While you can strawman a position you don’t understand, I’m not sure you can steelman it.

Steelmanning is a good habit to get into. Rather than dismissing something that you disagree with, you can try come up with the most cogent argument you can why it might be true. However, to disagree with a proposition, statement or a conclusion requires understanding it in the first place. I admit freely: There’s a whole lot I don’t understand. I’m in the habit of asking people to clarify when I don’t understand them but am intrigued. I’m sure this comes across as combative or borne of derision. It isn’t borne of derision; it is born of confusion!

It is sadly easy to strawman things you don’t understand or have failed to grasp the nuances of. Strawmanning is a bad habit to get into (but probably an effective rhetorical tactic sadly) because you may find yourself dismissing things that are true. 

The flip side is if you fail to understand a position and you try to give it the benefit of the doubt by steelman-ing it you may find yourself imputing things the party didn’t mean, assuming facts that may not be true, positing theories that may sound good to you but for whatever reason lack rigor. Are you actually constructing a cogent argument for that position? Or are you erecting a scaffolding for a different position, or a faulty logical scaffolding that isn’t truthful?

On Soctt Aaronson’s blogpost about “Umeshims” he held a competition for the best one, and I have to admit I don’t understand it.

If you’ve never had children, then you’re spending too much time using protection. – Peter Brooke

Let’s get out the chainmail and the weird beak mask: it’s time to steelman that which I don’t understand…!! 

Let me be clear: It’s not that I think it’s untrue: I just don’t understand how one leads to the other.

Umeshims are about sub optimality. Missing one flight every once in a while is a net gain of time than being frequently early if you fly enough. Having a child though is not a comparable time investment to using protection: so I’ll assume they’re not making that comparison. What could it mean: ah, that you are sterile – and obviously if you’re sterile then practicing safe sex is a waste of time because if the sole objective is to not fall pregnant that’s impossible. Right? Probably not. It says “too much” not “completely pointless”.

I’m likely constructing a parallel argument scaffolding that fails to grasp what insight the original author meant to convey.

Here’s another example of how my attempts to give a statement I didn’t understand a cogent scaffolding was just plain wrong. I was confused by the meaning of a Bulgarian Proverb. Was it true? I couldn’t tell you when I first read it because I didn’t understand it.

The wife carries the husband on her face; the husband carries the wife on his clothes - Bulgarian Proverb

I made the mistake of reading this to literally. Innuendos aside, was the husband standing atop of his wife’s pursed face? I tried to imagine what figurative sense it could have – supporting. The man supports his wife with his clothes? Is this about “dress for the job you want, not the job you have” that the man who dresses well will provide financially better for his wife? That the woman with better cosmetics, better eyebrow sculpting is supporting her husbands standing and reputation in the community? 

After some google searching I found the actual meaning which is something like:

A woman who smiles has a good husband, a frowning or especially a battered wife ^[1]has a bad husband.

A man with clean, pressed, well cared for clothes has a good wife. If he’s dirty, or they are creased she is not a good wife.

The point I’m trying to make is that by giving the benefit of the doubt and trying to come up with a reasoned explanation – I arrived at a conclusion which was not the intended one.

But all this talk of steelmanning, it is only appropriate I steelman my own counterpoint. So please enjoy this rebuttal from my very own devil’s advocate:

Not only is steelmanning statements and positions you don’t understand possible: it is essential for any kind of intellectual growth. If you are paralysed with fear by a statement you aren’t 100% certain you understand, it will forever taunt you. It will present you with the limitations and bounds of your knowledge which while good to avoid any kind of Dunning-Kruger induced overconfidence, will become a prison as you fail to challenge or stretch those limitations with intellectual growth. Not only that but constantly seeking, like a student raising their hand for the teacher’s help, that the originator of a position or statement spell it out to you is a disservice to them and to yourself. It atrophies your ability to understand and communicate with others. The world is a confusing, frustrating, seemingly contradictory place. The learning never stops – if, you have the courage to charge headfirst into those matters which you don’t understand.  Sometimes it is that very attempt to brainstorm “what truths could this encode” that leads you to understand the statement in the first place. 

