If you can't steelman the opposition you're not actually interested in the subject and the truth.
Discussion
If you haven't become intimately familiar with the other side of the argument from somebody who actually believes it, then you don't understand your side of the argument either.
But what if the opposition are Malthusians?
People who are unsure of their abilities to feed their children's shouldn't procreate.
I think that would be good.
That statement is one short step from Eugenics.
Think carefully about how you arrived at that response and understand that the worst people in the world want you to respond in this way.
They want us dead.
So making us poor and/or telling us we can't afford to have children is the low time preference approach to achieving our deaths.
I arrived to this response by looking at the definition of the word to steelman the position. You then proceed to strawman it.
There's ways to argue against it but there's nothing wrong about steelmanning it. Thay was the point of OP.
One can internally steelman and I do it all time but I wouldn't actually steelman a Malthusian.
I would not give oxygen to that thought process. I don't really care if that is a strawman.
If they want me dead, I won't steelman them.
