A well-written article, especially clearly listing out the differences in the forms of communication helped make the point.
But sadly, the people most prone to bad-faith communication are also probably least likely to take this criticism and improve. I have also resorted to bad-faith communications in conversations where it seems like that is the only way to be heard.
Consider this example:
Person A, displaying some humility, says : "You might be right, there is a chance politician X is in the wrong".
Person A assumes this is interpreted by Person B as: "There is uncertainty about politician X being in the wrong"
Person B actually interprets this as: "Person A has admitted, without any doubt, to politician X being completely in the wrong"
If I ever find myself in a conversation where I'm in the shoes of Person A, using good-faith communication means actually risking a complete failure of communication. Why even bother to communicate?
I think some other responders have touched lightly on this but I feel it should be explicitly said that sometimes engaging in conversation is not actually what the other party is doing, even though it might look like it.
Sometimes they are not speaking to you at all, but rather to your listeners. And the larger your pool of listeners the more likely you'll encounter arguments in bad faith because it turns out that if the goal is persuasion then good-faith arguments don't scale.
A tangent here is that on private-public platforms like twitter "your listeners" could be an entirely separate set from the people you actually have contact with. Algorithms that signal-boost opinions out of their actual social circle become essentially propaganda posters for a host of varying in and out groups.
My personal opinion is that this is a misaligned incentive that social platforms should correct structurally, rather than via governance or policies. And pushing the corrective actions back down to the individual is a cop-out.
> if the goal is persuasion then good-faith arguments don't scale.
This is true, but only in a very narrow, specific sense. Arguments don't persuade on their own, they scale with the credibility of the speaker. Speakers gain credibility and respect by:
- Giving good advice.
- Showing good judgement and making accurate predictions.
- Demonstrating that they understand various audience.
constituencies, with bonus points for demonstrating that they actually care about these constituencies.
Conversely, there are numerous ways for speakers to destroy that credibility, like a history of making deceptive statements.
For most people, this means good-faith argumentation doesn't scale because they don't have the standing to make people take them seriously. But it isn't a rule of good-faith arguments as such: arguments are just constrained by social factors and by people's finely-tuned heuristics for who's worth taking seriously.
I suspect this is the main reason people are frustrated by internet debates, to the point of wanting to give up on them and just start censoring people. I make what I think is a careful, reasoned case, and in response all I hear is crickets, or trolls, or "lol lol lol lmao lol lol lol". This is because, to almost everyone reading Twitter, Hacker News, Substack, or the NYT comments, I'm just a rando.
It takes time to build respect and credibility, so keep at the good faith discussion, give people a reason to read what you're writing, and keep your relative obscurity in perspective on the way up.
Do you mean only at the local level, individually? Because it sure isn't hard to find extremely popular speakers with a great deal of influence that run counter to most of those points. It is hard not to conclude that the only thing that scales well in social media is to correctly deduce what most people want to hear, and then say it. People don't care about deception, good advice, good faith discussion, none of that, so long as you confirm the biases they already hold.
People really want to be told they are right, and were always right.
Hypothesis: bad faith communicators are more persuasive among people who mostly agree with them; good faith communicators are more persuasive among people who mostly disagree with them.
Not sure if this is accurate, and I'm sure misses some nuance, but rings true-ish to me.
I agree with the what you're saying, but I'm not talking about things that make people popular, I'm talking about argumentation and what makes someone persuasive. I'm talking about the relatively rare circumstances that can create opportunities to repudiate biases instead of confirm them.
I agree with you to a point, but it's not my experience that speakers gain credibility and respect by giving good advice / showing good judgement / making accurate predictions. This would be true in traditional discourse, but not online. Online it feels as if speakers gain an audience by demonstrating their world view as loudly and as viciously as possible. It's like a group of children where one has learned that the way to get attention is to scream louder and longer than the others. I also have this feeling that social media is ruled by those who are willing to spend their time and effort to elevate a particular point of view no matter how unpopular it is.
I know of many specific examples in my field where the most thoughtful people who operate the most frequently in good faith have nowhere near the following of bad faith loudmouths.
I assume it's entertainment. People enjoy watching drama. Social media is their drama hit, and genuine communicators are frankly more boring.
The dynamics you describe are real, especially on the big social-media utilities like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. "Boo outgroup" is the easiest thing to sell in the attention economy, the louder and more viciously, the better.
But "building an audience" is a different than building credibility, trust, and respect. If you just aim for the most eyeballs, you find yourself vulnerable to what some people call audience capture, where your audience controls you, rather than the other way around.
For example, Trump has a huge audience, but that didn't stop an audience from booing him when he recommended getting vaccinated. [0]
The best most of us can hope for, if we're careful, is influence on a small group of people.
This is only true at simulacra level 1 [1], when communication is focused on objective facts. This is not a good way to understand communication in business relationships, social media, traditional news media, or politics. I like talking with my friends who communicate this way, but it's not the only way that people communicate, and pretending that it is will lead to confusion.
There are other ways to persuade: You could lie about the facts of the argument, you could convince others you're in their group or that your opponent is in a group opposed to them, or you could say whatever you think they want to hear and sprinkle your message in among it.
I agree with all of that. The context for my comment is discussions involving good-faith arguments intended to change hearts and minds (more or less object-level or simulacra level 1 arguments).
The parent commenter wrote that "good-faith arguments don't scale". I don't agree with that, because good-faith arguments do scale with social capital. People often run afoul of several problems that make it seem like they don't:
- Their reach exceeds their grasp: they want to persuade strangers, but don't have enough social capital to pull it off.
- They think they're involved in a good-faith discussion or argument, but the other participants are competing for status or trying to entertain themselves (or others).
In other words, I don't think good-faith arguments are the only way to persuade people, but if that's your preferred technique, you have to develop credibility, respect, and trust - on top of building an audience, which is a whole different matter.
Aye, the ideal goal of disussion shouldn't be to persuade in my opinion, but to explore each other's ideas with the aim of modifying and improving each position. I think the process of doing that happens to be the best way to actually get people to go along with something also.
Take an interest, not a position. A position often causes us to feel like we have to defend a position, taking an interest helps increase the likelihood that both parties remain open
With many political matters, though, people inherently have to hold positions by virtue of the fact that the issues affect their material interests. You need to remain open in spite of that, but there are also limits to how open one can be when someone else is arguing that you should lose your job or that your health insurance should be able to deny you coverage for care, or maybe that you are culturally or genetically inherently stupid or incapable of self-governance.
Not all controversial matters are political. For instance, it's not inherently political whether global warming is real or whether vaccines work in curtailing a pandemic. Only a certain side in these debates wants to reduce arguments in which there is rational evidence (and important actions to be taken) to something that is merely "political", and therefore a just a matter of constitutional free speech and action.
That's a good way of thinking about it. Reminds me of when Alan Kay asks "Are ideas like matter? [bumps his fists together] Or are they more like light? [Overlaps his hands]" (roughly paraphrasing there).
The ability to entertain multiple, seemingly contradictory thoughts at once is a good skill I think.
“The ability to entertain multiple, seemingly contradictory thoughts at once is a good skill I think.”
Unfortunately large portions of the populace see this as being phony. You must be a red or blue team person, being “people without a tribe” is itself a heresy because by not conforming to this idiotic false dichotomy denies the simpletons and partisans their fallacious little world views. Socrates died in vein, I suppose.
That's a strange take on Socrates, it makes him sound like he died (intended to die?) for our sins like some kind of Jesus figure. I doubt he'd agree with it.
Anyway, I suspect you mean 'in vain'. Veins are those little tubes in your body that the blood flows through, in generally in the direction of the heart. Since Socrates died by poison one could argue that he literally died "in vein" but this is probably not the interpretation you were going for.
I agree with you on the teams thing, and in my opinion it has a strong relation to two-party systems.
> That's a strange take on Socrates, it makes him sound like he died (intended to die?) for our sins like some kind of Jesus figure. I doubt he'd agree with it.
Much of the Christian narrative about Jesus and the nature of divinity is influenced by Neo-Platonist thought, and Plato did kind of frame Socrates' story in those terms. So it's not that Socrates was a Jesus figure, Jesus was a Socrates figure.
>Sometimes they are not speaking to you at all, but rather to your listeners. And the larger your pool of listeners the more likely you'll encounter arguments in bad faith because it turns out that if the goal is persuasion then good-faith arguments don't scale.
I hesitate to throw this out there because, in general, I don't agree with all the hot takes such as "the internet has made us dumber" or whatever negative trait is the flavor of the week to blame on technology. But in this case, I'd say a lot of this is the direct result of forums/social media/etc.
People are arguing/debating the same way politicians do on stage with each other. Functionally we are millions of surrogates arguing everywhere for whatever individual/policy/ideal we believe in. The goal isn't to change the mind of your "opponent," it's to convince onlookers that you're right. And whether that victory is the result of the "better argument" is secondary - the point is to win over the most people by whatever means are deemed most effective. This is bad for dialogue, but (usually) great for winning debate competitions.
I'll do this sometimes in web forums. There are certain points of view expressed certain ways where I already have a pretty good idea of exactly what the poster's opinions are, how they'll defend them, and how they'll respond to any questions, and I know my likelihood of getting them to reconsider or maybe even engage on terms I consider reasonable is nearly zero, but I might reply anyway just so lookers-on can get a sense that there are alternatives to that POV (and that, after a couple back-and-forths, that maybe their position isn't as strong as their very-certain tone implies)
Expanding a bit further, all sorts of problems arise when participants bring with them different conversational frames. Take, for instance, the case where one participant frames a back and forth as in the same way they would a dyadic conversation, while the other participants frames the same strip of events as a debate in front of an audience. The former may see the later as being bombastic or evasive, while the later may see the former as being naïve or pestering. There are all sorts of rhetorical registers available or unavailable to each depending on how each frames the exchange and using an "unavailable" rhetorical register in a particular frame can be keyed as a deception. Bad faith arguments, can then be thought of as deliberately fabricating a frame in order to induce a false belief (ex: that the participants share a common frame).
> this is a misaligned incentive that social platforms should correct structurally, rather than via governance or policies. And pushing the corrective actions back down to the individual is a cop-out.
Can platforms do a better job at framing online discussion in such a way that makes it easier to maintain common framing? Which sort of laminations are available or could be invented in order to facilitate common framing and allow readers to identify frame-breaking activity? Platform creators literally create the mediums for these interactions, the choices they make make them structural participants in the ways in which these interactions play out. As such there is an implicit responsibility placed on them because of their agency in this process.
You make a very solid point - public conversations are way more predisposed to bad faith - who's got ability to accept the perception of looking bad in public?!
> My personal opinion is that this is a misaligned incentive that social platforms should correct structurally, rather than via governance or policies. And pushing the corrective actions back down to the individual is a cop-out.
hmm... I rather think the opposite is the case. Its all about playing to the crowd. And that there is no incentive for anyone (apart from the good faith individual) to do anything about it - all that noise translates into engagement with the platform.
It’s more basic too. Bad faith redefines the nature of the situation. It’s no longer a conversation and instead a game. And in game theory you have to play on level ground as your opponent. Ie when they go low you have to go low or exit the conversation turned game. “Going high” in modern rhetoric doesn’t actually net strategic advantage.
