Abuse of the ‘steel man’ concept and attempt to introduce a toxic social norm. I am strongly opposed to this influence.
MixedNuts attempts to refute a quote using a non-sequitur. Supporting a false refutation is not being generous, it is being biased. It is being unfair to the initial speaker.
Replacing “everyone” with “people” leaves the basic point unchanged.
So much so that it leaves the basic point a straw man.
Supporting a false refutation is not being generous, it is being biased. It is being unfair to the initial speaker.
Steel-manning a refutation does not equal supporting that refutation. In fact, steel-manning entails criticizing the original refutation, at least implicitly.
However, when a claim is plausibly intended to be a hyperbolic version of a reasonable claim, pointing out that the hyperbolic version is a straw man, without addressing the reasonable version, is mostly just poisoning the discourse.
(This charge doesn’t apply to you if you sincerely believed that MixedNuts was non-hyperbolically claiming that literally everyone has scorn heaped on them in the community under discussion, or that MixedNuts would be read that way by many readers.)
The point that you think is reasonable is still a straw man.
It would help me to understand why my version is a straw man if you would steel-man it. Then I could compare your steel man to my straw man and better feel the force of your criticism. (I certainly wouldn’t take you to be supporting my straw man, which seemed to be your earlier concern.)
As it stands, I am puzzled by your accusation because Eric Raymond said, “Let’s drive away people unwilling to adopt that ‘git’r’done’ attitude with withering scorn …”. Why is it a straw man to characterize this as “heaping scorn on people and seeing who sticks around”?
Is it because you read it as “heaping scorn on people randomly...”, rather than as “heaping scorn on people who are unwilling to adopt that ‘git’r’done’ attitude …”? Or is it something else?
It would help me to understand why my version is a straw man if you would steel-man it.
There isn’t a convenient steel man available. Not all wrong (or, to be agnostic with respect to the correctness of our positions, disagreed with) positions have another position nearby in concept space that is agreed with (or, sometimes, disagreed with only with significant respect and more complicated reasoning).
As it stands, I am puzzled by your accusation because Eric Raymond said, “Let’s drive away people unwilling to adopt that ‘git’r’done’ attitude with withering scorn …”. Why is it a straw man to characterize this as “heaping scorn on people and seeing who sticks around”?
Because that is a different described procedure. They are similar in as much as scorn is applied in both cases but the selection process for when scorn is applied is removed and the intended outcome is changed.
To illustrate, consider taking the required equivocation back in the other direction. We end up with:
Empirically, <driving away people unwilling to adopt that “git’r’done” attitude with withering scorn, rather than waste our time pacifying tender-minded ninnies and grievance collectors> leads to lots of time wasted on flame wars.
This seems to be a different empirical claim. It is also a more controversial claim and one that is less obviously correct. I certainly wouldn’t expect scorn to be the optimal response in such circumstances but the claim that it wastes more time than the described alternative is still an empirical claim that would actually require empiricism to be done and cited. It isn’t something that I have seen anywhere.
There isn’t a convenient steel man available. Not all wrong (or, to be agnostic with respect to the correctness of our positions, disagreed with) positions have another position nearby in concept space that is agreed with (or, sometimes, disagreed with only with significant respect and more complicated reasoning).
I agree that, in general, wrong positions may lack steel-man versions. However, I am not convinced that this is the case here. Indeed, it seems to me that you provide just such a steel man in your comment.
Because that is a different described procedure. They are similar in as much as scorn is applied in both cases but the selection process for when scorn is applied is removed and the intended outcome is changed.
You are reading “seeing who sticks around” as the reason why the scorn is being applied. This is a possible reading. It might be the intended meaning, but it might not. The intended meaning might just be that “seeing who sticks around” is an outcome, and not the intended outcome.
If the meaning was what you said, the sentence could have been written as “heaping scorn on people to see who sticks around”. That would have been equally concise and less ambiguous. Since that wasn’t what was written, your reading is less certain.
This seems to be a different empirical claim. It is also a more controversial claim and one that is less obviously correct.
Refutations of straw men are usually obviously correct. That is why straw men are offered. The steel man version of the straw-man-based refutation will rarely be so obviously correct, but it will be obviously better. The steel man will be more relevant, raise more important issues, be more likely to move the conversation forward in a productive way, and so on.
You seemed to me to be offering just such a steel man when you wrote,
Empirically, <driving away people unwilling to adopt that “git’r’done” attitude with withering scorn, rather than waste our time pacifying tender-minded ninnies and grievance collectors> leads to lots of time wasted on flame wars.
Yes, your version is a different empirical claim, but steel men are generally different claims from the original “unsteeled” version. Your version raises controversial issues, but that need not obviate productive discussion.
Most importantly, and as you point out, your steel man version raises empirical issues, which would help keep the conversation connected to reality. Moreover, addressing those empirical questions would probably require getting into the specific dynamics of the community under discussion. (What have the documented conversations in this specific community actually been like? What are the actual social dynamics and the actual history of how they’ve changed over time? What has this community accomplished, and under just what conditions, as a function of how much scorn was being applied? Etc.)
