A steel man argument (or steelmanning) is the opposite of a straw man argument. The idea is to help one’s opponent to construct the strongest form of their argument. This may involve removing flawed assumptions that could be easily refuted, for example, so that one produces the best argument for the “core” of one’s opponent’s position.[19][20] It has been advocated as a more productive strategy in political dialog that promotes real understanding and compromise instead of fueling partisanship by discussing only the weakest arguments of the opposition.[19]
This implies that the target of steelmanning is an opponent position. The idea is to show that you can definitely defeat the actual opponent position, by, conservatively, defeating the strongest possible form of it you can think of.
Charity, on the other hand, doesn’t imply that the target is an opponent position; it also doesn’t imply that you intend to “defeat” the resulting position. It’s, instead, implying something like that you intend to interpret the statements such that they are most generally valuable.
nooo, don’t “steelman” a position and then fail to knock down the steelman, that defeats the purpose, you have just put some steel armor onto a thing that seemed bad to you initially, aaa
If you steelman a position and can’t knock it down, that indicates that you may be wrong about your point, which, IMO, is valuable. Recognizing error in ourselves has a much higher return than recognizing error in others.
From Wikipedia:
This implies that the target of steelmanning is an opponent position. The idea is to show that you can definitely defeat the actual opponent position, by, conservatively, defeating the strongest possible form of it you can think of.
Charity, on the other hand, doesn’t imply that the target is an opponent position; it also doesn’t imply that you intend to “defeat” the resulting position. It’s, instead, implying something like that you intend to interpret the statements such that they are most generally valuable.
I wrote earlier on this topic:
If you steelman a position and can’t knock it down, that indicates that you may be wrong about your point, which, IMO, is valuable. Recognizing error in ourselves has a much higher return than recognizing error in others.