[FRIAM] steelman, again

[glen]

Avoiding Toxic Charity in Argumentation
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11245-025-10238-9

Backing into toxic charity from the concept of "civility porn" (e.g. Lex Fridman), confirms my bias against "yes and" sense-making. But I admit that Stevens' distinction between types of rhetorical charity (ego, emic, & complex) gives some credence to those who call me contrarian. I spend way more time doing ego charity and not enough time in the emic mode. However, this trichotomy is also false. I don't believe one can do ego mode without doing emic mode ... at least and still call it "charity" with any fidelity.

The words that come out of others' mouths never actually make sense to me ... even my own words revisited rarely make sense at first. I always have to decode whatever was being said before I can re-frame it in my current context. And I think it's that handicap of mine that leads face-to-face interlocuters to describe me as a competent listener.

Anyway, the reason I'm posting it, here, is because Stevens' 1st footnote walls off assessing rhetoric from afar - like reading a 1500 page tome or trolling from your mom's basement. And that relates directly, I think, to epistemic loneliness and the dopaminergic addiction to LLMs. What, precisely, do we lose when we stop talking to live intelligence(s) and our intellectual diet is overwhelmed by zombie intelligence? I'm almost at the point where I'd prefer talking to a Nazi with a spittle soaked chin than ChatGPT ... almost, almost.

-- 
¡sıɹƎ ןıɐH ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ
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