I think ITT is most useful for practicing privately, as a method for systematically developing intellectual understanding of arguments. Practicing it publicly is somewhat useless (though a good sanity check) and requires a setup where claims so channeled are not taken as your own beliefs.
Unlike ITT, steelmanning is not aiming for accurate understanding, so it’s much less useful for intellectual understanding of the actual points. It’s instead a mode of taking inspiration from something you don’t consider good or useful, and running away with whatever gears survive the analogy to what you do see as good or useful. Steelmanning is great at opposing aversion to associating with a thing that appears bad or useless, and making some intellectual use of it, even if it’s not for the intended purpose and lossy on intended nuance.
I think ITT is most useful for practicing privately, as a method for systematically developing intellectual understanding of arguments. Practicing it publicly is somewhat useless (though a good sanity check) and requires a setup where claims so channeled are not taken as your own beliefs.
Unlike ITT, steelmanning is not aiming for accurate understanding, so it’s much less useful for intellectual understanding of the actual points. It’s instead a mode of taking inspiration from something you don’t consider good or useful, and running away with whatever gears survive the analogy to what you do see as good or useful. Steelmanning is great at opposing aversion to associating with a thing that appears bad or useless, and making some intellectual use of it, even if it’s not for the intended purpose and lossy on intended nuance.