I think if such practices became mainstream, then people would begin to realize the difficulties involved in having a coherent conversation about a point of disagreement. The passive-aggressive cudgels you mention would fall flat because it is instantly noticeable as not fitting the necessary patterns for coherent conversation.
No one needs to accept or reject the other. the point of an argument is to educate each other, answer questions, and allow each other to fit both opinions into their own world view (ex. what are the limits / specifics to your belief?). Maybe someone changes their mind during that conversation, maybe they dont. maybe someone needs to let the new information ferment in their minds and life for a bit before it clicks. that is part of giving someone benefit of the doubt
maybe you are talking to someone who is venting, or in the middle of a mental episode (i mean that literally, not derogatorily), or was unfortunately born a narcissistic manipulator and cant help themselves. It doesnt matter, they cannot "win" the conversation - no one can - and the more people that realize this truth about conversations in general, the better the world will become
This is why I stopped giving people benefit of the doubt. With every uncharitable action of theirs, I tried to understand their perspective, explain mine, and discover a ground truth. Yet, they are not interested in finding the truth. They are interested in doing what they believe is to be true, regardless of whether it is true or not. They are not interested in getting educated. They have already decided that they are educated and I am wrong, just because we have different ideas. My strategy of giving benefit of the doubt in such a case turns out to be nothing but a waste of time.
Therefore, I've changed my strategy. If they don't respond well to my giving benefit of the doubt, I'll confront them directly. If they insist, then they'll become an out-group to me. Starmanning no more.
I dont enjoy casting people into out-groups, but I understand its appeal and necessity for some people. However, I dont give BotD for the other persons benefit. I do it for my own peace of mind and because I find it yields better conversations overall. Sometimes conversations go nowhere, or people deliberately try to manipulate. Those conversations yield nothing, but that's okay. No one owes me anything, afterall. there's always the future.
I find the best way to keep people open to changing their minds about something either now or in the future is to make them feel like they are free to support whatever they want. Then I act as a source of information and act as a safe zone for thought-exploration.
People do not enjoy feeling hunted. and that goes for educated people hunting uneducated people in order to teach them something or else be out-casted. I think a response of "fuck you, go ahead and outcast me" to that would be pretty normal.
I would much prefer in-grouping people with proper differentiation. "so and so is a great cook!" instead of "so and so doesnt understand climate change and couldnt hold a rational conversation with me about it that one time so I dont associate with them anymore and if they die then good riddance". People want to be validated. Sometimes finding something to validate someone on rather than attack them on the points of disagreement can help reshape their identity. they might never agree with you, but maybe you can move them towards ignoring the topic entirely within their lives in favor of other things that are better aligned with the good of society.
The types I'm talking about are the ones who are not willing to cooperate. I act as a team player, yet they have their own agenda against the team's. What's worse is they act as if they are willing to cooperate, to benefit from BotD. I don't know whether they do so consciously to manipulate people or because of their insecurities. It doesn't matter. If they are not willing to cooperate after being treated with the best of intentions, then those good intentions are better invested to where they are valued.
It is interesting to see how labeling a technique like this and assigning it a sense of moral superiority seems to invite the exact abuse you describe.
I’ve noticed this with the recent popularity of “steelmanning”; Many of the explicitly-labeled steelman arguments I’ve read lately are actually just strawman arguments, but the author tries to preempt criticism by labeling it a steelman and pretending it is the most robust counter argument that could exist. Often these false steelman arguments arise when the author doesn’t understand the topic as well as they think they do but they believe that “steelmanning” automatically makes them an expert on the counter arguments.
It sounds stupid, but I believe it. The flow of a lot of arguments make sense if you assume neither side understands practical empathy (not a comment on objectives, just they can't hold 2x perspectives in mind at once so a lot of the conversation is invisible to them).
Just means that they have limited imagination, no?
I'd hesitate to label anything as steelmanning even if I believed that was what I was doing.
Somebody else coming up with a slightly better argument than my labeled steelman would undermine my entire point.
That said, successfully presenting an opponents steelman argument as well or better than they would and then countering it is very effective.
Limited enough to not imagine the possibility there's something they don't know.
