The steelman argument 🤖
We send out this newsletter every two weeks, talking about how organizations and individuals can better communicate with their audience. Read past issues. In this issue, we look at how steel manning can help resolve conversations.
The word debate sparks in our heads the image of presentable-looking people standing on stage, having a dialogue on topics of importance, say, in a presidential primary. Even on these “important” occasions, participants tend to fall into errors in reasoning (see the strawman argument below).
With that being the case, why should we take the effort to be understanding and sincere in the smaller discussions that happen closer to home? Ex. When answering a customer or donor objection.
One reason—that we might take heart in or despair at—is that debates in front of crowds often take place with the purpose of swaying the crowd, and not necessarily reaching common ground.
Finding consensus requires us to be willing to understand and acknowledge different points of view. A conversational aid that can help us with that is steel manning.
Steelman by refining someone’s point of view
A steelman argument is the inverse of a strawman argument (the act of taking someone’s point, distorting it, and addressing this weaker version of the point). In conversation, a strawman might look something like this:
Person 1: Puts across point A
Person 2: Argues against a point B that is only superficially similar to point A
Ex.
Person 1: “I prefer movies over books”
Person 2: “Why do you hate books?”
A steelman argument would instead involve constructing the strongest possible version of point A, and then making an argument against it.
Ex.
Person 1: “The early literacy rate is going down.”
Person 2: “During the pandemic period, yes. But historically, it has been increasing steadily.”
This does two things: It reassures our conversational partner that we are listening, and it moves us closer to reaching a consensus. One could also say it helps make us better, more rational people in conversations.
Now, some of the caveats of adopting this approach:
- You risk sounding patronizing, depending on how you frame what you say.
- You risk further mischaracterizing the opposing argument by failing to understand it.
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There is no doubt that steel manning is a hard skill to develop. After all, we would be living in a much more agreeable world if it was easy to control emotional reactions, adopt alternate points of view, and compromise.
Something to consider the next time we are in conversation – moving the focus from debating to truth-seeking through collaboration.
See you next time,
Mukundan
