![]() ![]() Steelmanning, by contrast, focuses on making an argument as true as possible. One can try to trim off particularly ugly implications. One can try to make it fit in to a broader philosophical world view, even if it's a world view that you don't hold. One can try to make it as consistent or coherent as one can. One can try to make it as true as one can. Relatedly, there are multiple ways one can be "charitable" to somebody else's claim. It just matters what the best argument is. "You have to be able to declare, at some point: 'For crying out loud, he never would have thought of that!'" By contrast, with steelmanning it doesn't really matter what a particular person said. There is a potential limit to interpretive charity if you think: I know he should have said X, but he just plainly rejected X or didn't think of it. Interpretive charity is ultimately more interpretive than steelmanning. Reflecting about it, I think these two strategies are obviously related, and both are forms of good intellectual hygiene, but there are some differences. On Twitter last night, my friend Jacob Levy asked whether this practice is really just a re-labeled version of the older notion of " interpretive charity," in which we try to put others' claims in a sympathetic rather than an unsympathetic light. ![]() (I discussed this a little bit towards the end of my recent podcast appearance on Rationally Speaking with Julia Galef.) Indeed, I now sometimes test a version of this skill on my exams, asking students to write up both sides of an argument, with the rule that their grade will be based on the quality of the worse of the two arguments. Steelmanning "is the art of addressing the best form of the other person's argument, even if it's not the one they presented." For instance, given the inconsistent quality of judicial opinions, this can be a very useful supplement to just reading cases if you are trying to think through an area of law. So a useful exercise to get there is what some people on the internet call "steelmanning." A steel man is the opposite, of course, of a straw man. ( Look, I understand the strongest arguments against my position, it's just that they are all bad arguments! That's why my position is correct!) Lots of people agree that this is important in principle, but can falter in practice. One of the things lawyers need to do, and therefore one of the things I try to teach my students how to do, is to understand the strongest arguments against their position. ![]()
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