So maybe that’s insightful. Point out that conversations (unless they’re debates and everyone’s agreed to debate) are not games.
Consider a verbal fight within a couple. Everyone wants to have the last word and both throw loudly anything they can come up with at each other. In such a situaiton you may be able to break that mental stance of your opponent by "simply" shifting the topic/perspective to something, they did not expect at all. This way, you may be able to force you opponent to give up the trench they dig themself into.
I know its not simple. This is more education than superficial conversation.
I find the best tactic in this situation is to let the other party exhaust themselves. You're never going to be heard, so just listen (actually listen, not pretend) until they've got whatever they want to say out, and then make a response that shows you've listened and tried to understand.
When a conversation is stagnating in a cycle and you elevate it on a meta level, away from the original topic to that conversation and how it is going, you will not only display good faith but you may be able to find the traces of good faith in your opponent and maybe turn back to the original topic.
You cannot flip the table and still call it a game. Its not a game move when your intention is progress and not a rhetorical win.
I personally use the meta-conversational move a lot, and it usually turns heated political discussions into more thoughtful philosophy discussions. I think because most people don't have such strong identity based beliefs around questions like "how can we know if something is right/true/good/bad, what does that mean?"
The meta-conversation technique blew up for me once. A buddy and I got into it and I went in that direction of how do we know if something is good or bad, right or wrong, and it had him feeling incredibly frustrated and distraught, questioning whether his friends have fundamentally different values than he does. I recognized in that moment he seemed very emotionally vulnerable and so I switched out of my head exploration and opened up deep abkut some of the emotional struggles I had been facing. I think very often conflicts are not about the actual conflict we discuss, but about tangential, or even unrelated, things.
That actually sounds like a true philosophical situation, where you both questioned some deeply held beliefs. This can have epistemologically and existential repercussions for the individual, especially if you are emotionally invested (and we always are at some level)
Perhaps, I'll think about that a bit more. I think I was seeing it more as me using theorizing as a defense mechanism to avoid opening up emotionally and connecting with my friend on a deeper level. I've noticed in my life that I can often dive deeper into theory, hypothetical situations, and general philosophy as way to distance myself from how I'm actually feeling in the moment and from saying that to others.
Oh yea, as a general rule of thumb I have found that if any party is getting emotional (defensive, frustrated, hurt, etc) then the conversation will have to pivot to feelings.. something about the pre-frontal cortex going offline when we get into a certain state.
I've seen this state called different things, like "Exiles" in IFS therapy, "below the line", "tilted", "triggering painful spots", I usually call it "defensive".
(Aside... a thing I've learned is not to ask if someone is feeling defensive (if they are, they'll say no). Instead I think the better move is to ask if they feel like I'm not listening, or not understanding their position. This lines up with the internal thoughts of feeling defensive.)
All this to say, rational conversation is possible when two people are in a rational state but there are other states of being.
(Aside.. I find that rational communication techniques like NVC are actually devilishly hard to put into practice all the time because they go out the window when we get tilted.)
(Aside... EFT couples therapy is designed around communication in an emotionally vulnerable state as opposed to rational, and supposedly has pretty good empirical results)
Does digitization remove the negative consequences of communicating in bad faith?
In that sense, does it change the game, just through removing those consequences and thus making bad faith a more attractive strategy than it would be otherwise (e.g. face to face reputation based communication)?
Maybe you are right and positing it as a game is itself reductive, and gets people into a zero-sum mindset, rather than viewing conversation as a win-win.
I find that it depends on the size of the community, and your stake in that community. If you're a regular somewhere, you're a lot less likely to start some shit there. After a while some users earn a reputation that affects all future interactions.
I treat my local subreddit like I would treat my local pub, especially since I know a few of its users IRL, and many tie my username to my business. I can't say the same about large subreddits.
Tight moderation also helps a ton. It enforces a certain tone, and after a while the community crystallises around that tone and enforces it itself. You don't pick fights at the country club.
I realise now that I stopped interacting in larger communities. I prefer quieter channels where people have a reputation to uphold.
Agreed moderation is essential. It's easy to spot and remove people who don't care about harmony or true discussion, but it often doesn't happen (or moderators are themselves bad actors).
My policy as a moderator was to moderate tone but not opinions. Some people weren't happy when "the good guys" got their posts deleted and "the bad guys" didn't, because the latter left their guns at the door.
The new moderation team is more heavy-handed. Of course people still aren't happy.
Digitization has clearly added lots of negatives that otherwise wouldn’t last. As simple as, does it really make sense for something local with only local and fittingly small consequences, to be discussed at a global level? But anybody can post a photo or video to be seen the world over. Depending on content there will even be users on the internet policing (“influencing”) other users in the internet to weigh in on whatever. But clearly human societies function at a level of cohesion that breaks apart at scale. Ie there isn’t one truly universal way to live that everyone can and in time could be made to live.
Edit-I’d venture even the ability for the internet to bring together people who would otherwise not have a cohort “breaks at scale” because people just don’t scale like that.
I think digitization, specifically the commoditization of attention in advertising-supported social media, has strongly incentivized bad-faith communication. It turns out that outrage and conflict are a great way to get attention. So systems made to profit from keeping attention have inadvertently started promoting conflict and outrage to capture the value of the attention produced.
This has been profitable enough that these social media now dominate a large part of public discussions, and other platforms have followed suit either by choice or by selection pressure. Hence a large part of public communication is happening in a context that is (inadvertently or intentionally) built to encourage conflict and outrage. This rewards bad-faith communication, so that is what we get.
> If I ever find myself in a conversation where I'm in the shoes of Person A, using good-faith communication means actually risking a complete failure of communication. Why even bother to communicate?
The article actually addresses this, and in a good way IMHO (in the paragraph starting "Avoiding social catastrophe"). The reason to both to communicate, in such cases, is to attempt to demonstrate your willingness (and ability!) to engage in good faith, and thereby eventually restoring faith in Person B that good-faith communication is possible.
Note that this is explicitly not an attempt to convince the other party of whatever it is you're arguing about. The goal is not to change their view, but to restore a society in which discussion about those views in good faith is at least possible again.
Only a tiny percentage of users take part in online discussions . It is important to communicate with bad faith actors so that the overwhelming majority of users who are simply lurkers are exposed to ideas from "the other side". Refusing to engage with bad faith actors is leaving their ideas unchallenged out in the open.
A problem is that one has limited time and energy to respond to these comments, though the idea you've mentioned has motivated responses I've made in the past. It can be draining to submit a well-sourced comment written respectfully, then get downvoted (this is more prevalent on Reddit) where fewer people see it.
I've resolved to avoid responses, unless it's a subject where I have an especially valuable perspective (e.g. personal expertise, I have a passage from a credible book that could be relevant, or I have a highly relevant anecdote to share).
It's almost always not worth it to get involved in a controversial topic discussion (examples include journalism, Apple products, urban planning and whether the ending of a popular television series was good or not). It can be distracting and draining, especially if people respond negatively or you get downvoted (I tell myself it's just internet points, but it feels punishing despite my rational thoughts), and I'm unlikely to change minds. There's more to life that's more rewarding (e.g. reading a book, physical exercise, even playing a relaxing video game for a few minutes).
The issue being that you're operating in good faith, while they're putting on a show. You're immediately at a disadvantage because they can use any tool at their disposal, whereas you have to stick to truth and rationality.
Unfortunately, the latter two don't typically scale all that well, especially as the bad actor hones their ability to put you in a rhetorical box.
I think the continuation of this line of thought is often the argument 'their bad faith communication is so effective we have to counter it with our own'.
I hope that this argument under-estimates the intelligence of the silent majority.
That is another good way to phrase the problem described by the parent post of yours.
There is not a way to beat bad faith communication with good faith communication at scale, because the latter doesn't scale, because the average/median person is not intelligent enough for it. I wish they were.
I have never seen anyone get converted by bad faith arguments, but I have seen people get converted by good faith arguments. So it seems good faith arguments are inherently much stronger, while bad faith arguments are useless except for frustrating the other side.
Bad faith arguments convert by quantity, not quality. If you overwhelm the good faith information with mountains of bad faith information, you'll convince a lot of people, none of whom will be able to point at one specific thing that convinced them.
Considering I see bad faith arguments from politicians in power all the time, I wouldn't say anything conclusive about good faith or bad faith being stronger. This is before mentioning how many people are running around with a victim mentality, quickly antagonize others or engage in social activities which reinforce segregation and labeling over trying to form a social understanding.
A lot of people love drama, and bad faith creates drama. Good faith creates solutions, and a lot of people seek solutions. That alone is enough to be skeptical of anything conclusive.
What you’re describing is simply person B not really listening, and if that’s true then it’s pointless to argue the point anyways. Person A is better off sticking with the compromise because it doesn’t cost him/her anything to do so, and hey maybe there’s a very slight chance person B clues in.
Basically sticking to good faith even when it’s not reciprocated is usually the best option, or just saving your energy by dropping the topic. The alternative is usually just ego stuff.
I look for this in interviews. Obviously people are typically on best behavior and nervous so liable to make non-meaningful* errors, but I look for humility and openness, hard as it is to find upon such a high pressure and artificial situation. If it does it’s positive.
More importantly the founders set the culture through their own behavior and most new hires adopt and adapt to the local culture. So if you can propagate humility, openness to changing minds, etc your company will become stronger and more fun.
And I use the word “company” deliberately: “corporation” and “business” and technical tools, but a ”company” is a group of people getting together. Often corporation and company are used interchangeably, but effective organizations know the difference.
> If I ever find myself in a conversation where I'm in the shoes of Person A, using good-faith communication means actually risking a complete failure of communication. Why even bother to communicate?
Unfortunately you can't always know ahead of time, even here on HN I have found that sometimes if I give an inch, others will take a mile. But if that happens I think you have two options: Out right correction, just outright say "Hey wait a minute, that's not what I meant." or, step back and accept that you are probably not changing this persons mind today.
The trouble with the internet, or really any public speaking, is that you might accidentally end up on the side of the conversation you are against in the eyes of the public, so just letting it go may not be a good idea.
I think to an extent people do this unconsciously, or offenders don't realize their projection onto others is bad faith. It's habit that is mistakenly believed to be a good heuristic. I expect this triggers as they switch to "argument" mode following contradiction, assuming a posture of attacking/defending, casting nuance aside.
As online spaces are concerned, one thing I liked about forums is that communities, while large, became increasingly familiar and you could reasonably expect some good faith discussion over time. On spaces like reddit, all the tip toeing in the world doesn't prevent it. You could be Mr Rogers speaking to someone's "elephant in the brain" and it wouldn't prevent it.
I think there's a degree of market segmentation (as it were) when it comes to arguing. The fastest way someone can discredit themselves in my eyes is to be too certain about something. In your example I'd be much more open to someone who admits that their side could be in the wrong than someone who says that it's impossible. Especially where there's not enough evidence for that kind of claim. But you're right that certainty does appeal in other contexts.
