In favor of steelmanning

I think there's also a third thing that I would call steelmanning, which is a rhetorical technique I sometimes use when faced with particularly bad arguments. If strawmanning introduces new weaknesses to an argument and then knocks it down, steelmanning fixes weaknesses in an argument and then knocks it down anyway. It looks like "this argument doesn't work because X assumption isn't true, but you could actually fix that like this so you don't need that assumption. But it still doesn't work because of Y, and even if you fix that by such and such, it all still fails because of Z". You're kind of skipping ahead in the debate, doing your opponent's job of fixing up their argument as it's attacked, and showing that the argument is too broken to fix up. This is not a very nice way to act, it's not truth seeking, and you'd better be damn sure that you're right, and make sure to actually repair the argument well rather than just putting on a show of it. But done right, in a situation that calls for it, it can produce a very powerful effect. This should probably have a different name, but I still think of it as making and then knocking down a steel man.

As a reviewer of this doc said, “ITT in the streets, steelmanning in the sheets.”

Lol, great line.

Generally I like this frame.

Huh, your dogs and cats example is almost the opposite of how I use "steelmanning". I use steelmaning to mean something like "find the assumptions that make this conclusion valid". What you describe in that example I'd call... "finding the good"? "finding correct assumptions?" I guess I don't have a short word for this. TBC I think finding the good in arguments is a great thing to do, but not what I mean by steelmanning, or at least not the central example. 

This might have something to do with the scope of application. I mostly use the steelman concept in arguments about, like, public policy. It doesn't feel like a fit for someone describing me in particular. 

What about opportunity costs? When you encounter an argument you find uncompelling, you can certainly try to steelman it. Or you can directly look up stronger versions of the argument. If you're steelmanning for your own sake, then why do the former, rather than the latter?