| ▲ | dnissley 5 days ago |
| how would you steelman his position? |
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| ▲ | beeflet 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| I wouldn't. It's a position selected specifically to troll immature leftist college students and score youtube views. |
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| ▲ | qcnguy 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Steelmanning that position, though, would go like this. The purpose of debate is to challenge people's views, even if they strongly disagree, in order to convince if not participants then bystanders to change their mind. Good debate makes good viewing, which is why debates have audiences. And young people in particular tend to be impressionable because they don't have a lifetime of commitment to one position. So if you want to engage people politically via debate, then university campuses are a good place to do that and thus - to someone extraordinarily uncharitable - any such debate could be described as "trolling immature leftist college students to score YouTube views". The same activity done by an academic would be described as "presenting the youth with mind-expanding dialogue", and they'd be doing it to score tuition fees, but nobody would quibble with that phrasing. | | |
| ▲ | camgunz 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > The purpose of debate is to challenge people's views, even if they strongly disagree, in order to convince if not participants then bystanders to change their mind. Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together. Unless you're very, very careful and good faith, and your counterpart is very, very careful and good faith, debates are a race to the bottom of psychological manipulation. They're not contests of facts; there's no way to objectively score them; they're not good ways for participants or bystanders to learn. Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging. You'll almost never see right-wing "debaters" go up against "big" left-wing names like an Ezra Klein or Destiny (Ben Shapiro is kind of the exception, but he's far more conciliatory with someone like Klein--he did do one with Destiny, it went pretty badly for him, so it of course became a one-time thing). Kirk et al lose--they lose frequently! You rarely see it because they have far bigger megaphones than their victorious rivals. But have these (many) losses changed their views? No. Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together. | | |
| ▲ | johnnyanmac 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Debates SHOULD be about 2 parties seeking truth. In reality, it's about brining people over to your viewpoint and garnering support. There's many ways to do that, but centuries of debate etiquette describe bad form and dishonest means to "win a debate". Despite the events here, it is generally bad form in an exchange of words to incite violence against an opponent. And that's often what Kirk does, or did. >Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging Yes. Before we sigsrcoated it, we just called this propaganda. Propaganda is not a debate. The most dangerous discovery in early social media was that a spewing of propaganda (aka, arguments not all based on reason nor a goal to further humanity) will still get you a following, no matter how badly you use. Becsuse saying those words rouse the thoughts of those who are either prone to propaganda, or simply embolden those who already had those thoughts but werre too scared to admit it. A decade of refinement later, and look where we are. | |
| ▲ | yostrovs 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | One could say the same about this very debate you're participating in. And since that's how you see debates, one has to immediately assume that you're not acting in good faith. | | |
| ▲ | camgunz 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Only a small subset of conversations are debates, and personally I don't feel like I'm arguing with anyone (including you!), just discussing |
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| ▲ | bccdee 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| A position like his doesn't really take well to steelmanning… It's not really the kind of viewpoint that's meant to be spelled out explicitly. You're supposed to shroud it in euphemisms. I guess the steelmanned version of his beliefs would be something like, "racial and sexual minorities are an enemy to the white Americans who own this country; they threaten things we value about our culture and society, and we have no obligation to tolerate or accommodate them if we don't want to." He spoke out against the Civil Rights act. He said the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory (that immigration is a deliberate attempt to dilute and ultimately replace the white race) is "not a theory, it's a reality." He said the Levitican prescription to stone gay men is "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Social_policy) Coverage of Kirk's killing has largely skirted around his views, because to describe them at all feels like speaking ill of the dead. If you bring up the fact that Kirk was a loathsome hatemonger, it somewhat tempers your message that political violence is never acceptable |
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| ▲ | collingreen 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm comfortable saying both that charlie kirk was a loathsome hatemonger and that he also shouldn't have been murdered. This hurts everyone. | | |