Consider this example: Person A, displaying some humility, says : "You might be right, there is a chance politician X is in the wrong". Person A assumes this is interpreted by Person B as: "There is uncertainty about politician X being in the wrong" Person B actually interprets this as: "Person A has admitted, without any doubt, to politician X being completely in the wrong"
I think you intended Person A to be someone with an opposing view. But I read this Person A as a friend that strongly likes Politician X, and in some ways that seemed even more appropriate to what the article is talking about. Especially if "politician X" is something like a controversial issue that is strongly moralized. People often end up outwardly adopting an almost Manichean set of opinions on things, even if our internal beliefs are more nuanced. So we end up saying Politician X is perfect, even if we have more mixed opinions. It's not Bad Faith communication in the same vein as a troll on a forum, we're acting in bad faith to maintain cohesion and membership among our own social group.
The OP articulates this well in a paragraph:
A key feature of escalating extremism is a belief that group membership requires bad faith engagements with out-groups. In these contexts, bad faith behavior is often justified to maintain in-group membership and consensus. The normalization of bad faith communication contributes to the creation of extreme in-group pressures, which can rupture identities and exacerbate mental health crises. Personal instabilities usually lead to a doubling down on the need for group membership, increasing rationalizations and amplifications of bad faith practices.
But sadly, the people most prone to bad-faith communication are also probably least likely to take this criticism and improve.
It's not that people prone to this are doing so because of poor communication skills that can be improved upon, bad faith communication is by definition intentional.
Why even bother to communicate?
You probably should disregard anyone communicating in bad faith.
I think the biggest problem is cult of personality. Instead of discussing actual issues we focus on elevating or disparaging people. In your example - what is the chance that 'your' politician X is always right?
Isn't that more about drifting meaning of the language? "You might be right" is a common way of actually meaning to say "I reluctantly agree that you're definitely right".
When this happens I generally pause and say something like I just said X, what did you hear? If that doesn't work then I throw out a hypothesis like it sounds like you heard Y, is that right? Once we agree upon what I said and what they heard then I clarify that I don't believe Y, I sincerely believe X.
You can't control the outcome of a conversation, and cynicism goes hand in hand with bad faith. Communication is still the most awesome thing that humans do, or will ever be able to do!
That's some serious pom-pom action you just did. There are times when bad faith communication is just a waste of everyone's time. It's great to think that by having a conversation positive results will occur. However, that's not always going to happen. Since I'm not part of a diplomatic entourage where the mere act of continuing to talk past each other is seen as a positive, that same behavior does not tend to benefit normal people. At times, I have chosen to just end/walk away from a conversation just to avoid the energy and inevitable frustration. Maybe it's cynicism, but as you've said, I can't control the outcome but I can control it as far as me continuing to be a part of it.
You're right that my pom-pom action was serious, but it sounds like you're imaging a different kind of dilemma than I was. You're referring to walking away from an unproductive conversation, while I was responding to a cynical argument for choosing bad faith over good.
“Consider this example: Person A, displaying some humility, says : "You might be right, there is a chance politician X is in the wrong". Person A assumes this is interpreted by Person B as: "There is uncertainty about politician X being in the wrong" Person B actually interprets this as: "Person A has admitted, without any doubt, to politician X being completely in the wrong"”
Reminds me of a discussion with a neighbor. I was talking about things I didn’t like Obama or Biden had done. His response was “see? Should have voted for Trump”. He didn’t understand at all when I told him that Trump is even more wrong in my opinion. People are trained to totally agree or disagree with one side.
Those most likely to have strong disagreements mostly consist of politically engaged liberals at 6-8% of the population and politically engaged conservatives at 6-8% of the population. Because of this a more accurate representation of what is going on is that persons A and B disagree strongly with persons C and D and persons E through Z really wish that persons A through D would find some middle ground that all can live with even if they harbor objections. In this larger context it may make sense to call out bad faith communication and engage in good faith communication for the benefit of the larger population who get dragged into political conflicts.
Here's an alternative ending: what if good faith communication was superior to bad faith in a systemic way ?
Clues:
- at a personal level: have you ever tried to put in practice "highly skilled, non-naive good faith communication" ? If you did, you've probably noted that more often than not, it doesn't make you weaker. It increases your value, your status, even your financial success. So maybe this could also be a contagious/unstoppable strategy simply because it has an edge for personal success ?
- as an organization: good faith leadership, good faith communication... seem to overall be a competitive advantage because it goes hand-in-hand with happy & productive people
- as a society: democracy emerged despite a world of tyrants to take over most a the world. Why ? Maybe because it was stronger in a systemic way ? It unlocks collaboration, decentralization, resilience... Moreover, it doesn't sound unreasonable that democracy would be fittest as poverty diminishes. So maybe authoritarianism, not democracy, is in danger of extinction in the end ?
Result: instead of spiraling bad faith, maybe we will have (though slower) spiraling good faith ? Maybe "good faith" will win simply because it's stronger, in a kind of evolutionary sense.
This has implications in everyday life : practicing "highly skilled, non-naive good faith communication" may be the best way to personal success.
And this may also be the best way to incidentally induce a "good faith" society
Highly skilled, non-naive good faith communication is successful because it allows you to curate a community of good-faith communicators. Attempting to apply that when talking to bad-faith communicators leads to disaster.
Bad-faith communicators occupy a lot of powerful positions. Perhaps even the large majority.
> at a personal level: have you ever tried to put in practice "highly skilled, non-naive good faith communication" ? If you did, you've probably noted that more often than not, it doesn't make you weaker. It increases your value, your status, even your financial success.
Opposite experience. It leads to wasting time, especially compared to getting to the same conclusions using more effective, if less 'true', tactics. It just doesn't scale.
At some level good faith is superior on a very large scale, since the reality tends to provide a somewhat consistent feedback, but there remains a local niche of maxxing out persuasion skill tree. Not to beat dead horse, but large organizations with too much resources seem particularly prone - it is an obviously self correcting mechanism, but the tactic remains valid locally.
That's funny, my main drive for choosing this strategy is taking account of opportunity costs ie. not wasting time.
I've felt that not focusing on the fact that people may have bad faith and we need tactics etc freed a lot of time and energy to invest somewhere more useful
If you're talking to people who, for w/e reason, have large influence on your life, who you are stuck with and who are not very numerous, investing heavily in enforcing communications standards should pay off. Similarly in cooperative setting with aligned incentives you would expect assuming good faith to work out well.
Now, in social media, sales or a large fluid organization...
I would think that it scales, but that effectively practicing "highly skilled, non-naive good faith communication" is very difficult, and requires a lot of practice and honesty.
It starts with not assuming bad faith from the other side.
Trying to adapt your communication strategy depending on the profile of the other side is not really "good faith". The goal is to train _ourselves_ to look at reality in a less biased, personal way.
Wanting to max out every opportunities precisely tends to distort reality.
Your comment makes me think, I wonder if some of the problem is power imbalances and one off communication leads to bad faith communication being a better strategy.
For example, in social media the votes outweigh the replies 10 to 100 fold, and fewer people read the replies than the first post (especially on sites where it's an extra click to see comments).
Yet to your point, if it's iterated, that doesn't work as well. Of course this isn't just a technical problem, but I wonder if there's a way to weight high quality commenters similar to high quality posters, and if that leads to the virtuous cycle you describe.
Good faith communication was a cornerstone of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. It wasnt just a strategy it was who he was.
While it won him lots of supporters it ultimately resulted in his downfall as he refused to use underhanded rhetorical attacks of any kind, even when the ends clearly justified the means.
I hope your analysis is correct. On a personal level I have found it to work just as you describe, but on a more systemic higher level I am not yet convinced - I hope - but I am sadly not convinced.
For some systems it seems as though a prisoners dilemma develops where communicating in bad faith can give one actor an edge over another.
In company environments I think it’s a factor of size and what core leadership will tolerate. With a good CEO, it’s hard for a bad-faith leader to thrive at a 1000 person company. But at 3000 (anecdotally) it somehow becomes easier for this behavior to thrive.
This general concept is described in the "evolutionarily stable strategies" aspect of game theory.
In certain environments (say, one dominated by good-faith communicators) it may be advantageous to be a bad-faith communicator, while in other environments it may not.
The resulting fluctuations in the mix of strategies deployed in the environment (as agents seek out better performing strategies) may well be unstable (i.e. a particular strategy's performance depends on what's presently dominant).
Yeah, this is understandable. TBH I'm still trying to strengthen the intuition and looking for more clues that it scales.
The good thing is: the strategy for personal success seems to be aligned with the strategy for a global good faith.
So I can live with doubts: maybe it scales, maybe it doesn't. That doesn't change my daily behaviour, I'm maximizing for myself. This is not a prisoner dilemna where I lose if I cooperate.
I would even argue that if it wasn't aligned, this would certainly be doomed.
The books "Reinventing Organizations" (Frédéric Laloux) and "The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education" (Edward Deming) (intro: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20161226) gave me good intuitions that this can work at least at a corporate level.
BTW, not sure how much you've lived in or are in contact with people in authoritarian states, but that strategy (being in good fatih in general) most certainly does not lead to more success, on a personal level.
The best strategy there is to suck up to people in authority and derive benefits from that. Since (as the [Rules for rulers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs) idea states) authoritarian societies have way less keys, you will gain much more respectively if you're successful at sucking up to a power key.
And that's why good faith strategies work great in open democracies - since there are _a lot of_ albeit smaller keys, just sucking up is harder, and its easier just to have a reputation of competence, then you can go from one key to another and keep what you've earned. Merit and proven record both become more profitable for an individual, and since there is high trust between keys, it can also be transferable.
That's also a reason why authoritarian societies are so big on loyalty, since on a personal level, there are so much less keys, its better for you to stick with the one you have, and since there is way less trust in the society, you can't easily transfer your influence with one key to another.
Honestly that video (or more so the book it was based on) should be a required reading in all schools...
I'm immensely lucky to live a comfortable life in a democratic country.
So you're right, there is probably a blindspot here.
Good faith sounds definitely more fit for a kinder and more open environment.
However, there were no such "kind" environments a few centuries ago. Yet they managed to be bootstraped against their surroundings. So maybe there is clues that we underestimate the strength of "high-skilled good faith" strategies in adversarial situations?
But again, I can't really imagine what it's like to live in authoritarian states so my thoughts must not be very relevant here.
I've seen Rules for rulers previously and remember it pretty well as it was quite instructive. It didn't provide enough guiding answers for me to the question "And so, knowing that, how should I behave to live my best possible life ??"
Good faith communication is maladaptive on large scale
Imagine the war scenario. The honest, good-faith communication would be like:
If we capitulate outright, the worst thing that happens is paying taxes to somewhere else, and the set of faces on TV news will change to a different set of faces. Anyway, please go and die to prevent that from happening, while the people who have the most at stake hide in safety
It's not difficult to see why bad-faith war propaganda beats that every time
We're seeing the opposite play out in real time in Ukraine though. One side tells its soldiers that they are fighting a desperate battle to repel an invading dictator. The other side tells its soldiers that they are going on a training exercise in Belarus, then shoves them across the border telling them they will be welcomed as liberators, then finally switches to some handwavy explanation about nazis. The latter has massively worse morale and battlefield performance than the former.
