No, I'm experienced enough to recognize a dishonest/disingenuous argument from the start and while I might pay it a little bit of lip service, I'm not seriously entertaining certain categories of conversation or argumentation.

It is not hard to think of examples where steelmanning would not be worthwhile, such as when someone thinks an entire group of people is inferior. And unfortunately these types of views underly a surprisingly large number of political opinions these days.

>> such as when someone thinks an entire group of people is inferior

A point of steelmanning is that your assumption that this person thinks an entire group of people is inferior might be incorrect.

It feels good to be superior. And people really really like theries that make them feel superior. They also really really dislike walking away from then, catching any straws to be able to keep that feeling.

Your grand plan will fail the moment you finally get to the "incorrect" part. Cause there you dealing with additional feeling of loss you yourself just caused.

Again, are you afraid you might change your mind?

I like to think I have a pretty good idea of why people - whose ideas I find repulsive - believe what they do.

In my mind that means I have the capability to change their mind. The risk I take is that they can change mine.

Why are you up and down this thread defending a technique while refusing to ever enunciate a single position you think you understand, or have had your mind changed on?

Afraid there might be some really good reasons they're not worth talking about?

Because of comments like this, basically.

You seem to have confused contrarianism with steelmanning.