Steelmanning.

Steelmanning.

Eh? Idgi.

People are historically bad at judging their own competence and there’s far too much smug lit out there discussing the right way to debate when many of these advocates are, themselves, guilty of being deliberately obtuse, shifting goalposts, oversimplification etc.

I don’t find that article particularly useful, unless I missed sth in your reaction?

Minnesänger wrote:

Eh? Idgi. People are historically bad at judging their own competence and there’s far too much smug lit out there discussing the right way to debate when many of these advocates are, themselves, guilty of being deliberately obtuse, shifting goalposts, oversimplification etc. I don’t find that article particularly useful, unless I missed sth in your reaction?

I would just say that I think that's a pretty weak interpretation of the whole idea. I think it's pretty evident that literally everyone fails very frequently at being good at communication and not falling back on bad faith shit, I'm sure as fuck that I do this. But that's no reason to throw out the idea that maybe just maybe we should aim for a higher standard of conversation. If you look at an article like that or a comment like this and just infer smugness and high 'n mightiness you've already set the stage for a miserable and fruitless bad faith argument.

Genuinely baffled.

Enjoy yourself, Gurt. Continue the good fight against bad faith and straw mans.

Minnesänger wrote:

Me saying that these articles aren’t particularly useful absolutely isn’t throwing “out the idea that maybe just maybe we should aim for a higher standard of conversation “. How can you take that interpretation from what I wrote literally half a page after writing this:

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Seriously. You don’t need those articles. You need self reflection and humility first.

Ok so I think we're both coming at this from different angles here. Your comments about the article are dismissive, which to me appeared almost not quite but essentially the same as dismissing the idea of talking/thinking about good and bad faith in discussion. After this clarification and rereading I get where your coming from now, that you just think the article isn't useful, though you haven't really clarified why exactly other than to say "You need self reflection and humility first". That's fine and I apologise for reading more into your words than what you said, and would be interested in knowing in more detail why exactly you don't think this stuff isn't worthy of thought?

Yeah I kind of agree though it depends on your interpretation of the definition of steelmanning. I probably wouldn't use it in a sentence unless it had a more solid definition in common usage.

It's just pure brainless lazy thinking.  "Here's a list of good behaviours. Now create a list of their opposites - going to the point of creating a new word to achieve that".

Idiots who get book deals out of such formulaic thinking dressed up as a science. Eff them.

A strawman is a useful tool that is akin to brainstorming. If there is an opposite of that, it's a pet theory, a culturally held "truth" or a vanity project. Not a fucking steelman. Jesus.

I don't interpret the items on the previous page as 'rules', just things to think about and perhaps internalise as useful when talking to people. It's like learning about aspects of sexism or racism etc, once you know that something is a thing that happens and what it looks like, you can apply that idea when looking at what you or others do and see if it matches the pattern. Then you can make a decision to change things if you assess it to be worthwhile.

As for a right/left angle, personally I'm just not concerning myself with whatever aspect of politics the article may or may not be alluding to. I deeply disagree with the notion that some have that it's only 'one side' that does the bad faith arguing, I've seen countless examples to the contrary. I am aware of the various transgressions against fair conversation that parties aligned to 'the right' have made and how disproportionate such things are compared to their opponents, I'm not talking about that stuff, I'm just talking about the bread and butter of everyday conversation.

davyK wrote:

It's just pure brainless lazy thinking.  "Here's a list of good behaviours. Now create a list of their opposites - going to the point of creating a new word to achieve that".

Idiots who get book deals out of such formulaic thinking dressed up as a science. Eff them.

A strawman is a useful tool that is akin to brainstorming. If there is an opposite of that, it's a pet theory, a culturally held "truth" or a vanity project. Not a fucking steelman. Jesus.

I don't think you're on about the same version of strawman as they are

Paul the sparky wrote:

It's just pure brainless lazy thinking.  "Here's a list of good behaviours. Now create a list of their opposites - going to the point of creating a new word to achieve that". Idiots who get book deals out of such formulaic thinking dressed up as a science. Eff them. A strawman is a useful tool that is akin to brainstorming. If there is an opposite of that, it's a pet theory, a culturally held "truth" or a vanity project. Not a fucking steelman. Jesus.

I don't think you're on about the same version of strawman as they are

Probably. We use it as a first cut of a solution - something we know isn't going to work but has some merits and gets everybody thinking/going/shouting etc.

It can be easy to do it unintentionally with just carelessness too, which is why it's worth thinking about.

Aside from humility I think empathy is critically important to avoiding many of these problems. I feel like the majority of fraught disagreements stem from either party not understanding where the other is coming from and why.

I think a lot of it comes down to not being physically face to face, and that lack of consequences that comes with that.

Haven’t been on FB for ages but when I was anyone in my circle making shitty comments got removed, typically ex colleagues or school people.

On Twitter the majority of shitty comments are usually from people with relatively anonymous accounts. That’s where I see a lot of toxicity.

I think Twitter is easier for state actors to manipulate via troll farms, which is where a lot of the toxicity stems from. There’ll be some fascinating studies done on how social media changed over the first couple of weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine when all Russian activity on Twitter stopped for a while. Loads of things like Covid denialism and Brexit boosting dropped to almost nothing for a while.

Yossarian wrote:

I think Twitter is easier for state actors to manipulate via troll farms, which is where a lot of the toxicity stems from. There’ll be some fascinating studies done on how social media changed over the first couple of weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine when all Russian activity on Twitter stopped for a while. Loads of things like Covid denialism and Brexit boosting dropped to almost nothing for a while.

My recent opinion on Twitter, is that (I think) it's undoubtedly a reflection of society. 
3% of the world have too much, and are too greedy.

A smaller subset of that 3% is all the more selfish. And that in itself is an incredible idea to consider.

Twitter, I'd argue, is for the most part, only a conduit. But it's relative reach is alarming, tbf.