And not only that, the bad-faith communication goes back decades, and the equipment the invaders are fighting with is in disrepair because local administrators and subcontractors have been lying to those in charge while pocketing maintenance funds. We're seeing, in a massive way, the havoc that a culture of deceit wreaks on any organization or society's ability to function coherently.
Ukraine was morally indefensible from the start, as was the Nazi invasion of Europe; with the latter though, they had captured the "hearts and minds" of their own people thanks to over a decade of increasing propaganda. Hitler pulled Germany from an economic downturn post-WW2, and the showy militaristic theming really got people excited. And it still does, but for a much smaller demographic - current-day nazis like the combat boots and flags too.
There are two periods of economic problems in Germany in the 1920's. The first involved economic collapse and hyper inflation in the early 20's immediately after WWI. The second started in 1929 and was a deflationary event. Argument I've seen is the sooner a country got off the gold standard the sooner things improved. Everyone but the French did that. Which is to say the solution wasn't rocket science.
> If we capitulate outright, the worst thing that happens is paying taxes to somewhere else, and the set of faces on TV news will change to a different set of faces. Anyway, please go and die to prevent that from happening, while the people who have the most at stake hide in safety
Is that actual truth? It seems to me that in quite a lot of wars, there is a lot more in stake then just where you pay taxes or who is on TV. This is not a good faith communication - this is flat out lie.
And also, civilian casualties in wars outnumber military ones. Soldiers do die a lot ... but causalities and suffering in wars are not limited to them.
It would be great for people who desire good faith communication to call out people who are resorting to bad faith techniques. Especially, and most importantly, when those bad actors are of the same political stripe.
It's impossible for those bad actors to hear criticism from "the enemy". Only people who share a position of almost total fundamental agreement, can maybe be heard in any criticism of how to better deal with the opposition.
TLDR: We should be most aggressive and loud in criticism of those we agree with most.
There are, in my opinion, two problems with that. The first is that it is very, very difficult for most people to view their own side objectively. The Russel conjugation comes to mind; "I am a freedom fighter, you are a rebel, he is a terrorist." The other problem is that often, calling out your own side's bad behavior feels like treachery. "When arguments become soldiers, to criticize your own sides' points is to stab your fellows in the back." Anyone who engages in that kind of criticism is likely to be ostracized as a traitor well before their criticisms are taken seriously. See, for example, the Hundred Flowers Campaign. I believe the book Scout Mindset by Julia Galef discusses ways around the first problem (I have not personally read the book), with the main thrust being that this is exceptionally difficult to train oneself to do and a mostly personal endeavor. For the second problem, I have no idea except to aspire to groups that welcome self-criticism.
The second problem is being made worse by the increasing polarization and the cutting of the ties that bound the different sides, at least in America. People with political disagreements were never best friends, but there used to be more shared socialization than there is now.
I'm from a bipartisan family in a purple area in a purple/battlefield state. You can't grow up like I did without being exposed to both/all sides of the aisle, so you end up with a pretty decent idea of the follies of your own side as well as a lot of friends/colleagues/etc. that don't agree with you.
10-15 years ago, I was still 'allowed' to deviate from accepted practice/opinion, as long as I respected the hosts, and conditional/partial belonging was allowed. (e.g. I might be a dirty commie liberal, but I'm still a Christian or, on the other end, I might be a gun nut but I'm still queer so I fit in 'enough'). Now, not so much. We also used to have more defined and accepted internal fighting/it used to be accepted that sides were coalitions instead of Borgs.
Now, not so much. We talk a lot about things we can't say/do, and share tips on how not to be pilloried for saying the wrong thing. Interestingly, these discussions are happening with people across all parts of the political spectrum.
People were always somewhat suspicious of you for hanging out with the enemy, but it was accepted if you were of an intellectual or sneaky bent. Now it's not. You're in or you're out.
If you're at a point with your side where any criticism is taken as treachery, you're not really on the same side. Some even think the intention of the 100 flowers campaign was to weed out people who didn't exactly align with Mao (i.e. it was "bad faith" to begin with). Also, the campaign was open to all, not just members of the CCP (Mao's "side" in this context). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign#Debat...
I think the 'critisize your own is backstabbing' thought is much less relevant in private discussion, and that might be where it's most possible to call out and change compatriots who engage in bad-faith communication.
In high-trust social circles, certainly. But the risk of reputational damage still exists when using these channels; this is how whisper networks destroy people seen as insufficiently dedicated to the Cause. Criticize the wrong person or do so insensitively, do it to a person with an outsized ego, and you may find yourself ostracized. Jo Freeman's essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness well describes how such power imbalances can occur and how people suspected of insufficient loyalty can be informally but firmly removed from the decision-making of a group.
This is, after all, why virtue signalling is such a common tactic. It shores up reputational defense against such accusations. Unfortunately, it also commonly has the effect of further deepening the divide between the group and other parties who might otherwise be interested in the Cause, as the most valuable signalling techniques require costly actions - i.e. ones that are materially or socially damaging to the member doing said signalling. This may affirm loyalty, but often harms proselytization efforts (you cannot advance the Cause to your family if you have cut off contact with them for not already being part of the Cause, for example).
I would think "calling out" is, or often takes the form of, exactly the type of bad faith communication that this article is trying to argue against (possibly categorised under "Undue social pressure" or "Villainization").
Engaging in a good-faith argument, especially with those you often agree with, yes. "Calling out" - I'd be hesitant about that.
Indeed. I also rarely "call out" someone when they engage in what's clearly a fallacious argument. Instead, I will engage by saying "I don't think that is an accurate portrayal of the position, because [..]" (strawman), "because [other thing] is bad doesn't say much about [this-thing]; if you want to talk about [other-thing] we can do that another time" (whataboutism), "Just because [organisation/person/group] says X doesn't mean X is true, I think it's more important to look at the arguments they're making" (argument from authority), etc.
This way it doesn't come off an an accusation, it keeps the conversation going, and is generally much more constructive. I found that people who "call out" logical fallacies and the like are generally looking to "win the argument" rather than actually have a conversation.
Calling people out on "bad faith" is common; there's an entire string of terms for this ("gaslighting", "sealioning", "concern trolling", what-have-you). I've never seen it end well. If someone is actually engaging in bad faith then it's better to disengage and call it a day, and if someone is engaging in good faith then all you've did is insult them without actually contributing all that much.
"Gaslighting" has a different meaning (go watch the movie; it's a classic).
I haven't heard the other two terms, and wouldn't be able to guess what they mean.
Sea lions spend all day fighting over [arbitrary thing] to impress potential mates. I'm certain this happens on social media, and that most potential mates are as impressed as they are by an actual sea lion. :-)
Gaslighting seems to have mutated to mean "asserting strongly that something isn't true, which I've personally experienced to be true", or in the more extreme cases, "...which I believe to be true."
IMO it's an annoying corruption of what was actually a rather useful term, but there you go.
I agree that it’s important for your own side to call out bad faith communication as much as possible. Scrutiny of your own sides arguments helps improve your position and intellectual honesty.
That being said, what is ideal in theory, breaks down in practice.
Feel free to take this with a grain of salt, my experience has been that when one person calls out another on their side for bad faith communication, a weird popularity contest happens.
As others have said about “feeling like a traitor”, the person who is called out feels metaphorically “stabbed in the back” by someone they now perceive as a “turncoat”. The ensuing popularity battle is used to discredit the position of the person who called out the bad faith communication. I’ve seen it many times, it’s both predictable and bizarre. Watching folks alienate their closest friends and advocates to protect a perceived attack on their ego is wild.
I agree with this, but in spaces where bad faith is the predominant form of communication, you'll probably be accused of being a centrist for not falling exactly in line.
You'll be called much much worse than that. IME, you'll be lumped into the "other side" as defined by each of the bad faith participants. And if you point out their bad faith intent and rhetorical games, the level of ad hominem attacks increases exponentially.
Except centrism isn't a real position - by definition. It's solely defined by the sides in opposition. There's a real and important difference between holding positions which make you "roughly" at the center of apparent sides, and the apparent holding of positions because "moderate" or "centrist" is being held up as a virtue.
And that last part is key: at the point where people are arguing that they are moderate, rather then what they actually believe, they're not arguing in good faith to start with - they're trying to argue they're morally superior without engaging with the actual subject matter.
At best, they're in fact arguing for the status quo and trying to pretend that they are not in fact very definitely asserting a position by doing that.
I think what's caused a disagreement here with you and /u/notahacker is the word "real" in this casual, seemingly fine phrase:
>> Except centrism isn't a real position - by definition.
There is something distinctly and genuinely different about centrism, but it is still a real position (it does in fact exist, and is thus "real").
I think what you're actually getting at is that centrism is a relative position (by definition), whereas non-centrists are absolute positions. Well...at least potentially. Fundamentally, few positions are not mostly relative (especially if one includes premises, axioms, etc), as the mind fundamentally and almost necessarily perceives reality thorough relative lenses (with respect to the individual's prior experiences, or in neural network terms: according to the training of their model). And if one is to discuss things in purely/highly absolute terms, the other person will balk ("That's pedantry/Gish Galloping / JAQing off!", behavior which more than a few HN'ers are not immune to themselves).
I believe a large percentage of the population actually possesses these abilities, and some subset of people even exercise these abilities on a very regular basis, with extreme skill (say, when we are programming software) - but only under specific circumstances. Take someone who has these capabilities and drop them into an object level culture war discussion, and these abilities will vanish. This phenomenon can be seen in large quantities not just on sites like Reddit, but also here - it is our nature, at least for now (perhaps some day someone will notice and try to address the issue).
There are also other hidden fundamental problems that are rarely realized or discussed: as just one example, the very language we use to communicate - take the innocuous looking word word "is"....oh, the problems this one seemingly simple word causes in "reality".
"Centrism" is every bit as real as "right wing" or "left wing", both positions also defined in different contexts by what is to the left/right of them. And people can be as genuinely enthusiastic in principle and detail about "a market, but a heavily regulated one" as they can about "the government has no business interfering in markets" or "private profiteers can't be allowed to exploit this resource". Or indeed hold a particular "right wing" or "left wing" position purely because they believe that agreeing with their tribe or expressing the appropriate degree of vehemence of disagreement with the other tribes makes them more virtuous.
There's a certain amount of irony in dismissing a
entire range of political opinion as uniquely susceptible to "trying to argue they're morally superior without engaging with the actual subject matter" under an article about bad faith communication.
I've found they usually assume I'm secretly on the other side.
Someone (that is generally thoughtful and level-headed) once implied I was racist because I agreed with a conservative.
The conservative had claimed, and I agreed, that, on average, people of African descent have quantifiably darker skin than those with Northern European ancestry.
Edit: The context was a paper on Vitamin D deficiency arguing that funding for increasing Vitamin D supplementation should be aimed at African American communities, since Vitamin D deficiency is more common in darker-skinned communities.
According to the paper, darker skin means less sunlight gets through, which means less Vitamin D production per unit of sun exposure. This matches common sense, and also their epidemiological data.
Why it happened to Taibbi I am unsure, but Greenwald has often resorted to bad faith callouts, before and after his "excommunication". I remember his Iraq war era blogging and uncharitable paraphrasing was pretty common. I just didn't care at the time because I was also antiwar.
