Coaching practices for Devil Advocate vs Real Opponent
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Devil Advocate vs Real Opponent, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Nobody around me will actually push back
- I keep winning this argument in my head against the dumbest version of what they think, and then it goes nowhere in real life
- I’ve settled on my position and I can feel how much I want it to be right, which is exactly why I don’t trust it yet
- I’m completely certain I’m right and the other person is just being unreasonable
- I wave through arguments on my side that I’d tear apart in a heartbeat if the other side made them
Practices that may help
- Invite an adversarial collaborator
Find someone whose genuine prior is the opposite of yours, and work together on the same evidence.
Confirmation Bias: Seeing What You Expect to See - Steelman the opposing view before rebutting it
Reconstruct the strongest possible version of the argument you disagree with — then respond to that.
Naive Realism: Why Everyone Thinks They See Things as They Are - Ask what alternative perspectives would say
Deliberately steelman the strongest objection to your current position before treating it as settled.
Socratic Questioning - Perspective rotation: inhabiting another’s view
Construct the strongest, most internally coherent version of a view that opposes your own.
Zhuangzi and the Practice of Perspective Shift - Apply the double-standard check: would I accept this reasoning if it pointed the other way?
Test whether you are holding your team’s arguments to a lower bar than the other side’s.
The Scout Mindset - Find the strongest version of the opposing view
If there are multiple ways to interpret a position, choose the most defensible one.
Steelmanning - Use a challenge-calibration partner or coach
Have a more skilled observer set the challenge level — your own assessment is biased.
Growth-Edge Training: Practicing at the Edge of Your Ability - Simulate the adversary’s response to your move
Assign someone to genuinely think and plan as your competitor, not just describe them.
Red Teaming: Stress-Testing Plans Before They Fail - Recognize decoys in political and narrative framing
In debates and narratives, an extreme position is often introduced to make a moderate position seem reasonable — identify this before updating.
The Decoy Effect — How an Irrelevant Option Changes Your Choice - Distinguish steelmanning from sycophancy
Charitably interpreting a position is not the same as agreeing with it, refusing to disagree, or softening your critique to avoid conflict.
Steelmanning
Related concerns
- When Steelmanning Find The Strongest Version
If there are multiple ways to interpret a position, choose the most defensible one.
Find the strongest version of the opposing view
- Devil S Advocate Role
Give one person the formal job of arguing against the plan — making dissent structural, not personal.
Appoint an explicit devil’s advocate role
- Steel Man Argument
Steelmanning — popularized by Daniel Dennett as a core intellectual virtue — means reconstructing an opposing position in its strongest, most charitable form before responding to it. It is the deliberate inverse of strawmanning. The practice is well-established in philosophy and structured debate; direct experimental evidence for its effects on reasoning quality is limited, but its mechanism is logically sound.
- Steelman Vs Sycophancy
Charitably interpreting a position is not the same as agreeing with it, refusing to disagree, or softening your critique to avoid conflict.
Distinguish steelmanning from sycophancy
- Wiseman Debate Maker
Multipliers use real debate to engage the team’s best thinking before deciding; Diminishers use meetings to announce.
Make decisions through debate, not declaration
- Devil S Advocate Critical Thinking
Apply the most rigorous critical scrutiny to the idea — the black hat is the voice of caution and evidence-based pessimism.
Black hat: identify risks and why something could fail
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