This would make the conversation far more likely to stay relevant to the actual matter at hand. The conversation would be more likely to stay at the object level, instead of floating in the meta level, where accusations of fallacies live.
To summarize, I think that what you offered is a good steel man of MixedNuts’s original claim for the following reasons:
It is recognizably related to what MixedNuts said, although it is different. Moreover, it is plausible that he could be convinced that this is what he should have said.
The antecedent (“driving away people unwilling to adopt that ‘git’r’done’ attitude with withering scorn, rather than waste our time pacifying tender-minded ninnies and grievance collectors”) is not a straw man.
It raises promising and empirically grounded points of disagreement, as I argue above.
Abuse of the ‘steel man’ concept and attempt to introduce a toxic social norm. I am strongly opposed to this influence.
MixedNuts attempts to refute a quote using a non-sequitur. Supporting a false refutation is not being generous, it is being biased. It is being unfair to the initial speaker.
So much so that it leaves the basic point a straw man.
Steel-manning a refutation does not equal supporting that refutation. In fact, steel-manning entails criticizing the original refutation, at least implicitly.
However, when a claim is plausibly intended to be a hyperbolic version of a reasonable claim, pointing out that the hyperbolic version is a straw man, without addressing the reasonable version, is mostly just poisoning the discourse.
(This charge doesn’t apply to you if you sincerely believed that MixedNuts was non-hyperbolically claiming that literally everyone has scorn heaped on them in the community under discussion, or that MixedNuts would be read that way by many readers.)
I oppose your influence in this context for the aforementioned reasons.
The point that you think is reasonable is still a straw man.
It would help me to understand why my version is a straw man if you would steel-man it. Then I could compare your steel man to my straw man and better feel the force of your criticism. (I certainly wouldn’t take you to be supporting my straw man, which seemed to be your earlier concern.)
As it stands, I am puzzled by your accusation because Eric Raymond said, “Let’s drive away people unwilling to adopt that ‘git’r’done’ attitude with withering scorn …”. Why is it a straw man to characterize this as “heaping scorn on people and seeing who sticks around”?
Is it because you read it as “heaping scorn on people randomly...”, rather than as “heaping scorn on people who are unwilling to adopt that ‘git’r’done’ attitude …”? Or is it something else?
There isn’t a convenient steel man available. Not all wrong (or, to be agnostic with respect to the correctness of our positions, disagreed with) positions have another position nearby in concept space that is agreed with (or, sometimes, disagreed with only with significant respect and more complicated reasoning).
Because that is a different described procedure. They are similar in as much as scorn is applied in both cases but the selection process for when scorn is applied is removed and the intended outcome is changed.
To illustrate, consider taking the required equivocation back in the other direction. We end up with:
This seems to be a different empirical claim. It is also a more controversial claim and one that is less obviously correct. I certainly wouldn’t expect scorn to be the optimal response in such circumstances but the claim that it wastes more time than the described alternative is still an empirical claim that would actually require empiricism to be done and cited. It isn’t something that I have seen anywhere.
This was a helpful comment.
I agree that, in general, wrong positions may lack steel-man versions. However, I am not convinced that this is the case here. Indeed, it seems to me that you provide just such a steel man in your comment.
You are reading “seeing who sticks around” as the reason why the scorn is being applied. This is a possible reading. It might be the intended meaning, but it might not. The intended meaning might just be that “seeing who sticks around” is an outcome, and not the intended outcome.
If the meaning was what you said, the sentence could have been written as “heaping scorn on people to see who sticks around”. That would have been equally concise and less ambiguous. Since that wasn’t what was written, your reading is less certain.
Refutations of straw men are usually obviously correct. That is why straw men are offered. The steel man version of the straw-man-based refutation will rarely be so obviously correct, but it will be obviously better. The steel man will be more relevant, raise more important issues, be more likely to move the conversation forward in a productive way, and so on.
You seemed to me to be offering just such a steel man when you wrote,
Yes, your version is a different empirical claim, but steel men are generally different claims from the original “unsteeled” version. Your version raises controversial issues, but that need not obviate productive discussion.
Most importantly, and as you point out, your steel man version raises empirical issues, which would help keep the conversation connected to reality. Moreover, addressing those empirical questions would probably require getting into the specific dynamics of the community under discussion. (What have the documented conversations in this specific community actually been like? What are the actual social dynamics and the actual history of how they’ve changed over time? What has this community accomplished, and under just what conditions, as a function of how much scorn was being applied? Etc.)
This would make the conversation far more likely to stay relevant to the actual matter at hand. The conversation would be more likely to stay at the object level, instead of floating in the meta level, where accusations of fallacies live.
To summarize, I think that what you offered is a good steel man of MixedNuts’s original claim for the following reasons:
It is recognizably related to what MixedNuts said, although it is different. Moreover, it is plausible that he could be convinced that this is what he should have said.
The antecedent (“driving away people unwilling to adopt that ‘git’r’done’ attitude with withering scorn, rather than waste our time pacifying tender-minded ninnies and grievance collectors”) is not a straw man.
It raises promising and empirically grounded points of disagreement, as I argue above.