I'd say it slightly different: I hope that we can have the courage to tell the people closest to us when their behaviors make us feel angry or disgusted or ashamed.
I don't like to use the word "criticism" because I believe it tends to be about trying to objectively label their actions, and much more prefer opening up about we individually feel or even how we imagine others might feel in reaction to those actions.
I agree with you in that this may be more well received by people who feel closest to us and also may be easier for us to open up to them when we fee close to them.
One of the things about call out culture is that it can be an extremely potent weapon for bad faith actors to silence everyone else. Thus stiffling vital dissent and making organizations stupid. In the recent Atlantic, there is an article by Jonathan Haidt that argues precisely that.
Looking at past results, I would not encourage call out culture further.
I agree that is one way to interpret those guidelines, but I don't think it is the only way to do it.
It is completely possible for one person to use bad faith techniques without doing it on purpose. You can assume they did that by mistake, and point that out. If after being presented with the evidence they simply refuse to take it, you can continue from there. But be prepared to be presented by their own counter-argument, though.
According to the article always assuming bad faith by the other side is part of the problem that we are lead into. So by calling for the assumption of good faith we can avoid falling into the spiral of bad faith communication.
In the sprit of TFA, let me try to steel man their argument, with which I don't agree.
Effective communication requires nuance, and definitionally nuances are subtle, and therefore are often difficult to convey in a terse way.
Headlines definitionally are restricted in length. So we can say that nuance and headlines are natural enemies.
Therefore, the best thing a headline can do is to direct a reader toward nuance, which hopefully is contained within the article. So an article that gets page views is not just good for the publisher, but it's also good for discourse in general.
But what about technically correct? Well, I think it's safe to say that a headline that gets clicks but is technically wrong is not what we want. Then let's consider technically correct, what does that even mean? To me, I'd really have to hear the argument in full, but in the spirit of steel manning I'd have to think what they meant was "factually correct", as "technically correct" has some negative connotation having to do focusing on facts while ignoring or discounting more salient issues.
Then again, due to the limited nature of a headline, some or even most of the context must be elided. So really I think the difference between something being "factually correct" and "technically correct" is intent to deceive through lies of omission.
Given the above, I would say a good headline is one which drives the reader to nuance and does so in a way which is factually correct, which I could see characterized as "technically correct and gets page views".
This is consistently what Glenn Greenwald has done and the smear campaign against him by the DNC and liberal establishment has taken him from a world famous Oscar and Pulitzer prize winning journalist to a pariah and supposed Russian right wing shill, kicked out of the organization he founded, The Intercept.
His beliefs and ideas are clearly left wing and he has remained consistent, but by doing what you suggest he has been effectively destroyed. It's really sad to see. And I agree with you, I think he did the right thing regardless of the consequences.
I think Glenn Greenwald was stressed into a place where he just kind of cracked, such as by governments actually hounding him. I have listened to his recent interviews and I think he's gone into classical conspiracy theories involving the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc.
Could you cite a particular unfounded "conspiracy theory" that he is espousing? Most of the things he's written about the CIA, FBI, NSA etc that I've read are grounded in fact and sourced..
Are you suggesting that these three letter agencies aren't constantly involved in shady unethical often law-breaking activity? Have you not been reading hacker news at all? They make it to the front page regularly with their poor behavior.
Greenwald (and Tulsi Gabbard) quoted Nuland directly, who admitted that there were biological research labs.
Greenwald had previously worked on the Anthrax story of 2001, where a couple of high profile people got sent a sophisticated Anthrax variant in the mail.
It was supposed to be foreign terrorism at first, later it was found that the strain came from a U.S. research facility.
Biological weapons aren't allowed by treaty. Research how to combat biological weapons however is allowed. So many countries produce strains in biological research facilities under the guise of defense.
That is precisely Greenwald's point, he has never claimed that bioweapons are manufactured in Ukraine. He has claimed that dangerous biological agents might be present, like they were in the U.S. in 2001.
It takes a lot of history and reading to understand Greenwald. The man is a walking encyclopedia, very careful in his statements and touches issues of great complexity. One can rarely refute him in a one liner.
The jump from "bioresearch lab" which to bioweapons. Making it sound as if there was something to "admit" in Ukraine having same labs as everyone has. Then you try to confuse it with bioweapons, anthrax attacks in America and completely irrelevant treaties about bioweapons.
If he wanted to make historical point about Antrax, he did not had to make it in context of Ukraine. If he wanted to make point about bioresearch labs in general, he could have made that one. He did not wanted to do either. He wanted to muddy waters precisedly at the time when is sounded like Ukraine has bioweapons precisedly when they were invaded.
> The jump from "bioresearch lab" which to bioweapons. Making it sound as if there was something to "admit" in Ukraine having same labs as everyone has. Then you try to confuse it with bioweapons, anthrax attacks in America and completely irrelevant treaties about bioweapons.
Who is it that's actually doing the confusing here? It's certainly possible that Greenwald is dog-whistling "bioresearch lab" into "bioweapons", but is he actually doing that, and to a large degree (mostly, etc)?
Consider this: within your mind, might there be a bias toward perceiving that this is what he is doing, and might it be also possible that you may not be able to perceive that this is happening (due to the evolved nature of the human mind)?
Let's try to simultaneously operate in a dual state of mind: both abstract (keeping in mind the phenomena discussed in the article, and taking it seriously) and object level (discussion of "these bio labs"[1]): is it possible that some of the things discussed in the article could happen to us folks here on HN, sometimes? To be clear, I am not asserting as a fact that this is happening here, in a big way - rather, I am merely and explicitly offering it as a suggestion of what might be happening, at least to some degree.
[1] I put "these bio labs" in brackets because technically, at the cognitive/neuroscientific level, that is not what either person is actually discussing - rather, each person is necessarily discussing their model of "these bio labs". However, while this is architecturally unavoidable, this is not to say that there is no way to optimize the manner in which we perceive and discuss our respective virtual realities.
As a third party, I can weigh in to eliminate some of the ambiguity you're worried about:
It seems like the views you're replying to, match reality (Greenwald is indeed spreading FUD about something which is totally normal), and, I'm sorry, you are coming across as incomprehensible
> It seems like the views you're replying to, match reality (Greenwald is indeed spreading FUD about something which is totally normal)
Consider this: are things always as they seem? If you consider the entirety of your history on this planet, has there ever been a time where you were at least partially mistaken? Or even easier: have you ever observed another human being mistaking belief for knowledge?
I mean technically: is it not true that you are representing/asserting your perception of "reality" (virtual/perceptual/cognitive reality) to be 100% perfectly and comprehensively aligned with reality itself?
> and, I'm sorry, you are coming across as incomprehensible.
This is extremely common in conversations within certain domains.
Consider this:
- if someone has a bias against certain things, might this have some negative effect on the style and effort they devote to trying to truly understand it (also taking into consideration what is happening in the subconscious mind, which is sub-perceptual, and arguably has the ability to place a ~"hard cap" on what any given individual is capable of, especially if they are not intimately(!) familiar with the phenomenon and actively taking measures to counteract its effects)?
- if one was to give a quantum mechanics textbook to someone who has no background in math/physics/etc, might it seem incomprehensible to them?
And based on prior conversations, it is perhaps a good idea to preemptively counter some common rebuttals to this sort of thinking: often the response I will get to this sort of reasoning is that it is "pedantic", or various memes/slurs such as /r/iamverysmart, Gish Gallop, JAQing off, etc. I promise that this is not what I am doing - I am genuinely trying to have a truly good faith conversation (which, unsurprisingly, may appear "very weird"), and I encourage you to disagree with any points I've made that you believe (after some self-critical contemplation, ideally) contain a genuine flaw(s), however small.
> I am a third party confirming that, yes, in this case, they are as they seem to that person
And now I am asking you. Two people agreeing that something "seems" true does not render it true in actual/shared reality.
> if you believe their position, as confirmed by a third party, contains genuine flaws, it might just be your biases showing through
This is one possibility, but another possibility is that their position, and the "confirmation" by the third party, is erroneous, perhaps due to their biases.
> nonetheless, I encourage you to clearly (and succinctly) articulate them, and try to convince us that said person's views do not reflect reality
I do not "have a dog" in this object level fight - my interest is in the abstract: what are the various ways in which human beings perceive reality incorrectly, and is it possible to get even one of them to explicitly acknowledge that it is possible that their belief is incorrect, at least to some degree....and, might it be possible that this ~methodology (exerting effort to discover what is actually true, and fine-grained "hard stops" preventing that discovery, etc) may have materially important utility to humanity, and should therefore perhaps be taken seriously.
Note also that I explicitly encourage disagreement, as well as avoiding the premature formation of conclusions (I did not do this explicitly before, so I am appending it here).
As the third party here, I am actually the unbiased one in your disagreement with the other person, and I am simply saying that your position is unconvincing compared to theirs.
You, meanwhile, by attacking this person specifically, definitely seem to "have a dog" in this fight, despite your claims to the contrary.
Just take it from an outside observer, you could stand a little introspection to apply some of the solipsistic philosophical musings to yourself.
Or, if you believe something that person said to be false, feel free to make a convincing case for it.
I am happy to answer any questions you pose to me - unless I am overlooking something, I have not missed anything you have asked of me.
However, you have missed some questions I asked of you. I would also enjoy reading any answers you may have to questions I have asked of others upthread.
And of course, you have no obligation to answer my questions, but I would prefer if we are explicit and accurate about how each of us conducts ourselves in the conversation (ie: if one of us does not answer specific questions, acknowledge that simply and unequivocally).
And if you were implicitly posing "Are things always as they seem?" to me, my answer is: no, things are not always as they seem. In fact, I argue that they are almost always not what they seem, and that this is necessarily the case due to the physical architecture of the mind/reality, plus a whole bunch of other scientifically uncontroversial reasons.
> As the third party here, I am actually the unbiased one in your disagreement with the other person...
We are discussing an object level matter - it is possible that you do not have bias on this matter, but that you personally perceive yourself to be unbiased is not convincing, and is certainly subject to a variety of possible well known phenomenon in psychology/etc.
At the very least, I think the most epistemically sound stance is that it is not known whether you or I have some bias, or the degree to which each of us is biased. After all, science has a fair amount of depth in this realm and if you take their findings even partially seriously, that there is at least some uncertainty seems highly certain.
> ...and I am simply saying that your position is unconvincing compared to theirs.
I am less interested in being persuasive than I am in being correct. Actually, I have enough experience in this domain that I believe it may not be possible to convince certain people of certain things, at least on current communication platforms like this one, in cultures like this one. I think this could change with more sophisticated platforms and cultures, but such things are not the purpose or goal of HN (dang has been explicit about this).
> You, meanwhile, by attacking this person specifically, definitely seem to "have a dog" in this fight, despite your claims to the contrary.
As I already asked you (and you did not answer): "Are things always as they seem?"
I respectfully challenge you to answer this question.
> Just take it from an outside observer, you could stand a little introspection to apply some of the solipsistic philosophical musings to yourself.
Ah, "solipsism", color me not shocked at all that this idea manifested in the mind of someone I am having this type of conversation with.
Do you believe that I am a solipsist, or that the ideas I have written here are fundamentally and necessarily solipsistic?
