I would describe the dialogue by saying that Bob is steelmanning Alice’s claim, while being uncharitable and remaining unaware of equivocation between the original claim and the steelmanned claim.
In terms of paradigms, Alice is making a factual claim, while Bob doesn’t understand or tolerate the paradigm of factual claims, and is instead familiar with the paradigms of social implications and practical advice, uses for facts rather than facts considered in themselves. The charitable thing for Bob would be to figure out the paradigm of factual claims (and make use of it for the purposes of this conversation), the point of view that focuses on knowledge in itself while abstracting from its possible applications. Trying to find subtext is Bob’s way of steelmanning the claim, recasting it into a shape that’s more natural for the paradigms Bob understands (or insists on).
Equivocation between the claim in the paradigm of factual claims and the same claim in the paradigm of practical applications is unnecessary confusion that could be avoided. The steelmanning aims to improve the argument by performing a centrality-seeking translation, a way of making a concept more resilient to equivocation. And it would make the conversation more robust rather than more confusing, had Bob been aware of the issue of paradigms, another hidden argument that matters when interpreting language, in this case a difference in paradigms (ways of understanding) rather than a difference in preference (subjectively selected).
I would describe the dialogue by saying that Bob is steelmanning Alice’s claim, while being uncharitable and remaining unaware of equivocation between the original claim and the steelmanned claim.
In terms of paradigms, Alice is making a factual claim, while Bob doesn’t understand or tolerate the paradigm of factual claims, and is instead familiar with the paradigms of social implications and practical advice, uses for facts rather than facts considered in themselves. The charitable thing for Bob would be to figure out the paradigm of factual claims (and make use of it for the purposes of this conversation), the point of view that focuses on knowledge in itself while abstracting from its possible applications. Trying to find subtext is Bob’s way of steelmanning the claim, recasting it into a shape that’s more natural for the paradigms Bob understands (or insists on).
Equivocation between the claim in the paradigm of factual claims and the same claim in the paradigm of practical applications is unnecessary confusion that could be avoided. The steelmanning aims to improve the argument by performing a centrality-seeking translation, a way of making a concept more resilient to equivocation. And it would make the conversation more robust rather than more confusing, had Bob been aware of the issue of paradigms, another hidden argument that matters when interpreting language, in this case a difference in paradigms (ways of understanding) rather than a difference in preference (subjectively selected).