but this bizarrely seems to discount the possibility of iterating on criticisms as they are posed. Despite making a genuine effort to think up better code that might exist, I often fail. If other people can see flaws in my code (because they know things I don’t) and have their own suggestions, and I can see flaws in their suggestions (because I also know things they don’t which didn’t make it into my first draft) and have my own counter-suggestions, that seems like an ideal working relationship, not a malign imposition.
And this is exactly the reason why ITT is so important. Other people may know something that you don’t that’s why your attempts to steelman them may fail dramatically—the strongest version of their argument you manage to come up with, may and often is weaker than the strongest version of the argument they, or a person who can pass their ITT can come up with.
In general, if you expect to learn something from another person, it’s useful to be able to understand them. And passing ITT is about understanding. You may not value understanding another person for it’s own sake, but it’s an important instrumental value for a truth seeker, for the reasons you talk about.
the strongest version of their argument you manage to come up with, may and often is weaker than the strongest version of the argument they, or a person who can pass their ITT can come up with.
I mean, you should definitely only steelman if a genuine steelman actually occurs to you! You obviously don’t want to ignore the text that the other person wrote and just make something up. But my hope and expectation is that people usually have enough reading comprehension such that it suffices to just reason about the text that was written, even if you couldn’t have generated it yourself.
In the case of a drastic communication failure, sure, falling back to the ITT can make sense. (I try to address this in the post in the paragraph beginning with “All this having been said, I agree that there’s a serious potential failure mode [...]”.) My thesis is that this is a niche use-case.
It may be the case, that you think that genuine steelman occured to you, while still making a weaker version of the argument than the person you are talking to could have, because you misunderstand their position.
It’s not just about reading comprehension. Communicating complex ideas is generally hard and there are possible mistakes and misgeneralisations on every step made by both the sender and the receiver.
A person has a position P which is based on arguments A1, A2, A3, A4, A5. While describing their arguments, they just omit A1, because it seems just so obvious to them and A4 and A5, because they are too nuanced and their post is already too long or they simply forgot, so they bring up only A2′ and A3′ - their interpretation of A2 and A3, which may or may not equal A2 and A3.
You interpret them as A2″ and A3″. Not because you can’t read properly, but due to language being imperfect medium of ideas transfer. Now if you can generalise P from the arguments you’ve got—pas the ITT—all is fine. It means that you can fix whatever communication mistakes occured, recreate the missing arguments yourself, understand the relation between them and see what actually make them stronger or weaker not only according to you, but from the position of the person you are talking to. In practice, reaching this level of understanding is usually enough to challenge your views and progress truth seeking. But if it’s not enough, you can try to steelman any of the A1-A5, getting A1*-A5*.
But with all likelihood you can’t generalise P. And if you are not interested in passing ITT, you won’t even know it. So your genuine attempts to steelman will produce A2″* and A3″*, which may not even be stronger than A2 and A3, because you don’t yet understand what makes these arguments strong in relation to P.
making a weaker version of the argument than the person you are talking to could have, because you misunderstand their position
Steelmanning generates hypotheticals to figure out. It’s less useful when thinking about the hypotheticals doesn’t teach you new things. Even actually being “stronger” is relatively unimportant, it’s a heuristic for finding good hypotheticals, not a reference to what makes them good. Understanding someone’s position or remaining on-topic is even less relevant, since these are neither the heuristic nor what makes the hypotheticals generated with it valuable.
In my comment I was using “strength” as a catch-all-term for general usefulness of the argument, without going too deep into the nuances. I don’t think that this approximation failed to deliver the point.
And this is exactly the reason why ITT is so important. Other people may know something that you don’t that’s why your attempts to steelman them may fail dramatically—the strongest version of their argument you manage to come up with, may and often is weaker than the strongest version of the argument they, or a person who can pass their ITT can come up with.
In general, if you expect to learn something from another person, it’s useful to be able to understand them. And passing ITT is about understanding. You may not value understanding another person for it’s own sake, but it’s an important instrumental value for a truth seeker, for the reasons you talk about.
I mean, you should definitely only steelman if a genuine steelman actually occurs to you! You obviously don’t want to ignore the text that the other person wrote and just make something up. But my hope and expectation is that people usually have enough reading comprehension such that it suffices to just reason about the text that was written, even if you couldn’t have generated it yourself.
In the case of a drastic communication failure, sure, falling back to the ITT can make sense. (I try to address this in the post in the paragraph beginning with “All this having been said, I agree that there’s a serious potential failure mode [...]”.) My thesis is that this is a niche use-case.
It may be the case, that you think that genuine steelman occured to you, while still making a weaker version of the argument than the person you are talking to could have, because you misunderstand their position.
It’s not just about reading comprehension. Communicating complex ideas is generally hard and there are possible mistakes and misgeneralisations on every step made by both the sender and the receiver.
A person has a position P which is based on arguments A1, A2, A3, A4, A5. While describing their arguments, they just omit A1, because it seems just so obvious to them and A4 and A5, because they are too nuanced and their post is already too long or they simply forgot, so they bring up only A2′ and A3′ - their interpretation of A2 and A3, which may or may not equal A2 and A3.
You interpret them as A2″ and A3″. Not because you can’t read properly, but due to language being imperfect medium of ideas transfer. Now if you can generalise P from the arguments you’ve got—pas the ITT—all is fine. It means that you can fix whatever communication mistakes occured, recreate the missing arguments yourself, understand the relation between them and see what actually make them stronger or weaker not only according to you, but from the position of the person you are talking to. In practice, reaching this level of understanding is usually enough to challenge your views and progress truth seeking. But if it’s not enough, you can try to steelman any of the A1-A5, getting A1*-A5*.
But with all likelihood you can’t generalise P. And if you are not interested in passing ITT, you won’t even know it. So your genuine attempts to steelman will produce A2″* and A3″*, which may not even be stronger than A2 and A3, because you don’t yet understand what makes these arguments strong in relation to P.
Steelmanning generates hypotheticals to figure out. It’s less useful when thinking about the hypotheticals doesn’t teach you new things. Even actually being “stronger” is relatively unimportant, it’s a heuristic for finding good hypotheticals, not a reference to what makes them good. Understanding someone’s position or remaining on-topic is even less relevant, since these are neither the heuristic nor what makes the hypotheticals generated with it valuable.
You are correct.
In my comment I was using “strength” as a catch-all-term for general usefulness of the argument, without going too deep into the nuances. I don’t think that this approximation failed to deliver the point.