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I don't think you understand what steelmanning means.
It doesn't mean "Adopt a positive perspective of the other side's point of view."
It means "Try to understand why they think the way they do." Assume they act out of rational (to themselves) motives, even if it's purely self-interest. At the very least, you should be able to describe their motives in a way they would agree with.
Do you think anyone carrying out DEI policies would agree "My job is to hire incompetent people who hate me?" I suppose a very cynical person who actually hates DEI but just does it because it's their job might. But surely you can imagine what an actual believer would say that would make sense from their perspective.
It has nothing to do with believing that their perspective is accurate or ethical.
You can of course insist that the only reason your enemies do anything is that they are stupid and evil, and this may be a satisfying and self-gratifying thing to believe, but it's probably not accurate either.
I am interested in the reasons people genuinely do things and far more so the substance of what they support and not the way they will present what they are after since of course people constantly present things too favorably in a manner that distorts things. Whether they are lying to others or to themselves, the positive version of a strawman where it is a positive distortion is a bad thing and not something that should be accepted without exploring where it is wrong.
Censoring reality for the sake of political corectness is bad, but I don't object to someone explaining where a negative conclusion is too negative. And of course being overly charitable towards the left comes along with being overly uncharitable to both those harmed by the left and to those critical of the left.
I don't think OP was merely steelmaning though but was arguing in favor of a specific perspective and against a different view. But there was an entitlement to positive bias towards the left, and I don't think OP sufficiently demonstrated anti-dan's position being inaccurate and anti-dan's argument more accurately captures the reality of DEI than it being about market outcomes.
But this is a strawman! You are framing my perspective too negatively and in a manner that I wouldn't present it while complaining about others supposedly doing the same.
I think some of the people who some include my "enemies" other people who I dislike what they are doing but not necessarily consider my enemies are immoral or insufficiently moral and sellouts who don't even care about what is the right and smart things to do from a broader perspective, or are blind ideologues, or some are neither but something not as bad but still bad enough from the perspective of what is the common good.
There are people who don't have the freedom to resist doing stupid things that enough people push as an agenda and are doing it to get along. Others are smart and malicious and support DEI because they think they will benefit or think it will harm a group that they ideologically or ethnically dislike. Some are not zealous ideologues but might follow a stupid and disastrous ideology
A lot of people can do evil and stupid things all the time, in all sorts of societies, sometimes even ideologically opponents of each other. The expectation of wise and ethical and correct conduct is much more presumptuous.
A very decent % of them can have stupid beliefs while in other facets not be stupid. One could call them misguided I guess and I am not after calling all people doing destructive things with the label idiots/stupid but using your terms. People acting in a self destructive irrational manner such as promoting incompetents at their own expense is an aspect of DEI.
Is the point to make it as if it is about calling people stupid, so you can dismiss the negative criticism that is about irrational ideology and promote the perspective that it is about market outcomes?
Misguided/Stupid/irrational and immoral ideologies and policies happen all the time. There are plenty of different people who support what is wrong for reasons that don't reflect positively upon them, for others to find legitimate things to criticize for lifetimes. Certainly the left is far from exempt from this. There is no legitimate basis to bias in favor of what reflects more positively but could be inaccurate, over what doesn't reflect as positively, and in this case is more accurate.
It can even be beneficial to some of the ideologues if enough influential types have rigged the system to benefit ideological conformism, even if what they support is bad in general. And while it wasn't my original language, but I defended it, yes there are people who support incompetent people who hate them to replace them for reasons of ideological blindspot, going along with zeltgeist, following a bad and irrational ideology, etc.
Have you considered that you might be biased against right wingers who are critical towards the left and are trying to frame such criticisms and negativity as irrational, illegitimate, hysterical, unfair, etc, etc?
You might not be as negative to the establishment neocon type to a degree, I guess, but I simply do not see any of intensity from you for people to steelman your right wing outgroup, but you are in fact the one who is constantly framing the anti feminist, white identitarians, HBDers, those critical of Jews, those critical of the left, etc, you name it, in very a negative light and not in the way they would like to represent their views. Yes you can always try to explain how they genuinely are that bad, and are terrible extremist evil irrational haters, but there is zero consistency here. You might even try to frame it again at how people want to get away with being uncharitable haters. But you are doing so while you are uncharitable and hating. So that would be again trying to frame people in a way that is too negative, incorrect and not how they like to present themselves. This can go ad nauseum with repetition.
It is more that you are using the "unfairness towards left" as a weapon to dismiss the other side, or in fact censor it.
Leftist cancel culture towards people being insufficiently politically correct/insufficiently conformist and positive over left wing visions which has in fact also had a more violent form in history, is actually a very serious deal. You don't seem to care whatsoever if in your extreme zeal to protest perceived unfairness toward the left you are unfair towards the people who you frame as these terrible irrational people, in my view very uncharitably and with distortions.
There are consequences of doing this both in censorship and in booing correct speech that leftists find offensive because it is politically incorrect *. Both in mistreating the naysayers and in not allowing bad ideologies, and bad harmful factions that comprise of people, to be treated accurately, as bad as they really are. And therefore to be allowed to continue to do harm. The rape gangs continuing in Britain after far righters sounded the alarm but they were dismissed, in addition of course to the victims who were also dismissed with some of the stories being especially horrific, is one example of the consequences of zealous pro left and associated groups political correctness which treats negative reality towards its in-groups as too unbelievable and offensive to be taken seriously.
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Well, if I look up what DEI enjoyers actually believe, they might no phrase it as "hire incompetent people who hate me", but if I'm working in some techie / shit-actually-needs-to-get-done field, and believe that:
Even if I believe that this combination will magically work out as an improvement over the status quo, how is it anything other than:
If I thought we should abolish medical licensing, would we be splitting hairs over whether or not I believe that incompetent people should be permitted to practice medicine?
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The person carrying out the DEI policies is likely a DEI candidate themselves. The job is not to hire people that hate her (statistically) its to hire people who hate the core employees so they can, in the long run, execute a coup and take over the company.
First—do you have any statistics on this? How can you know someone is a DEI candidate?
Assuming you’re right, and most DEI is implemented by a fifth column, there’s still an obvious bootstrap problem. Someone had to implement the first DEI policies. Someone at each firm, even.
If so…why? Why is this cause the one which gets a conspiracy? How’d they overcome the profit motive, the complacency bias, all the things which kept commies and anarchists from pulling the same shtick?
My theory is in my above posts. The entryism starts because the legal environment is hostile to a non-DEI company. Its either coming from the funds, who already had been entered, or the law firms advising the startup, who also have been entered. Why do those continue on? Because legacy profits at most of our larger firms in the US are significant and there is also the issue of the entire education-industrial complex being a captured institution that is slowly burning its legacy reputation in service of DEI.
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