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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33485 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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The whole ethos of this forum is to be charitable and assume the best form of your opponent's argument, regardless of how wrong you imagine it/they might be. In the interest of avoiding the easy construction of strawman arguments.

I think you're describing an extreme example, where whoever it is you might be arguing with produces only incomprehensible babble or wild contortions of logic. I'd need a specific example to decide whether I agree with you that in such a case any charitable interaction would be pointless. I would also suggest it is very easy to simply dismiss one's interlocutor/opponent as beyond hope/nuts/irrational, having "no steelman" version, because then no effort need be spent trying to imagine his or her POV.

Steelmanning as I understand it does not mean constructing an elaborate facade of reasonable, fact-based arguments on behalf of your opponent, where you must engage in mental contortionism and grant them every concession--or "accept" their assumptions, as you've phrased it. It simply means making (or assuming) the clearest best form of their argument--which you can then refute.

I am going to suggest that it is possible to imagine a worldview where the positions you have listed here are arguable. Mind you, I do not subscribe to such a worldview, but I can see how if a person held certain beliefs or had had certain experiences, they might be convinced to embrace both of your example points.

But I am not sure we're getting anywhere by this back-and-forth. What you seem to be saying is that if you think someone's position is so far afield from your own that you simply cannot fathom their reasoning, then it is okay, is in fact the right response, to wave them away as hopeless (and whatever else.) I am suggesting that it is exactly at these moments when it is most helpful to try and break through what I would argue is just your own defensive bias, and to attempt to at least understand the most good-faith version of their position. To do so may not enable you to change their mind(s), but it will hopefully stave off the common tendency to completely otherize them and see them as utterly irredeemable, or vile and evil, or subhuman, because at that point you may say whatever you want about them and do whatever you like to them, and keep your conscience clear. There's no good end to that road. It also unfortunately seems to be the road the US is on politically now.

hence the Quokka meme that is so richly deserved in the rat community.

Haven't you heard, the new meme animal is the Lemur, the one who lurks.

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