steelmanned argument] — once you’re asserting that he does still own the argument, it’s screwing with his consent to mess around with the argument in a way he doesn’t want.
I feel like this has some bearing on appropriation as well, but I can’t really figure it out. Something about rituals/ways of expressing oneself being part of culture but beliefs not being part of culture, so therefore you shouldn’t appropriate the former but you can the latter? I don’t like calling beliefs not a part of culture though, that seems wrong. Something about not appropriation only being problematic if you do it to a non-dominant culture? That would say we shouldn’t “appropriate” racists’ arguments that black people shouldn’t marry white people to show that arguments against gay marriage are bigoted, since the former belief is not dominant nowadays. That seems wrong too. I guess what I’m saying in this paragraph is that it seems like this example should illustrate some limits on the scope of “don’t appropriate,” but I don’t actually seem to be able to figure out anything new5.
A good principle in general, I’m not trying to say not to use it; I’m just trying to figure out limitations on its scope. And I think the fact that I didn’t have a handy example is that this isn’t a principle that’s applied too broadly very often; “consent” isn’t at the point of something like “freedom” where everyone claims they’re protecting it. ↩
Probably, anyway. I’m not sure we really are strengthening his argument, we mostly seem to be saying it’s not right, but I guess we’re debating against points that are not quite he said but rather something stronger (to us at least), and hence implicitly steelmanning his argument. ↩
I guess I shouldn’t speak for all of us on this point. I, at least, am learning (and having new and interesting thoughts, etc). ↩
Which, by the way, I like my beliefs and think they are right, and if you manage to interpret one my arguments so that it says that homosexuality is bad, it’s very very very likely that I’ve either said something really stupid or that you’re coming from a really messed up worldview. And in the latter case you should change your worldview to something that isn’t wrong. (In the former case you can just tell me that my arguments prove things they shouldn’t, and then I/we/you can try to sort out what the problem is.) ↩
But maybe someone else can? If you have thoughts, I’m interested. ↩
Ooh yay this is interesting. I feel like exchange and cross-pollination of ideas is really important so I’m skeptical of any limits on it except limits necessary to incentivize content creation (you can’t copypaste my book and then sell it). I don’t think Jim is going to stop coming up with ideas just because we steelman them. This is also why I get annoyed at authors who don’t want fanfic of their work written, and why I can’t suggest any new limits on “don’t appropriate,” because I don’t really get what’s bad about appropriation in the first place.
Maybe I just haven’t had the arguments against cultural appropriation properly explained to me? And I also think I lack the “being offended” gene. Like if I were an author and someone wrote terrible fanfic of my characters I don’t think I would mind at all, and on St Patrick’s Day (I was raised Irish Catholic) I recognize that there are lots of appropriation and bad Irish stereotypes going on but I don’t feel bothered by it.