Any time you don't understand a domain, many problems in that domain will seem impossible because when you query your brain for a solution pathway, it will return null.  But there are only mysterious questions, never mysterious answers.  If you spend a year or two working on the domain, then, if you don't get stuck in any blind alleys, and if you have the native ability level required to make progress, you will understand it better.  The apparent difficulty of problems may go way down. It won't be as scary as it was to your novice-self. – On Doing the Impossible

And even if you don’t reach the author’s intended meaning – this is not necessarily a bad thing. Many beautiful lyrics have been the product of mondegreens. Many pithy quotable quotes are the misremembering of longer quotes. In the same manner, you may in fact expand the limitations of your understanding rather than doubling down on what you already know by trying to interpreted that which you don’t currently understand. Stanley Kubrick ^[2]misquoted Joyce as on a film set mistakes were the portals of discovery – actually Joyce’s character said that a genius makes no mistakes – his errors are volitional and portals to discovery. But Kubrick’s misinterpretation isn’t any less true to what he was talking about. Likewise, who is to say that your misinterpretation of the Bulgarian proverb is any more wrong than the antiquated and gendered original meaning?

The line between intellectual humility and intellectual cowardice is thinner than a human hair. Admitting that you don’t understand a statement is humility. Not attempting to interrogate what it could mean by steelmanning is cowardice. It is perfectly acceptable to have humility and steelman: provided you correctly label it what it is – an investigation, an attempt to find the meaning.

The idea that steelmaning statements that flummox, confuse, or you aren’t sure you understand is anywhere near as intellectually dangerous as strawmanning those arguments you do but disagree with is a harmful proposition. It discourages intellectual curiosity and makes one a prison of their own uncertainty and confusion. 

So, when should you Steelman?

I hate to say it, the ultimate thought terminating cliché but... it depends...

Oh it depends…!

Steelmaning a statement or a position that you don’t understand leaves you at risk of create a self-serving if not all out incorrect interpretation. On the other hand, if you never do it, you will not intellectually grow. The balance is probably to noncommittally investigate “well let’s tentatively steelman”.

Some assumptions I've made

There are a few assumptions of mine that underpin my warning about steelmanning arguments one doesn’t understand.

First assumption: that a reader’s subjective confidence that they have understood a statement is a reliable indicator that they have indeed correctly interpreted it. This doesn’t mean people are never wrong about what they think something means, even if they are confident they understood it. Only that human communication works pretty regularly where both the recipient and the sender of a communique have similar if not the same interpretation. (To do: is it possible to actually quantify the amount of ‘noise’ or ‘divergence’ in interpretation in everyday human conversation? For every ten propositions, how many are correctly received?)

Second Assumption: When someone steelman’s an argument they are not confident they understand; they will err more often than not towards a “self-serving bias” that fits their current worldview. Because their current worldview provides rationales, observations, facts, and beliefs which are ready to hand to fit in the scaffolding.

This is different from steelmaning a position they disagree: because all those atoms of arguments are building towards a position that isn’t part of their worldview. That’s what makes steelmaning a good habit: because it might cause someone to reflect on a way their worldview is inconsistent with reality and alter it to be less wrong.

Third Assumption: Strawmanning is easy to do because it doesn’t require the cognitive load of constructing a cogent argument. It often manifests as handwaving using cached thoughts and shortcuts rather than cognitive load. Simply put: it is easy to argue against something that is totally wrong than to sift through the nuance of a position. 

Then again, how many statements that we agree with or hold to be “true” are we also using cached thoughts and shortcuts?

Fourth Assumption: it is doing the person who makes a statement a disservice to attribute faulty reckoning or scaffolding, particularly if they position rests on a strong argument.

Don't be afraid to ask questions, but don't be afraid to understand on your own

There is no shame in asking someone what they meant if you genuinely are confused. Asking people for their reasoning is an essential skill in sharpening your own reasoning and improving your own understanding of reality. But likewise pressing against the limitations of your own knowledge and trying to understand that which you’re confident you don’t is essential to intellectual growth too.

1. ^{^}

   As an aside – it is interesting to note the implicit traditionalist gender roles and the very real implication of domestic violence.

2. ^{^}

   "I think it was Joyce who observed that accidents are the portals to discovery. Well, that's certainly true in making films. And perhaps in much the same way, there is an aspect of film-making which can be compared to a sporting contest. You can start with a game plan but depending on where the ball bounces and where the other side happens to be, opportunities and problems arise which can only be effectively dealt with at that very moment."
   http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.bl.html 
    “Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”
   Ch. 9: Scylla and Charybdis. Ulysses, James Joyce.