In writing this article I did some digging into the history of steelmanning in order to find the original meaning and I got to say I’m not sure your description totally fits. The Black Belt Bayesian quote I mentioned wasn’t talking about that, but maybe that doesn’t count because he didn’t call it a steelman (I’m not sure the term was invented yet). The Lukeprog post I linked to did say
2 Sometimes the term “steel man” is used to refer to a position’s or argument’s improved form. A straw man is a misrepresentation of someone’s position or argument that is easy to defeat: a “steel man” is an improvement of someone’s position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument.
but that might’ve been edited in later. I found this post by ‘the merely real’:
Then we would be steelmanning, the art of addressing the best form of the other person’s argument, even if it’s not the one they presented.
This is a very early mention and it’s also the source wikipedia uses.
But I’ve also seen plenty of people use steelmanning the way you explained it. Your definition of steelmanning would be fine during the debate but the other definition wouldn’t be. I solved this dilemma by just not mentioning the term steelmanning in my post and instead using the original Black Belt Bayesian quote.
a “steel man” is an improvement of someone’s position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument.
This seems compatible with both, to me. “You’re likely to underestimate the risks, and you can die even on a short trip” is a stronger argument than “You should always wear your seat belt because it is NEVER safe to be in a car without a seat belt”, and cannot be so easily defeated as saying “Parked in the garage. Checkmate”.
Reading through the hyperbole to the reasonable point underneath is still an example of addressing “the best form of the other person’s argument”, and it’s not the one they presented.
In writing this article I did some digging into the history of steelmanning in order to find the original meaning and I got to say I’m not sure your description totally fits. The Black Belt Bayesian quote I mentioned wasn’t talking about that, but maybe that doesn’t count because he didn’t call it a steelman (I’m not sure the term was invented yet). The Lukeprog post I linked to did say
but that might’ve been edited in later. I found this post by ‘the merely real’:
This is a very early mention and it’s also the source wikipedia uses.
But I’ve also seen plenty of people use steelmanning the way you explained it. Your definition of steelmanning would be fine during the debate but the other definition wouldn’t be. I solved this dilemma by just not mentioning the term steelmanning in my post and instead using the original Black Belt Bayesian quote.
This seems compatible with both, to me. “You’re likely to underestimate the risks, and you can die even on a short trip” is a stronger argument than “You should always wear your seat belt because it is NEVER safe to be in a car without a seat belt”, and cannot be so easily defeated as saying “Parked in the garage. Checkmate”.
Reading through the hyperbole to the reasonable point underneath is still an example of addressing “the best form of the other person’s argument”, and it’s not the one they presented.