Steel-manning
is the opposite of straw-manning – it is the principle of presenting the
strongest possible version of your opponent’s argument. I have frequently used
steel-manning throughout my life, to understand opposing views more clearly, to
sharpen my own reasoning, and to attempt to build the strongest arsenal of
personal views and beliefs that I can. It’s an essential tool for intellectual
honesty.
I have a theory that the harder it is to steelman a belief or proposition, the less likely that belief or proposition is to be true. It’s well within our ability to believe A over B - where if B has some merit or interesting tenets of consideration, but is still believed to be inferior to A – and yet still use the steel-manning technique to make a reasonable case for B. Out of Charlotte and Emily Bronte, I believe Charlotte is, by a small margin, the more accomplished novelist. But I could write a good steel-manning case for Emily being the better writer. I believe we have free will (to a certain degree), but I could write a steel-manning paper that convincingly argues that free will is not, in fact, built into the material substrate of a wholly deterministic universe. On interpretations of quantum theory, I believe that quantum collapse is an objective physical process, and that it occurs independently of human measurement. Still, I could steelman a defence of alternative interpretations - whether Copenhagen, decoherence, or many-worlds - and such an exercise would make for a stimulating discussion.
Now, when confronted with a belief or viewpoint that you find prohibitively difficult to steelman – where, even if you tried your very best, and made the most honest, rigorous attempt to argue for its case, you still found it’s not even possible to get off the ground - you probably have a very good reason to conclude that that idea is not just folly, but beyond even a reasonable defence of non-folly. For example, I find it prohibitively difficult to steelman young earth creationism – it is just so plain wrong that there isn’t a rational defence that can be made; the only defence occurs through lies, blatant falsehoods and misrepresentations of evidence. I know young earth creationism is wrong – not just because there is no evidence to believe it is right – but also because I find it impossible to steelman.
I find the same with Islam. While it isn’t built on the same kind of empirical lies, blatant falsehoods and misrepresentations of evidence as young earth creationism - as a Christian, I could steel man atheism a lot more easily than I could steelman Islam. There is just nothing about Islam that convinces me it’s anything other than a wholly man-made religion that has evolved into a very false dominant belief system through cultural contagion and hegemonic power structures. Where it speaks truths, its truths are already found in Judaism and Christianity, and where it speaks untruths or makes inaccurate deviations from better religions, it exposes itself as derivative and unreliable.
Sure, if you’re a Muslim young earth creationist you are probably not convinced (😊). But that’s only due to being wedded to the very falsities that steel-manning attempts to expose – it doesn’t undermine the efficacy of the proposition itself. Because you only need to pick something that does fall far from your intellectual purlieus – say, flat earth theory, holocaust denial, or astrology – and see why, to most people, they are just as un-steelmannable, because their claims have been tested and found wanting, and no rigorous defence can survive contact with empirical scrutiny.
So that’s my tip for today; the harder it is to steelman a belief or proposition, the less likely it is to be true. And if you are competent at steel-manning, and find something impossible to steelman, then that thing is almost certainly false.