| ▲ | TheCoelacanth 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | He absolutely shouldn't have been murdered and the rise of political violence is terrifying for the country's future. However, he has directly stated that empathy is bad and that shooting victims are an acceptable price to pay to avoid gun control. I refuse to feel sympathy for someone who vigorously argued against doing anything to prevent what happened to him and who vigorously argued against caring about the people it happened to. | | |
| ▲ | daveidol 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | He never once stated that “empathy is bad”. He had plenty of bad takes, but no need to misrepresent. He was simply saying that the term empathy is overused vs sympathy | | |
| ▲ | dragonwriter 3 days ago | parent [-] | | The terms mean different things, and he is very clear that one is good and the other is bad in his eyes, and that’t the reason for his opposition to the use of the one term. |
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| ▲ | diogenescynic 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | His argument was that we shouldn't disarm just because evil exists and guns can be mis-used. Using that as a way to suggest his death is justified or whatever people are implying is just gross and disgusting. Dude was 31 years old and had 2 young kids and simply went and talked to people. He was assassinated in front of his family for nothing more than talking. Nothing that he ever did was even close to deserving violence. If people can't take someone politely debating their ideas, then they're a whiny entitled baby and they're the problem. | |
| ▲ | soupbowl 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | People that don't like Charlie don't need to have sympathy for him, but not having sympathy and being douche bags in mass is something totally different. "I can't stand the word empathy, actually," he continued. "I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage. But, it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. That's a separate topic for a different time." | | |
| ▲ | Yeul 3 days ago | parent [-] | | How can you not be a douche bag to someone who wants to kill you?
How are homosexuals supposed to feel about this guy? | | |
| ▲ | soupbowl 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Ah yes... he wanted all homosexuals murdered[citation needed]. Good thing the good guys killed him eh? |
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| ▲ | ratelimitsteve 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | As one of the people against whom his hate was routinely monged, I agree wholeheartedly. I won't mourn him personally because he was proud to tell us all how thrilled he would be if me and my partner got what he got, but I'm also not gonna engage in the gloating and performative grossness that the more hideously online seem to enjoy whether they're left or right. The people I love aren't safer because of this. In fact, we've already been tried and found guilty. | |
| ▲ | bccdee 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I agree wholeheartedly. | |
| ▲ | diogenescynic 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | He wasn't even a hate monger though? Just because he was a republican means he's a hate monger and racist? I don't get it. I haven't seen one person accusing him of this stuff actually cite a quote that seemed like hate speech or racism? They just don't like facts being used in a debate that hurt their feeling. It's ridiculous. People need to grow up. There is a complete lack of maturity on the part of his critics. They want to live in a censored thought bubble and don't value the first amendment (or seem to understand it). | | |
| ▲ | bccdee 4 days ago | parent [-] | | > I haven't seen one person accusing him of this stuff actually cite a quote that seemed like hate speech or racism? You can peruse the "political views" section on his Wikipedia page if you want something comprehensive, but here's an example for you to chew on: In one podcast interview, Kirk cited Leviticus 20:18 (he paraphrases as "if thou liest with another man, thou shalt be stoned") and called it "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." That's a pretty explicit endorsement of the death penalty for sodomy. If that isn't hate speech, what is? > They [...] don't value the first amendment (or seem to understand it). I think you're the one misunderstanding it. The first amendment protects people from government censorship, not infamy and disgrace. | | |
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| ▲ | zahlman 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > A position like his doesn't really take well to steelmanning… It's not really the kind of viewpoint that's meant to be spelled out explicitly. You're supposed to shroud it in euphemisms. > I guess the steelmanned version of his beliefs would be something like, "racial and sexual minorities are an enemy to the white Americans who own this country; they threaten things we value about our culture and society, and we have no obligation to tolerate or accommodate them if we don't want to." What you are doing here is quite literally the opposite of steelmanning. | |
| ▲ | dnissley 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Here's an attempt to steelman just one of the things you bring up: the great replacement theory. The United States, like many developed nations, is experiencing a fertility crisis: it doesn't produce enough families and resulting children to sustain it's current population. The US could take steps to address the underlying problems that result in declining fertility for it's current population, but it's unlikely to do so for several reasons that all boil down to political realities where the people that are most incentivized to vote (retired people who earn social security) would probably bear the brunt of the (significant) costs of such solutions. See the idea of "concentrated benefits, diffuse costs". So instead the US uses immigration to fill the gap left by declining fertility rates (an option not equally available to all developed countries), resulting in young US citizens continuing to struggle to form families, and producing a fraying of the social fabric that such an inability to form families is likely to have on a society. So you can see why some people would be duped into such a conspiracy theory, which purports to explain what people are seeing with their very eyes. | | |