Explicitly labeled steelman is just "argument from arrogance", and that's one reason people often react badly to it. Some times the arrogant person does know better than everybody else, but statistically those two are negatively correlated.
The purpose of dialogue is to explore differences in thinking and possibly emerge with a new shared understanding.
To me, steelmanning is offering the other person the courtesy of the same thing you just insisted they “should” do if they want to have a discussion with you.
For years, a big part of my process for evaluating a new idea was to ask questions and mentally argue for and against various propositions. This might force me to read or think a bit more, but that process almost inherently tries to find the strongest (by whatever values constitute 'strong' to me) version of a point of view.
Is it foolproof? No, I find new arguments and facts.
But I do generally find it easier to see where other people are coming from in a discussion because I can usually reference back to my own interior dialogue to see where the idea at least could have come from (whether it did or not).
Is that steelmanning? I have no earthly idea, but it works for me.
It seems the hard part is convincing people that this kind of dialogue is important.
However, if I say A and I know 90% of people counter A with B then I'll say A and counter with steelmanned B and then counter that all at once so we can quickly jump to C.
C would either be a less predictable counter or no counter at all.
Thats kind of the whole point of steelmanning.
To me steelmanning is more of a better version of restating the others point in order to verify you understand their point. The best steelmanning is often proceeded by that. (do I understand the other parties meaning, and what is the strongest version of that meaning.)
Most often though I just find that steelmanning is just ignoring fallacies in otherwise decent efforts at conversational debate. In order to not devolve into back and forth "thats a fallacy!".
In which case the responsibility is on the steelmanner to demonstrate conclusively why the best possible argument differs from the original argument by discussing what makes the original argument weak. You can't just address it with 'it's weak.'
They might, yes. The point is to try not that you will necessarily always succeed.
This is why I said above that trying to do it but not labeling it is the best approach coz hey, maybe your steelman game sucks.
In the end there isn’t a lot you can do about it, except learn when to cut bait and move on. I agree with you that it’s still worth trying.
So I tend to cut bait and move on at the point where it starts to upset me rather than the point at which the conversation itself is obviously futile.
However my tolerance before I start to actually be upset is relatively high - most people would be significantly better served by bailing out earlier and I've seen too many people burning out of having such conversations entirely because of not doing that and I miss their perspective so would prefer they set boundaries that work for them.
(in case you can't tell, I like being covering fire and it very definitely earns me more friends I am glad to have than enemies I would have preferred not to have)
There are plenty of issues of basic human decency that can only be changed by talking to the people around you. Stopping entirely can only entrench people in their beliefs and validates the narrative that there are “sides”, and that the other side doesn’t listen.
Referring to an entire group of people as swine is case in point.
Politicians have their place, but so too the common conversation on the street.
Especially if you aren't part of the majority.
Such unfiltered workplaces inevitably become toxic.
The problem is that listening is a lot less flashy and glamorous than violent self-promotion. As long as the people who are in positions of power have got there by violent self-promotion, they will, from intentional or unintentional self-interest, bias the hiring process towards people like them.
It's a very common problem, particularly in tech, which has a very young employee base.
This remind me about the idea of "holy wars" in "The denial of death" of Ernest Becker.
“Since the main task of human life is to become heroic and transcend death, every culture must provide its members with an intricate symbolic system that is covertly religious. This means that ideological conflicts between cultures are essentially battles between immortality projects, holy wars.”
Also something along the lines of preferring to annihilate the other before they risk to be symbolically annihilated, like if we prefer the physical death before than the death of the symbolic. For both the other (when is an ideological opponent) and ourselves. We may be physically death, but symbolically immortal.
Some people have made their political ideology the foundation that they build their ego on. Any disagreement is intolerable. Others are not thoughtful enough to understand that there can be genuine disagreement in the world of both thought and action which needs to be tolerated.
These people will ruin any concept of starmanning that catches hold by using it as a passive-aggressive cudgel ("I'm sure you are a good person and therefore you will immediately cease your opposition and accept my arguments!", "I'm sure you want to be a good person and therefore can't really believe these things you are saying, which are only for bad people!", "Why are you resisting when I'm starmanning you, you must be Hitler 2.0").
But without labelling it, I do endorse the technique. Almost everyone wants the world to get better.