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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Dangers of steelmanning / principle of charity - Less Wrong
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I endorse all of these problems as real. Too much steelmanning blinds to the reality of the rather incompetent civilization and malfunctioning species we live in.
Issue 1 above has nothing to do with losing sight of how incompetent our civilization and most of its individuals are. It's about almost the opposite problem: trying to be charitable to someone else by adjusting their position to be more like your own, at the risk of messing it up in the process.
[EDITED because I wrote "Issue 2" where I meant "Issue 1", and also to fix up a minor consistency arising from the fact that an earlier draft had had "Issues 1 and 2".]
Can you give an example of someone who had this problem?
It seems like almost the opposite problem is more common (aspiring rationalists "steelmanning" popular but wrong concepts, and then adopting the steelmanned version, in a sort of high-level refusal to update.)
(And, of course, it seems like the refusal to steelman at all, instead attacking a demonized strawman version of the Other Side,is a ore common issue still - but that should go without saying.)