| ▲ | projektfu 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That's not really steelmanning. You can't steelman a position by saying it's not the real position but it dupes the rubes. The great replacement theory is the theory that there is an intentional effort to dilute or replace the capital-W White, meaning the historical English/Scottish/Scotch Irish, population of the US, with immigrants and former slaves, and it usually involves a part that says that it is being done to weaken the country against its international competitors. A third part that is usually involved is that the process is being facilitated by and for the benefit of people like "international bankers", "cosmopolitans", "elites", etc., terms which have an antisemitic history. To steelman it, you would have to steelman at least the intentional dilution part. Not just to say that it is hard to meet our demand for labor without immigration but that someone is coordinating it. Further, I don't think it has any meaning without the part that says it is being done to weaken the country, which you would have to show that not only would it weaken the country, but that is the intention of these coordinators. Without that, you just have a demographic argument. If "Whites" do not have many children, and the population would otherwise shrink as a whole, while immigration is needed to satisfy demand for labor, then their proportion will shrink, but it is not "great replacement" without it being intentional/directed. | | |
| ▲ | dnissley 4 days ago | parent [-] | | It is what I consider steelmanning. Not of the conspiracy itself (I'm not interested in that, since the literal version isn't even well agreed upon by most of its believers) but of the observable pressures that make the conspiracy attractive. I think I could convince an average believer in the great replacement theory (who would be a casual believer that doesn't know many of the specific details you've listed at length of the "official" version) that my restatement of the issue is what they're actually concerned about. In fact, I have had productive conversations with right wingers who express such a casual belief in this theory by telling them what I've written here in the comment you're replying to. |
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| ▲ | akimbostrawman 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >So instead the US uses immigration to fill the gap left by declining fertility rates Because that is working so good for Europe? At some point you need to understand that replacing a population is not the solution for low fertility population. | | |
| ▲ | dnissley 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I think we agree, but in case I wasn't clear I will restate this more plainly: patching over the problem of fertility with immigration is toxic to the social fabric of a nation. |
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| ▲ | johnnyanmac 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If anyone reads this and think it's not the fault of the politicians, or at least the boomers for "not wanting to help their children/grandchildren", it's pretty clear that their goal wasn't to solve the fertility crisis. On top of that I don't even think most boomers need to be inconvininced. Increase capital taxes, remove the ceiling for SS taxes, give wokers a 4 day workweek, raise minimum wage, invest in 3rd places. A few steps give people the time and energy to meet and make families. But it seems like we really will just go to civil war before we make sure rich people contribute to the nation. | | |
| ▲ | dnissley 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I disagree that the measures you're suggesting will move the needle on fertility, since they will be enjoyed by singles, dinks, and families alike. If you want more children you have to reward mothers directly and significantly in line with their potential earnings. Not a paltry few thousand dollars, but more than enough to offset the price of daycare in hcol cities. I want to mimic social security but for families, and that means concentrated benefits (that directly incentivize voting turnout and interest group formation). At the same time I want our country to continue to be competitive globally when it comes to business, and not turn into whatever Europe has become. We can't just add this as a line item to our budget. We are not that rich and we have financial problems that are looming. |
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| ▲ | mostertoaster 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If a Baptist tells me I’m sinning because I smoke and drink whiskey, I don’t hate him, I just dismiss him. If Charlie Kirk said a male cannot be a woman, then the response was hate and was felt to be completely justified. The hate mongering is from those who bow down to the zeitgeist of the age. My hope is that Charlie Kirk bravely speaking the truth in the face of so much hate, even though it cost him his life, inspires many more to not fear for their lives to speak the truth, and raise their kids to be the same, until society turns and rejects what is false. |
