I agree that the proposed ‘fleshman’ view point is quite abstract and very different in its use from the other two. It seems to me that the main way to make it not as abstract is given in the conclusion: as a means to predict what a group might do or how the group might evolve.
People can believe and follow good causes (steelmanned version of an idea) for partially wrong reasons (fleashmanned version). Debating whether the actual idea is good or bad is one thing, looking at what actions the followers of that idea will take is another.
In a way, given a distribution of beliefs in a movement, the strawman is the lower bound (easy to attack), the steelman is the upper bound (great to use to prove wrong), but the fleshman reflects the actual distribution of opinions between those two, which helps not debate the idea, but understand real world cases.
It’s easy to take a belief held by real people and straw/steelman it into oblivion to an extent that no-one in the group actually recognises the idea anymore.
I agree that the proposed ‘fleshman’ view point is quite abstract and very different in its use from the other two. It seems to me that the main way to make it not as abstract is given in the conclusion: as a means to predict what a group might do or how the group might evolve.
People can believe and follow good causes (steelmanned version of an idea) for partially wrong reasons (fleashmanned version). Debating whether the actual idea is good or bad is one thing, looking at what actions the followers of that idea will take is another.
In a way, given a distribution of beliefs in a movement, the strawman is the lower bound (easy to attack), the steelman is the upper bound (great to use to prove wrong), but the fleshman reflects the actual distribution of opinions between those two, which helps not debate the idea, but understand real world cases.
It’s easy to take a belief held by real people and straw/steelman it into oblivion to an extent that no-one in the group actually recognises the idea anymore.