> Or, if you believe something that person said to be false, feel free to make a convincing case for it.
The first burden of proof lies with the one making an assertion - I challenged the assertion above, no response has appeared thus far.
As for making a case, consider this assertion:
>> He wanted to muddy waters precisedly at the time when is sounded like Ukraine has bioweapons precisedly when they were invaded.
Is this not mind reading? Or at the very least, stating one's opinions/inferences in the form of facts?
And if this is ok, then should Mr. Greenwald not get a free pass on the very same basis?
>I am happy to answer any questions you pose to me - unless I am overlooking something, I have not missed anything you have asked of me.
You have indeed! I asked if there was any specific part of the post you responded to, with which you disagreed. Since you did not provide any, though, we can thus conclude that you agree with what was in that post.
>>He wanted to muddy waters precisedly at the time when is sounded like Ukraine has bioweapons precisedly when they were invaded.
>Is this not mind reading?
No, it's drawing conclusions based on the available data. I also independently drew the same conclusions, so that should make you introspect a little, and ask what it is you're doing which causes people to conclude that based on the available data of your behavior.
>Are things always as they seem?
Indeed, are they? Is it possible that you aren't actually asking this question at all, and you actually agree with the person to which you responded? And you just think something else happened? Do you think this is possible?
On a higher level, you believe you are engaged in meta-discussion, in response to the actual discussion started by the other person.
I am thus engaged in meta-meta-discussion: My new question to you is, can you make a convincing case that your meta-discussion increases understanding of the original topic, rather than deflecting from it? Thanks!
> You have indeed! I asked if there was any specific part of the post you responded to, which which you disagreed. Since you did not provide any though....
I replied addressing that. If you are unsatisfied with my reply, please quote the text of the specific question you asked that you believe I did not answer.
Note also: I may not hold a position on object level matters - me pushing back on a claim should not be interpreted as a belief in the opposite (as is usually the case, in my experience).
> ...we can thus conclude that you agree with what was in that post.
You can certainly conclude that, and even assert it, but this does not make it true.
> On a higher level, you believe you are engaged in meta-discussion, in response to the actual discussion started by the other person.
This is my intent and desire, but whether this is a group undertaking in fact I cannot say, I can only hope.
> I am thus engaged in meta-meta-discussion: My new question to you is, can you make a convincing case that your meta-discussion increases understanding of the original topic, rather than deflecting from it? Thanks!
I would hope that it would help: the goal is be to highlight that perception and reality are similar but different, and that this is extremely important, but whether I am successful in the slightest I do not know - if forced, I would predict that I am not successful, based on hundreds if not thousands of similar conversations. This seems to be a very difficult nut to crack, but then I don't think that should be very surprising.
If you don't mind: could you state explicitly whether you will answer the questions I stated above (physically answer them, in this thread)?
>> You have indeed! I asked if there was any specific part of the post you responded to, which which you disagreed. Since you did not provide any though....
>I replied addressing that. If you are unsatisfied with my reply, please quote the text of the specific question you asked that you believe I did not answer.
and I replied to that reply, concluding from it that you had no substantive material disagreements. If you're unsatisfied with this conclusion, please reply with, for each disagreement, a quote of the claim, what you believe to be wrong about that claim, and your evidence for your assertion that the claim is wrong, and I'll evaluate your evidence to see whether it convincingly supports your doubts.
>perception and reality are similar but different, and that this is extremely important
Indeed, and, this is extremely important: isn't it possible that you only perceive yourself to be in disagreement with what the original poster said, but in reality, you are in total agreement, and have no complaints or criticisms whatsoever? Furthermore, isn't it possible that you only _perceived_ yourself asking the questions you think you asked, and in reality, you did not ask them? Is this a possibility?
> and I replied to that reply, concluding from it that you had no substantive material disagreements. If you're unsatisfied with this conclusion, please reply with, for each disagreement, a quote of the claim, what you believe to be wrong about that claim, and your evidence for your assertion that the claim is wrong, and I'll evaluate your evidence to see whether it convincingly supports your doubts.
My initial grievance is here:
>> (someone) The jump from "bioresearch lab" which to bioweapons. Making it sound as if there was something to "admit" in Ukraine having same labs as everyone has. Then you try to confuse it with bioweapons, anthrax attacks in America and completely irrelevant treaties about bioweapons.
> (me) Who is it that's actually doing the confusing here? It's certainly possible that Greenwald is dog-whistling "bioresearch lab" into "bioweapons", but is he actually doing that, and to a large degree (mostly, etc)?
Here one human is accusing another human (or several), whom he doesn't know, of speaking deliberately deceivingly, making ~invalid associations between things, etc - a not abnormal interpretation of this might be something like "this guy doesn't know what he's talking about, he's trying to tell a tall tale, he might even be a conspiracy theorist".
At the very least, there's little acknowledgement I see about the complexities and uncertainty involved. This is but one of my overall complaints about culture war arguments, people play so fast and loose with the truth. If there's a post about computing on HN, attention to detail and emphasis on correctness is bountiful and uncontroversial. But in a culture war conversation, I proclaim that the inverse is true - and, I also think this abstract phenomenon is a big deal in the big scheme of things.
> Indeed, and, this is extremely important: isn't it possible that you only perceive yourself to be in disagreement with what the original poster said, but in reality, you are in total agreement, and have no complaints or criticisms whatsoever? Furthermore, isn't it possible that you only _perceived_ yourself asking the questions you think you asked, and in reality, you did not ask them? Is this a possibility?
Of course, why not.
But you brought up solipsism earlier:
>> Just take it from an outside observer, you could stand a little introspection to apply some of the solipsistic philosophical musings to yourself.
Perhaps you cannot (or will not) think in these terms without falling into a state of solipsism (or impotency due to indecision, another common complaint), but it's certainly not necessary. It is possible to address these ideas as they are, and take them seriously (as opposed to representing that they are silly, woo woo, bad faith, whatever). Perhaps it is not possible in the mainstream, in 2022, but it is possible.
The evidence supporting their position is convincing, you may now present your evidence to the contrary, and I'll determine whose position between the two of you is more tenable given the evidence.
You see, raising questions does not add to any position in particular -- if you have questions, feel free to find the answers, and hopefully they will be ones which make your case more convincing than the case you are arguing against.
>Perhaps you cannot...
I think it is a bit primitive to make assumptions about what I can or cannot do. Perhaps I address these ideas better than you can comprehend, and you just _PERCEIVE_ it to be biting satire that cuts any hypothetical similarly-structured dissembling to the bone
As we see in Wuhan, a virus can be devastating no matter if it escapes from a research facility, a wet market or a deliberate bioweapon. That was the primary concern of Tulsi Gabbard.
In Ukraine, matters are exacerbated by the fact that these research facilities, according to the left wing newspaper The Guardian, were U.S. funded:
Ukraine does operate biological laboratories that receive US funding. The US undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland affirmed those facts in a Senate foreign relations committee hearing this week, in which the Republican senator Marco Rubio asked directly if Ukraine had biological weapons.
Given the politically unstable situation in February 2022 and earlier, people like Greenwald and Gabbard simply point out that Putin will view this as a provocation, same as the Nuland/Graham involvement in the revolution in 2014.
Most people who are called Putin apologists are simply doing one thing: They know that Putin is a bully with 6,000 nuclear weapons, so they try to understand his thinking and possible reactions. As we see now, they were right in many ways.
> They know that Putin is a bully with 6,000 nuclear weapons, so they try to understand his thinking and possible reactions.
This would require reading what Putin wrote and commenting on it. This would require listening to his speeches in Russia. This would require close listening to Russian ideology and mythology disseminated in Russia itself and commenting on it. This would required reading Russian and Easter European politics and history - at least recent one.
It would require watching which of his statements are shifting, which are ignored the moment they are not useful, which are staying and which are supported by his actions. I dont see them ever mentioning Putins historical theories, his theories about Ukraine statehood, about Stalin.
And somehow, that concern exists only when Russia is trying to excuse invasion by bioweapons labs. Somehow, magically, this concern did not existed before, nor in other countries and stopped existing as it turned out not many people are buying it as excuse for invasion. There was no "maybe the war did not started due to that" consideration either.
This was not concern about "provocation" or concern about Putin being good-faith afraid of new covid from Ukraine. This was muddying waters, trying to build up new WMD-like narrative, because libs are at Ukrainien side.
>And somehow, that concern exists only when Russia is trying to excuse invasion by bioweapons labs. Somehow, magically, this concern did not existed before, nor in other countries and stopped existing as it turned out not many people are buying it as excuse for invasion.
Seriously, like are we supposed to believe Russia has no biological labs? Or that only Russia is allowed to, and not other countries like Ukraine?
It's totally normal and expected for biological research labs to have biological samples with which to do research.
Ukraine, like any other country, has a vested interest in the health of its population, and so Ukraine, like many other countries, performs research on diseases that ail mankind.
Additionally, "receives US funding" is a better way to put it than "US funded", which is calculated to make it seem more like the US was the _only_ country funding them. Though one would expect that one of the largest economies in the world would help its allies research and treat their diseases.
The accusations and suppositions put forward are beyond that, with thinly veiled suggestions of covert maliciousness sprinkled in.
As for Putin, he views the existence of a free Ukraine that isn't part of Russia, as a provocation, thus the invasion, so it's pretty clear that what he viewed as provocation is not necessarily an actual provocation, but rather a pretext for further violence that he already planned anyways.
"thinly veiled suggestions of covert maliciousness sprinkled in."
This could be your bad-faith reading of the stories, though. You are "reading between the lines" and seeing statements that aren't actually there, then claiming bad-faith communication on others.
Finally, saying what you think another is thinking or going to say, as in Putin's actions and motives, is very far from SUPPORTING those actions and motives.
> You are "reading between the lines" and seeing statements that aren't actually there, then claiming bad-faith communication on others
You simply claiming that does not make it so.
>Finally, saying what you think another is thinking or going to say, as in Putin's actions and motives, is very far from SUPPORTING those actions and motives.
Yes, there was no disagreement on this point. The point is that "Putin will view X as a provocation, so we shouldn't do X" is an unconvincing argument, because Putin has already claimed his own actions were provocations against him. There is no world in which Putin will not either find or invent a pretext to do what he wants, and call it a "provocation".
No matter what anyone says or does, as long as Ukraine still exists as an independent country, Putin will say, it is engaged in "provocation" which necessitates eliminating Ukraine as an independent country.
Nah, Glenn Greenwald is not arguing in good faith and was not for a long time. And I did not needed to "smear campaign" against him to figure that out. All I needed was was to read his twitter feed regularly - as I was. He is good at strong words and insults, but not at good faith discussion at all.
> His beliefs and ideas are clearly left wing and he has remained consistent,
Kinda yes and no, not really. He has some lefty opinions, but that is it.
What did I say that was underhanded or otherwise indicated bad faith? Your direct ad hominem labeling without any context or explanation is the most bad faith thing in this thread.
Cycomanic pointed it out thoroughly enough that I'd only be repeating what they said.
One of your bigger tells however is how you never actually defend your positions. You only attack the others' opinions. You constantly require everyone else to be on the defense while never actually defending your positions yourself.
You're not here to engage in debate, you're here to rant.