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| ▲ | jennyholzer 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I've never heard of the "steelman" thought experiment I'm familiar with the "strawman" concept that it derives from, although in my experience this is typically presented as a logical fallacy. What is the purpose of "steelmanning" a political actor's political perspectives? What is this supposed to achieve? Where did you and the people responding to this comment hear about this concept? Are there articles out there making the case for "steelmanning"? |
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| ▲ | jackothy 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's just that a lot of people argue badly, either because of lacking skill or lacking goodwill. That doesn't mean their arguments are necessarily wrong. It is necessary to try to reframe such badly made arguments in a way that presents the message properly in order to be able to actually compare competing ideas and find truth. If you compare one well-crafted argument to a poorly crafted argument, the well-crafted argument would seem to come out on top even if its underlying ideas were actually wrong. E.g. if I say "Apples are good because my grandma loved apples and you are stupid!" And my opponent says "Apples are bad because there are other fruits that can be grown much more efficiently and feed people better" Then my opponent would probably "win" the argument. But that doesn't mean apples are actually bad. Try to remake the argument for why apples are good in a better way, in order to fairly compare the two sides and find the truth. | |
| ▲ | collingreen 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I've seen this jargon around and use it myself but now that you ask I'm not sure where I first saw it. tl;dr - good faith requires you to understand and do your best to represent the other side, not cherry pick sneaky "wins" When I use the term my intent is to frame the opposing argument as strongly and clearly (and fairly!) as possible so that you can make your own point strongly and fairly. The critique of a "strawman argument" is a metaphor about arguing/fighting a training dummy instead of an actual enemy, usually by addressing only part of an argument or by ignoring context or using logical fallacies like motte and baily or false dichotomies. The idea is that it's very easy to look like your point wins when you fight the scarecrow; if it's actually a good argument face it off against the knight in armor actually fighting back. | |
| ▲ | dnissley 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I use steelmanning to connect across cultural divides. This way I don't end up writing off half the country as deplorables. If I simply wrote them off in this way it would be contributing to the decay of our social fabric. So instead I intend to mend the social fabric by attempting to understand the emotional place that these deplorable ideas come from, which by themselves are often quite reasonable. Isolation is often how people end up with these ideas, so it's important to connect to them, and ultimately to love them. That goes for both sides of our political system, and beyond to the rural urban divide, the gender divide, the racial divide, the class divide, etc. I think I found out about by reading rationalist stuff. E.g. Less wrong and slatestarcodex. | |
| ▲ | zahlman 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | See for example: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/12/youre-probably-wonderi... |
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| ▲ | kiitos 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| before "how" the question is "why" would you steelman his position? should you? |
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| ▲ | greekrich92 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | disgruntledphd2 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Those are exactly the positions you should try hardest to steelman. Fundamentally the purpose of steelmanning is to convince yourself of the strongest arguments for a position, which you can then counter. | | |
| ▲ | mock-possum 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Very much disagree - in a bad faith argument, countering does nothing, because the point is not to prove their position, the point is to hurt you, or play to their base, or to tire you or distract you and generally just to waste your time. It’s more of a “the only winning move is not to play” situation. You win by refusing to take the bait, and shutting down the attempt to coerce you into playing along with the bad faith argument game. Or, if you like - when faced with “heads I win, tails you lose,” the strategy is not to figure out a way to get the coin to land on its edge, or to end up suspended in midair, or to propose some sort of infinite ‘best two out of three’ regress - the strategy is to recognize the rigged game and walk away. | |
| ▲ | cosmicgadget 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You are thinking of a good faith opposing argument. Not an argument where the other person is just trying to waste your time. | |
| ▲ | johnnyanmac 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | There's understanding disagreeable viewpoints and the there's failing to adhere to the paradox of tolerance. There's no reason to steelman "black people shouldn't exist in the US", as the most extreme example. I can steelman it, but what am I getting out of this? What am I professing to an audience to steelman this? Steelmans are used to build empathy and sh synthesize solutions taking multiple viewpoints into account. This is the opposite. |
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| ▲ | 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | miltonlost 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
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