I think there’s also a third thing that I would call steelmanning, which is a rhetorical technique I sometimes use when faced with particularly bad arguments. If strawmanning introduces new weaknesses to an argument and then knocks it down, steelmanning fixes weaknesses in an argument and then knocks it down anyway. It looks like “this argument doesn’t work because X assumption isn’t true, but you could actually fix that like this so you don’t need that assumption. But it still doesn’t work because of Y, and even if you fix that by such and such, it all still fails because of Z”.
You’re kind of skipping ahead in the debate, doing your opponent’s job of fixing up their argument as it’s attacked, and showing that the argument is too broken to fix up.
This is not a very nice way to act, it’s not truth seeking, and you’d better be damn sure that you’re right, and make sure to actually repair the argument well rather than just putting on a show of it. But done right, in a situation that calls for it, it can produce a very powerful effect. This should probably have a different name, but I still think of it as making and then knocking down a steel man.
This sounds like the debate strategy of trying to anticipate and address your opponent’s arguments before they do to get ahead of framing. It also reminds me of inventing fan theories about movies/shows/books to explain the plot, the effect is indeed powerful and stretches creative muscles.
General comment on interview: the way I took it Yudkowsky disclaimed steel manning because he does not want to be “interpreted charitably” rather he simply wants what he’s saying to be understood. Fridman-Yudkowsky interview transcript (there are some sentence cutoff errors).
I think there’s also a third thing that I would call steelmanning, which is a rhetorical technique I sometimes use when faced with particularly bad arguments. If strawmanning introduces new weaknesses to an argument and then knocks it down, steelmanning fixes weaknesses in an argument and then knocks it down anyway. It looks like “this argument doesn’t work because X assumption isn’t true, but you could actually fix that like this so you don’t need that assumption. But it still doesn’t work because of Y, and even if you fix that by such and such, it all still fails because of Z”. You’re kind of skipping ahead in the debate, doing your opponent’s job of fixing up their argument as it’s attacked, and showing that the argument is too broken to fix up. This is not a very nice way to act, it’s not truth seeking, and you’d better be damn sure that you’re right, and make sure to actually repair the argument well rather than just putting on a show of it. But done right, in a situation that calls for it, it can produce a very powerful effect. This should probably have a different name, but I still think of it as making and then knocking down a steel man.
This sounds like the debate strategy of trying to anticipate and address your opponent’s arguments before they do to get ahead of framing. It also reminds me of inventing fan theories about movies/shows/books to explain the plot, the effect is indeed powerful and stretches creative muscles.
General comment on interview: the way I took it Yudkowsky disclaimed steel manning because he does not want to be “interpreted charitably” rather he simply wants what he’s saying to be understood. Fridman-Yudkowsky interview transcript (there are some sentence cutoff errors).