I notice you also didn't engage with Cycomanic after he deconstructed your post and called out all of your bad faith tactics. I also pointed out another.
You also like to sneak in hyperbole. You claim I said you were underhanded, when I did no such thing. It's an effort to get me to argue something I never said.
This isn't so much an accusation as just pointing out what you're doing here.
Anyone reading this thread sees that you aren't even discussing the topic, labeling me, and criticizing with vague generalizations, then accusing others of exactly what you are doing, which is bad faith argument. Your response here is not worth further comment.
I think it's not quite so simple. I previously believed in some of the strong ad honimems against him (and I have revised that position). However, I am very critical of some of his behaviour, he himself has used bad faith communication (often adopted from right wing pundits) strategies to criticise "his side/the left" and had the same time goes onto shows like Tucker Carlsson and does not use it to engage in critical dialogue with him, or call out his constant bad faith arguments, but instead "bash the left".
Of course he goes on Tucker Carlson's show, because stories like the Hunter Biden laptop were suppressed by CNN, Facebook, Twitter and others. In fact they were called "Russian disinformation".
Now in 2022, many of the same outlets suddenly acknowledge the authenticity of the story. CNN has James Clapper as its own security analyst (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clapper#CNN_national_sec...), why would Greenwald appear there after all that has happened in 2013?
Many of Greenwald's "conspiracy theories" are facts two years later.
Attacking him for going on Tucker Carlson is a typical bad faith smear used against him and many others. CNN and MSNBC won't have him on despite him being willing to interview. Why must people only go on shows that are on "their side"? That's propaganda, not journalism.
Every journalist has a particular topic and audience that they focus on. His topic and audience is around waking up left wingers to the bad behavior of the "their own side". This topic is almost completely unaddressed amongst the left. To attack the right would be singing to the choir, and also be part of the choir, because 99% of the rest of left wing media already focus all their effort on "the other side". Do you not think it's a waste of time to convince the left that trump and fox are bad?
The fact is that most media are just cheerleaders for team red or team blue. Glenn is not a cheerleader, and thus not an establishment mouthpiece, and so he gets smeared by people like you.
> Attacking him for going on Tucker Carlson is a typical bad faith smear used against him and many others. CNN and MSNBC won't have him on despite him being willing to interview. Why must people only go on shows that are on "their side"? That's propaganda, not journalism.
Hold on, I did not say he shouldn't be going on Fox news or TC. However going to Fox news and calling NYT biased left wing media of the "rich elite", without any criticism towards Fox news, their ownership and agenda is not engaging in a good faith debate.
> Every journalist has a particular topic and audience that they focus on. His topic and audience is around waking up left wingers to the bad behavior of the "their own side". This topic is almost completely unaddressed amongst the left.
So do you believe that going to Fox news and essentially repeating their talking points is a good way of "waking up the left"? I mean the audience he is trying to address is not really listening there is it? Also why not take the opportunity to also engage critically with Fox?
>To attack the right would be singing to the choir, and also be part of the choir, because 99% of the rest of left wing media already focus all their effort on "the other side". Do you not think it's a waste of time to convince the left that trump and fox are bad?
I find the notion that any media in the US is left completely alien. I mean the NYT would maybe considered centre right in most of Europe.
> The fact is that most media are just cheerleaders for team red or team blue. Glenn is not a cheerleader, and thus not an establishment mouthpiece, and so he gets smeared by people like you.
I find it ironic that in a discussion about bad faith communication, you call my criticising Glenn as smearing? Where did I attack his character? I think what he is doing is not constructive, and I explained why I think that is the case.
> CNN and MSNBC won't have him on despite him being willing to interview.
The majority of journalists and opinion writers wont ever be on CNN and MSNBC. Overwhelming majority of them, in fact.
> Every journalist has a particular topic and audience that they focus on. His topic and audience is around waking up left wingers to the bad behavior of the "their own side".
Well, in that case, he is massive failure. Probably because he argues in bad faith and also because hate is dripping out of him.
> This topic is almost completely unaddressed amongst the left.
Glenn Greenwald is worthy of being on CNN and MSNBC, and has been on before, but mysteriously was no longer invited once he started criticizing the liberal establishment. Hmm..
And in-fighting is not the same as calling out the corrupt elite that maintain the Overton window of what most blue journalists and politicians speak about.
Overwhelming majority of journalists is "worthy" of that. But, Glenn Greenwald seemed to be mostly emotional bundle last years as I was watching him. And completely unable to handle any pushback or criticism back - responding with pure insults and anger half the time.
I used to like him and respect him, which is why I was following him. It was not other peoples criticism of Greenwald that made me loose respect to him. People I normally follow dont comment on Greenwald. It was him.
To say nothing of communication issues caused by social media users themselves, the platforms can have built-in miscommunication. For example, on reddit your removed comments are shown to you as if they are live, as shown here [1]. You can try it yourself in r/CantSayAnything [2].
You can be having a conversation with someone that suddenly stops because a 3rd party removed the last reply. Often, neither of the speakers is aware this happened, making it appear to each as if the other ghosted the discussion.
This "feature" of Reddit has always really bothered me. Who is Reddit helping when a user's comment is removed but they're tricked into thinking it's still up?
It's a tactic against spammers and trolls. It's believed that they are not as likely to continue the behavior as they would if they saw the immediate consequence of their actions.
Good question. Research suggests providing removal explanations [on posts] results in less work for mods [1]. And more research into reddit moderation is on the way [2].
The first time silent removals were discussed on reddit was apparently in 2007,
> "A better idea is a silent ban. Let him post comments" [3] (found via [3.a])
In 2010 reddit's CTO said he supports silent bans [4] after a blogger discovered they had been silently banned. And the CEO in 2017 said it was necessary [5], then in 2018 said,
> If we knew everything everything we know today about spam, enforcement, and transparency, we probably wouldn’t build shadow-banning. It’s use is really limited to spam, and I think the downsides (false positives, lack of transparency) outweigh the benefits.
> That said, it was useful in the early days when spam was more of an arms race, we didn’t have moderators or reporting, and our content policy was limited to spam. [6]
How exactly? It's not like the only other option is "always assume bad faith".
Since reality is a bit more complex, I think such things should be decided on a case by case basis. I've seen plenty of both extremes here on HN, and tons of unknowns
By being an effective moderation tool. I like shadowbanning more than a simple ban, because I think it works better by not giving the bad actor an instant response. They can't use the feedback for further bad action, creating a sense of confusion, or being ignored. And then if we suppose that it works well, then with other useful tools in the moderators' bag of tricks, they can do a good job keeping a community's discussion above a certain level, thereby benefiting the community at a larger scale. I'm sure that if used in bad faith, it can be used to control a narrative, but in this regard it doesn't do a better job than other moderation tools, like editing a comment or banning users.
I am a pretty big advocate for good faith communication and think the article is right that it is necessary. The thing that disheartens me though, is the asymmetric nature of the problem: good faith communication is hard. It takes time and patience. Bad faith communication is easy. You can write 20 bad faith drive by comments in the time it takes to post one thoughtful reply. And due to the wide open nature of most of these platforms you're rarely interacting with the same person twice. So it's hard not to feel that that effort is entirely going to waste.
I agree, I think it's also likely that in many scenarios bad faith communication is more successful in the short term. You can appeal to a persons emotions, disparage the person making the argument, exclude nuance to make simple memorable statements, etc. Which is where I struggle with settling on a strategy for dealing with it (and trying to prevent myself from doing it), since so much of our lives are geared towards/optimised for short term results
If the solution was providing people with a list of bad faith tactics we would have been done with it at least twice by now: first when Socrates was arguing with Sophists 2500 years ago and another time when Schopenhauer wrote Eristic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right. And before you think 'maybe someone doesn't know yet': yes, you are correct. Someone doesn't know. We tried telling everyone before and just trying harder doesn't seem to cut it.
What, I'd argue, would be at least a tiny step forward would be thinking in terms of games people play, rewards they seek and maybe even monetization of systems. Thinking of people who argue in 'bad faith' as being mostly plain wrong is naive and somewhat offensive. Talk to your PR department every now and then, some of them are smart and know what they're doing. Same for Twitter discourse and all else.
Telling people (or yourself) to make better communities ignores costs involved in managing that community. Can you afford onboarding of even telling people that cute list of bad faith tactics? Can you do it faster than a place that doesn't do it? Can you achieve retention higher than love bombarding communities?
No. No, you can't.
Not with current tooling at least. Not to push own products/services (today!), here are some angles that seem achievably hard, yet somewhat underdeveloped: good faith arguments are more time expensive - it can be cut into pieces/redesigned to give them more chance; both wrong and correct ways of thinking about specific problems are actually very limited in numbers - maintaining searchable database of them to reuse should dramatically speed up 'getting through'; false positives in ostracism are unnoticed - layered moderation that provides feedback on initial misjudgment can noticeably improve the space: not so much retention (that numbers would be small), but limit echo chamber by avoiding rituals of cancellation - without increasing costs as much as having 'full conversation' with everyone before banning would.
> What, I'd argue, would be at least a tiny step forward would be thinking in terms of games people play, rewards they seek
Definitely. One thing that I think is unappreciated is the extent to which we see "preference falsification". This is a game people play where they pretend to have different preferences to better fit in with their in-group.
It's common for preference falsification to be manufactured intentionally – I think Robin Hanson formalized it with the idea of a "meta-norm", a norm that not says: you must ostracize people who do <bad thing x> AND you must ostracize people who don't follow this rule. I think when people complain about "cancel culture", this is the real thing they're unhappy about, they just lack the vocabulary to articulate it. The sneaky thing about the meta-norm is that it's self-reinforcing. Once enough people follow the meta-norm, following the meta-norm becomes a stable equilibrium where no individual person gains from not following it.
From Scott Alexander:
> Imagine a country with two rules: first, every person must spend eight hours a day giving themselves strong electric shocks. Second, if anyone fails to follow a rule (including this one), or speaks out against it, or fails to enforce it, all citizens must unite to kill that person. Suppose these rules were well-enough established by tradition that everyone expected them to be enforced.
> So you shock yourself for eight hours a day, because you know if you don’t everyone else will kill you, because if they don’t, everyone else will kill them, and so on. Every single citizen hates the system, but for lack of a good coordination mechanism it endures.
The subtlety of this is that you might genuinely believe that everyone supports the electric shocks, because you'll never hear anyone speaking out against it, even though everyone hates it.
I think this dynamic is so powerful that it's almost innate. I remember once when a friend of a friend cheated on her boyfriend regularly. I obviously thought negatively of the cheater and didn't want to be around her, but I also thought negatively of my friend for continuing to be around the cheater. The instinct is that punishing cheaters by social ostracism is socially useful, so we should also punish people who fail to ostracize cheaters by ostracising them, and so on. This can be good like in the case of punishing cheaters, but the problem is that it could work for any social norm even if 100% of people disagreed with it.
