Steelmanning is a bad idea that needs to go away. It’s pretty condescending to say “your argument was bad I fixed it for you”. It’s also confusing when someone tries to improve an argument before responding to it. Lastly, steelmanning done poorly changes an argument into something that’s easier to respond to without necessarily improving it. It might be a good concept for academic debates in ivory towers. In general, it’s confusing and wildly impractical.
There's a risk that steel-manning can veer into condescension, but the real goal is to find a version of an argument that all parties agree represents it accurately and fairly.
(As opposed to wasting time on superficial contradictions, reductio ad absurdum variations, and other hazards of bad faith conflicts.)
I'd argue that if one side is using bad faith techniques and creating a bad faith conflict, no amount of steel manning is going to make the debate into a good debate. You need good faith efforts from all sides to have a good result. Nothing can replace this.
