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Comment by feintruled | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for the clarification. I recently read of steelmanning too by coincidence and have been fascinated with how it might work in practice.

I think it also means you should assume good faith too, right? So if someone says they are anti-abortion but pro-death penalty (for example) you don't jump on the hypocrisy as you see it but say "I see, so for you there is some material difference between the life of an unborn child and the life of a convict." When put this way it is easy to see where the other person's rationale is coming from.

I guess it like the Socractic method (except a little less confrontational) in which you restate the opponents statements in terms they can agree with, then follow up with questions exploring that until you trap them in a contradiction even they are forced to recognise.

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Things in the realm of anti abortion and pro death penalty break down when you get down to the root of things, which is free will and innocence of the unborn soul

From my understanding that's what is behind both of these ideologies, and both of those things are 100% made up fiction

There is literally no evidence for an immaterial soul and there is actually evidence that free will is an illusion, but the people who believe things things have their beliefs rooted in religion

> Things in the realm of anti abortion and pro death penalty break down when you get down to the root of things, which is free will and innocence of the unborn soul

...no?

The essential point of steelmanning is understanding your opponent's perspective, perhaps even finding a better argument for it than they have, even if you disagree with them.

It's perfectly possible to do that even if you think their position is nonsense.

Sometimes you may even find that your perception of their arguments and ideas is incorrect.

> There is literally no evidence for an immaterial soul

There's no hard evidence, but there are things that are, let's say, weird. The hard problem of consciousness is one, and the steady trickle of reports of veridical observations from medical staff treating unconscious NDE patients is another. For that matter, NDEs themselves are odd in absentia the supernatural.

I don't expect people to grant souls or the supernatural based on those things, but they're certainly observed phenomena that some people interpret as evidence for those things.

> there is actually evidence that free will is an illusion

If you're referring to Libet's analysis of the Bereitschaftspotential experiments, there has been some acceptance in the past few years that this paper shows he misinterpreted the data:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1210467109

Popular summary of the debate in The Atlantic:

https://archive.ph/SHH0p

If you're referring to other evidence, I'd love to know what it is.

Consciousness is the experience if processing information, there is no reason to believe its anything more than that

There are also other studies besides the Libet ones, more recent ones using things like fMRI and in vivo electrophysiology in awake human patients.

If we think about how neurons and their networks function, there isn't a mechanism in the realm of biophysics that allows for nondeterminism. That alone precludes the possibility of what people classically think of as free will. I've had discussions with other neuroscientists about this and they came to the same conclusion.

Just because something seems "weird" doesn't actually mean anything and its likely the person's perception of the situation that instills that feeling.

Near death experiences are entirely subjective, again its perception and information processing. The brain is great at connecting concepts and generating ideas even while we're unconscious. Its not like we stop processing sensory information when we aren't active.

As someone who studies behavioral neuroscience, I would never use an NDE itself as evidence of anything besides the fact that it is a phenomena that happens sometimes

There is a decent overview on wikipedia, they do discuss criticisms as well:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

As a side note, I don't think that paper on pnas concludes what you think it does. They state that a stochastic model could account for the buildup, in reality the stochastic model is simulating the chaotic environment of biochemistry. That environment is still deterministic and we absolutely could predict the entire system if we are able to simulate all of the variables.

Neurons are complex, but no matter how you slice it they are still a deterministic system

thanks for the wiki link - interesting reading.

> Consciousness is the experience if processing information, there is no reason to believe its anything more than that

This reads to me as a baseless assertion. You could be right, but the body of your post hasn't done much to convince me.

Your understanding misses that there are secular and philosophical arguments to be made against both of those things, no need to invoke religion or go on an antitheist tirade.

Well philosophical arguments aren't based on evidence from what I've seen, so we can reject those right away

What are the secular arguments?

> I see, so for you there is some material difference between the life of an unborn child and the life of a convict.

Pro abortion position is that unborn fetus is not a child. You are conceding pretty large point when you are framing it like this.

Well, that's what they think isn't it? That's what I understand the steelmanning technique to be. Frame the argument as best you can in the way they see it, then you discover the assumptions that led them to their conclusion.

I know that assumption. What I object to is that OP uncriticslly accepts that assumption as true. His comment is literally making reader think equivalence between features and Baby is accepted fact.

That's certainly one pro-abortion position, but not the only one.

The more general position is that whatever interests a fetus may or may not have to continued life is outweighed by the bodily autonomy interests of the mother in a given scenario. The Violinist Argument is a classic thought experiment that argues even if the continued life in question belongs to fully-grown adult human who happens to be a world-class artist, bodily autonomy still wins.

Generally, pro life people arent going to find the violinists argument forceful: 1) the violinist is framed as being particularly valuable due to their talent, this is not a shared assumption between the two camps, and even if it was - every baby is a potential violinist.

2) the violinist is not offspring, and there is no parent-child relationship

3) extraordinary means were and are required to maintain the violinist, this is unlike a pregnancy - where extraordinary means are required to end it.

The Violinist Argument is not without its caveats and flaws. I'm just highlighting it as an example of a pro-abortion position that does not need to concede that the fetus is not a child.

Anti abortion people don't see mothers potential as something ever worth preserving - even when she is excessively young.

So no, this argument does not work, be abuse it is not about potential. Had it been, women who will loose potential or have higher risk of death in case of dangerous pregnancy would had some "potential" consideration too.

The argument is about who is entitled to potential or consideration and who does not deserve one.

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