Steelman the Opposition

Not a straw man — the strongest version of their case

My position is: [position]. Write the strongest version of the opposing case — strong enough that I would find it hard to answer: 1) First restate my position in their vocabulary and confirm nothing is distorted; 2) Give 3 of the most damaging objections, each with evidence or a mechanism rather than an attitude; 3) Say under what conditions my position does hold, then why those conditions may fail; 4) Mark the weakest link in the opposing case so I can respond; 5) Judge whether the disagreement is about facts, values, or interests.

How to use

Do not rebut it immediately; send it to the other side first and ask whether this counts as their strongest version.

Good for

You have to persuade people in a meeting, you can restate their position accurately, and you still catch yourself thinking “how can they possibly think that.”
Before a major decision, you need to confirm you're not fighting a weakened version of the opposing view — especially the version circulating on social media.

Not for

The other side's core interest is distribution, not who's right (a raise negotiation, a budget fight) — the strongest possible argument won't make them concede.
You just want confirmation that you're right — steelmanning becomes a way to pick the version that looks strong but that you already know how to rebut.

Example

Input

My position: remote should be the default, and the office is for collaboration when you need it.

What you get

You want your position restated in the pro-office side's own terms first (how fast new hires ramp, tacit knowledge transfer, weak ties), with a check that nothing was distorted. Then three objections with a mechanism — new-hire output dipping for the first six months, fewer cross-team weak ties meaning less innovation. It should concede that remote genuinely works for senior individual contributors and say whether this is a dispute about facts or about values.

Common mistakes

Asking for “the strongest opposing case” without testing the conditions under which your own position holds — you collect attacks you can't answer, get more anxious, and change nothing.
Using steelmanning as sparring practice: you prepare rebuttals instead of actually understanding why the other side thinks what they think.

Try tweaking it like this

Change “write the strongest version of the other side” to “when you're done, tell me which part of it I've already quietly accepted” — debate turns into self-examination.
Add “what facts do both sides share in this disagreement” — circle the common ground first, and what's left is easier to classify as fact or value.