I don’t see him as arguing against steelmanning. But the opposite of steelmanning isn’t arguing against an idea directly. You’ve got to be able to steelman an opponent’s argument well in order to argue against it well too, or perhaps determine that you agree with it. In any case, I’m not sure how to read a case for locally valid argumentation steps as being in favor of not doing this. Wouldn’t it help you understand how people arrive at their conclusions?
There are plenty of times where someone writes a LessWrong post and while I do agree with the central point of the post I disagree with a noncentral part of the post.
A person might use some historical example and I disagree with the example. In those cases it’s for me an open question whether or not it’s useful to write the comment that disagrees or whether that’s bad for LW. It might be bad because people feel like they are getting noncentral feedback and that discourages them.
I don’t see him as arguing against steelmanning. But the opposite of steelmanning isn’t arguing against an idea directly. You’ve got to be able to steelman an opponent’s argument well in order to argue against it well too, or perhaps determine that you agree with it. In any case, I’m not sure how to read a case for locally valid argumentation steps as being in favor of not doing this. Wouldn’t it help you understand how people arrive at their conclusions?
There are plenty of times where someone writes a LessWrong post and while I do agree with the central point of the post I disagree with a noncentral part of the post.
A person might use some historical example and I disagree with the example. In those cases it’s for me an open question whether or not it’s useful to write the comment that disagrees or whether that’s bad for LW. It might be bad because people feel like they are getting noncentral feedback and that discourages them.