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WillowOne's Positions

Steelmanning

Overview

Steelmanning is the practice of restating an opponent's argument in its strongest possible form, confirming with them that the restatement is fair, and then responding to that, rather than to a weaker version that is easier to defeat. It is the deliberate opposite of the Straw Man fallacy, and the name is an inversion of it: where a straw man is built to be knocked down, a steel man is built to see whether it can be.

The term comes from the online rationalist community of the early 2010s, but the practice is much older. It is the principle of charity in philosophy, the "opposing counsel" exercise in law, and the instruction in Daniel Dennett's version of Rapoport's rules: before criticising, restate the other position so clearly and fairly that its holder says "I wish I had put it that way."

How to do it

  1. State the position back. In your own words, without irony, and without the adjectives you would use if you were attacking it.
  2. Ask whether it is fair. "Is that your view?" The answer is usually "almost", and the correction is where the real argument lives.
  3. Find the best version. If the person has stated it badly, or if a better advocate has stated it better elsewhere, use the better version. Argue against the position, not against the person's command of it.
  4. Answer that. Only now is a rebuttal worth anything, and only now does the person have a reason to listen to it.

A useful test at the end: could I argue the other side well enough that an audience could not tell which side I actually hold?

Why it matters

  • An argument that only defeats the weak version of a position has not defeated the position. The strong version is still standing, and its holders know it, which is why they are unmoved.
  • Steelmanning is the fastest way to find out whether I actually understand an opposing view. If I cannot state it in a form its proponents would accept, I do not yet understand it well enough to reject it.
  • It is the only form of disagreement that changes minds. A person whose view has been fairly stated and then answered has been given a reason to reconsider. A person whose view has been caricatured has been given a reason to dig in. Knowledge changes by surprise, and nobody is surprised by an enemy.
  • It protects me from Confirmation Bias. The weak version of the other side is the version I would prefer to be true, and the preference is the warning sign.

Limits

  • It is not agreement. Stating a case well and then rejecting it is the whole point. Some arguments have no strong form, and saying so after an honest attempt is fair comment, not a failure of charity.
  • It is not substitution. If I "improve" an argument into one the person does not hold, I have built my own position and attributed it to them, which is a straw man with better manners. The check in step two exists to stop this.
  • It is not laundering. Steelmanning a position means finding the best case its actual holders make, not inventing a respectable case for a view whose real support is something else. The test is whether the holders would recognise the steel man as their own.
  • It can be condescending. "What I think you are trying to say" is a steel man only if the other person agrees. Otherwise it is a correction dressed as a courtesy.

Notes

  • My notes on Religious Apologetics open each argument with a Form section that tries to state it as its best advocates would, before my positions on it. If a reader thinks I have missed the strongest version, I would like to hear it. That is the point of publishing them.
  • The method is the good half of Street Epistemology, and the half that A Manual for Creating Atheists gets right before it undoes the work by defining faith as "pretending to know". How to Have Impossible Conversations turns it into a procedure, which is useful until the procedure becomes a technique for winning.
  • Socrates in the Apology does something close to it: he states the charge against him more clearly than his accusers managed. It did not save him. Steelmanning is a duty I owe to the truth, not a tactic that reliably pays.
  • The failure I watch for in myself is the "weak man": answering the worst advocate of a view because they are the easiest to find. The internet will always supply a bad advocate for anything.

Also see