Generating good ideas can be likened to athletic training.
If you train against weak opponents you are not pushed to develop your skills. You can “win” even if your technique is sloppy and your fitness lacking. Defeating weak opponents, if you’re not mindful that is what you’re doing, can lead to a distorted and inflated sense of one’s abilities.
If you train against strong opponents you are pushed to your limits, each and every session. You are forced to work on your technique, you are forced to become as fit as you can. You will be defeated. You will be taught humility. You will get stronger. And when you do come out on top, it will mean something.
The intellectual equivalent of training against strong opponents is called ‘steel-manning’.
In short, steel-manning is the practice of constructing the best possible counter-arguments to your idea. As opposed to ‘straw-manning’, where one creates a weak opposing view based on erroneous reasoning, that can be easily countered by your idea. The straw-man view is usually not reflective of the actual position the opposing side would take on the topic.
If your goal is to generate the best possible ideas. To truly stress test a concept. To see if it’s worthy of building, doing or implementing, then it should be evident that straw-manning is, at best, unhelpful.
The process of generating a steel-man position requires that you have some emotional distance from the idea. That you don’t identify with, or as, it. If you take the idea to be linked to your worth as a person, to some fundamental notion of ‘who you are’ then an attack on the idea becomes an attack on you. If you approach an idea in this way it’s unlikely you will attack it with full force.
There are many paths to generating a steel man argument. Here are just a few.
- Look for thinkers in the space who disagree with your general position and listen with an open mind. They might not have a direct counter to your idea, (this is likely the case if it’s new and novel) but it will help you get into an opposing headspace.
- Look to the work of Ken Wilber and use the AQAL framework to take an integral approach to look at the idea from multiple perspectives. I suggest using the Integral quadrant model for this, (this will require a bit of additional reading, but well worth it in my view).
- Practice refining the language you use to articulate the counter-argument so it sounds as eloquent as possible. Try as hard as possible to communicate the opposing view better than your debate partner could.
- This should go without saying, but be willing to drop or pivot your idea if, through this process, it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
By articulating the strongest possible opposition to your own idea you do several things.
You free up time in discussions of the idea by negating the need to go back and forth on the basics. There will likely be confidence that you’ve thought deeply enough to cover those.
You honour your conversation partner by demonstrating you’ve taken the time to deeply understand their perspective. Usually resulting in a more constructive conversation.
You other a platform to your discussion partner, a higher vantage point to potentially see further than you. To notice things you missed. This is where things can really get interesting. This is where you both start to push your thinking to new limits.
The end result. Better ideas.