Theme
“What is a steelman?”
Every argument on this site starts with its steelman: the case as its best advocates would make it. This page explains what that means, where the idea comes from, how the site tests its own steelmen, and what a steelman is not.
The picture
The opposite of a strawman.
A strawman is a weakened copy of someone's view, built to be knocked down. A steelman is the reverse: the view restated in its strongest form, with its best evidence, in words its holders would recognise as their own. On this site that is the section 'Why people find it convincing' at the top of each argument. It comes before anything is said against the argument, and it is written in good faith: the facts that make the argument feel right are stated as facts when they are true.
An old idea with a new name.
The word is recent internet slang, but the practice is old. John Stuart Mill put it in 1859: 'He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.' Hearing the other side from your own teachers is not enough: 'He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.' The philosopher Daniel Dennett popularised 'Rapoport's rules' (after the game theorist Anatol Rapoport) for criticising a view: first restate it so clearly and fairly that its holder says 'thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way', then list what you agree with and what you learned from it, and only then say a word of criticism. The economist Bryan Caplan proposed an 'ideological Turing test' (2011): 'the ability to pass ideological Turing tests – to state opposing views as clearly and persuasively as their proponents – is a genuine symptom of objectivity and wisdom'; in his experiment, observers try to tell the real believers from the people imitating them.
primary documentJohn Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), chapter 2 (1859) ✓
Chapter II, 'Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion'; the passage 'He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that …' read in the Project Gutenberg text.
advocacy / viewDaniel C. Dennett, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (2013) — 'Rapoport's rules' (2013) ⚠
advocacy / viewBryan Caplan, 'The Ideological Turing Test' (EconLog, 2011) (2011) ✓
EconLog, 20 June 2011.
How this site tests its own steelmen.
Three checks. First, the signature test: would a thoughtful advocate of this argument sign the steelman as a fair statement of their case? If not, it is rewritten before anything else. Second, a search for the current leading advocates and their most-cited texts, because the first version that comes to mind is usually the most-written-about one, not the strongest (see 'You need to know the argument to find the argument'). Third, anchoring: each argument lists where it has actually been made in public, by whom and in which words ('Where it's been said'), so the steelman stays tied to what people really argue.
What a steelman is not.
It is not agreement: stating a case at full strength is how you find out exactly where it holds and where it breaks. It is not the most extreme version: the strongest case is usually the most careful one, not the loudest. And it is not an improved argument that nobody makes: an argument is only on this site if people actually make it in public; a clever version invented here would be a strawman in reverse, and it would teach readers to answer a case that nobody holds.
Why it matters here.
In this conflict each side mostly meets the other's arguments in the form its own side has chosen to show — often the weakest or ugliest version, which makes the other side look stupid or evil. People who then meet the real argument for the first time are unprepared, and often swing all the way over. A steelman works the other way round: it shows the case at its best, then what is true in it, what it leaves out and where it leads. That is also why this site states propaganda arguments at full strength (see 'Honesty and inoculation').
Where it leads if pressed
Limits.
Whoever writes a steelman also decides what 'strongest' means, and can pick a version that is easier to answer — the check against that is the advocates' own words, quoted and linked. And for some readers, stating a hateful argument at full strength will feel like giving it a platform; the answer this site gives is that the argument is already out there, and it works best when nobody has looked at it closely.