I think this is a real and powerful social dynamic that leads to a huge amount of people having no choice but to act in bad faith. If this is a real social dynamic, how can it be neutralized? One approach I think is promising is to use local opinion polls, only structured as opinion elections. If everyone could vote anonymously, I'm sure they would say "I'm not such a fan of these electric shocks" (and the anonymity protects them from the fear of socially-enforced retaliation). Once it becomes common knowledge that almost nobody around you likes the electric shocks, it's much easier to coordinate "let's stop punishing people for not shocking themselves". Electric shocks are just an example, you could use this for any hot-button political issue. For example, in the US's antebellum South I'm sure there was immense social pressure to be pro-slavery, but opinion elections might have helped pro-abolition people understand if they were even in the minority (and if so, by how much).
This is just one mechanism I think might be workable, but I'm sure if we sat down and thought about it we could come up with many others, like reputation systems for those who make accurate predictions for the future, debates where people have an incentive to call-out their counterparty's selective reporting of the facts, etc.
And this is muddled even further by effective propoganda.
Say a research article came out, claiming the health benefits of the electric shocks, or even some vague "think of the children" style "children become violent and dangerous when not shocked". It is parroted by all the news organisations you'd expect.
Even if any casual scrutiny debunks the article, I believe a worryingly high percentage of the population would believe it, because they _want_ to believe it, because it means they don't have to worry about the shocks. They've justified the shocks to themselves, so they become less painful. Accepting that they are useless or cruel after this would require them to accept that they were doing something harmful for no reason, and people are generally very resistant to being told they were wrong, especially if they have any stake in the status quo.
So now you have people who _genuinely_ believe in the shocks, even though they got there through being deceived. Then all it takes is a bit of villifying of those who even suggest that there might be another way (They want to hurt our children) and the system becomes self-sustaining.
I'm not making a value judgement, but I thought that the parallels with your last suggestion, and the 'blind cancel' idea in this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30906621 were kind of interesting. I don't know what that means, I'm mostly just free associating
I hadn't heard about steelmanning [0], and it was definitely a pleasant thing to learn about.
> A steel man argument (or steelmanning) is the opposite of a straw man argument. The idea is to help one's opponent to construct the strongest form of their argument. This may involve removing flawed assumptions that could be easily refuted, for example, so that one produces the best argument for the "core" of one's opponent's position. It has been advocated as a more productive strategy in political dialog that promotes real understanding and compromise instead of fueling partisanship by discussing only the weakest arguments of the opposition.
The end game of bad faith communication is that noise begins to dominate the channel.
Humans, reacting to this degradation in signal rely less and less on channels that are dominated by noise.
This opens up opportunities for technology to build new channels, which accumulate users, engagement and momentum by supporting good faith communication (truth).
You can have good faith communication over something like the Fermi Paradox or SETI, but the truth is unknown. With a lot of complex social and political realities, the truth is also unknown. Some facts are known, but how they fit whatever grand narrative is in dispute. And with technology, often the dispute centers around preference or what's popular, where for example, which programming language is better doesn't really have a truth value in the general sense.
The truth in this case is that there's no programming language that is better in all regards. There are programming languages that are better at certain things, or that provide certain benefits that are more important for some tasks.
Turning the conversation away from "X language is better" to "X works best than Y to accomplish Z", trying to gauge by how much (e.g.: will it pay of for you to learn X if you only have to do Z once in your lifetime?), etc.. is what I'm understanding "good faith" communication to entail in such situations.
I have realized when browsing some twitter culture war exchanges that people almost never respond to the opposing party's arguments. They imagine a set of arguments that uses some of the same words and then argue with that. This type of exchange never results in agreement -- or even the exchange of information! It's unhinged from any communicative act. It's merely inflammatory.
I do think this is extremely problematic in the long run.
My main concern in online discussions is that you're effectively arguing against a hydra. Even if you successfully convince a group of people about the validity of a specific point, there will always be someone else who will show up to continue arguing (often, as you say, with a completely different argument). And if someone successfully convinces me that my argument was wrong, there is no way for me to declare the point settled - someone else will show up and keep the discussion going.
It's turtles all the way down, where each turtle is yelling at the one on top.
It's my personal belief that the endless arguing as you describe is the main point of Twitter for a lot of people; they're not there to settle an argument or to have their mind changed, they're there for the heated discussions.
And I kinda get it, I was there for it as well and to this day will make shitposts on the internet with no intent to actually engage with any replies <_<
There's no function similar to "likes", "upvotes", or "reddit gold" that incentivizes good faith communication either. The features are too ambiguous. One community on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/ invented their own "delta" awards, where you submit a stance, people try to convince you otherwise, and if they do, they're awarded a "delta".
It's a small community, but it's an interesting experiment at what online communication could be.
> It's my personal belief that the endless arguing as you describe is the main point of Twitter for a lot of people; they're not there to settle an argument or to have their mind changed, they're there for the heated discussions.
'twas ever thus - some people just like arguing. Give them an amplifier and they'll never stop. Usenet was the same, back in the day, so its nothing new.
I would recognize that as just another form of bad faith communication. If you’re not in a debate to listen, learn and see things from another perspective you are just in it for emotional reasons (“I want to be right”,”Look how cool I am”,”My way or the highway”, etc)
It goes far beyond twitter culture. Even in daily conversation there are people who only open out port and close in port. One signal is that whenever you bring up a perspective (either in support/disagreement) this person gonna continue his speech and make the conversation expereince like attending a lecture.
Addressing your opponent position lets them pick what the topic is. They are picking a topic their position is strong at. Therefore addressing your opponent position in limited-attention setting (aka publicly) is simply a losing move.
For your own sanity, yeah I think so; online 'debates' only drain energy and attention if the other party is not acting in good faith.
That said, if you are playing, the winning move is not to play their games. Don't engage with their attempted straw man arguments, or end up in endless discussions about semantics. Some of the best debates I've seen / read were people not playing games and not reacting to bad faith arguments / tactics, but instead cleverly pointing out something else.
My online posting life got a lot less stressful once I realized that the world will be exactly the same if I neglect to rebut some twitter user's bad/uninformed point of view.
Maybe you have a ton more social clout than I do, though :P
Same here, although I just redefine winning to learning something new, seeing a different perspective or refining my own position. It's all about exchanging information.
I am not familiar with public debate. Before two persons start a public debate, is it a common assumption that you are going to hold your ground till the end, whatever the information provided by the opponent?
There is no flow of information and I could not see this form of acts as "communication" - it seems to be more like a kind of art/show/performance.
The goal of a public debate is to influence the perception of the many passive listeners, not the few other participants of the debate; There is extensive flow of information/communication, but it's simply not aimed towards the other participants of the debate.
So a key part of such debates becomes influencing or provoking others to talk about things that advance your cause and avoiding discussion of things that hurt it. E.g. if someone says "you eat babies" and you respond with extensive evidence that you don't, then that public debate becomes a debate about you being a baby-eater and not whatever you wanted to promote.
That's just it, neither side goes to Twitter for a good faith argument, they're there to vent and lash out, but they've already dismissed the other party.
I mean not always, but I do wonder if the posts that LOOK like they're in good faith are also misleading as such.
Best thing to do is to not spend the energy. Don't engage with anyone if they don't have an open mind or are acting in bad faith. If it's more neutral, you can always ask "What will it take you to change your mind?"; the answer of that will determine if it's worth spending energy on. And the answer to that could be done in bad faith as well - for example, if the other says "I will change my mind if I see a scientific paper disproving me", but then proceeds to not actually read any scientific paper sent to them, they were acting in bad faith all along.
Another point about social media - it’s structurally easier to say things (done with a single ‘re-tweet’ click to thousands of people) but increasingly difficult to listen (you still have only one thing you can focus), and even harder to carry on a two-way conversation because of this disparity. Even if everyone is well intended, it would be difficult if everyone is talking at the same time now mix in bad-faith actors and the situation becomes dire.
The purpose of such exchanges is not to communicate information to the other participant. It is to signal allegiance to one’s own side. This dynamic tends to drive people who already disagree further apart, and those who already agree, closer.
Hmm. I no longer log into Twitter, but I do browse it without being logged in[0]. At least with regard to Brexit (about which it seems the argument is still raging), pro and anti do seem to engage with each other, the problem is they reject each other’s evidence.
[0] The annoying popups you get when you scroll too far without being logged in, do at least prevent me from doom-scrolling
re: Brexit, the "argument" has been poisoned by high level bad actors who pay money to have people and bots go on Twitter to defend their point, who pay for advertising / propaganda campaigns, etc. That goes far beyond some bad faith actors on twitter.
This extends to a lot of politics these days. There are well-financed parties out there whose goal is to destabilize, mainly targeting the US and Europe but I'm sure it happens everywhere. These are the ones behind Trump getting elected, Brexit proceeding even though only 28% of eligible voters voted in favor of it, the referendum being bad for only having two options, and the referendum only being advisory, and countries like Hungary and Poland shifting hard to authoritarian right, breaking with the separation of state and justice.
These forces have the destabilization of post-ww2 unions in mind on the one hand, and people focusing on each other internally instead of internationally on the other. Think things like JK Rowling's trolling, Trump coming out with something that all of twitter and the media pounce on, Reddit brigades.
>The annoying popups you get when you scroll too far without being logged in, do at least prevent me from doom-scrolling
I feel the same way! When they come up, my reaction is "nice"+cmd-w. Thanks, twitter!
To your response: I mean, there are some curious people on twitter. Curious people don't engage in the problematic dynamics outlied in the article, so some exchange of information happens there. That's clearly not representative of the bigger picture though, simply because the most people can't afford curiosity, courtesy of their cognitive functions (if you subscribe to Jungs model) and/or their position in maslows pyramid.
> many still assert that it is actually unethical to engage "the other side" in good faith.
Not everybody on "the other side" is communicating in bad faith, but some are. (Same with "your own side".) When someone is communicating in bad faith, I don't think it's "unethical" to engage them in good faith, I think it's foolhardy.
Don't feed the trolls. For dog's sake don't assume you can change the trolls.
One of the HN guidelines is "assume good faith". But many arguments presented here are made in bad faith. There are certain topics which in my view, cannot be intelligently discussed on HN because you are not allowed to assume bad faith.
What's missing from this article is how to protect yourself from bad faith actors.
(I've deliberately written this so that it could apply to "either side". Take that as an attempt to engage in good faith.)
You just don't engage with them, or engage selectively. If someone wants to engage in bad faith, you politely end the discussion, and introduce distance into the relationship. You're not required to provide any explanation or attempt at rehabilitation, but I find that most people aren't operating in bad faith 100% of the time -- they have trigger topics which are emotionally charged and will put them into that mode. So you can first avoid those topics, and if they keep bringing those topics up, eventually you avoid them.
None of this is a silver bullet fix for the overall problem threatening society, but I doubt there is one, the only solution is for enough people to figure this out and start insisting on a better form of discourse in their own sphere of influence.
The pollution of the public square in recent years has prompted me to put more energy into actively managing my personal network, where I can maintain standards. Participating in social media is like fishing in a polluted river. You might find a good fish, reel them in, and transfer them to your pond. But usually you won't, and overall the ROI of this stuff is pretty low. (In places where it has declined the most, like Facebook, the platform's user engagement is declining too.)
> What's missing from this article is how to protect yourself from bad faith actors.
I think that's because, at the level of society at large, nobody knows how to do that. That's the unsolved problem the article is describing.
At an individual level, you protect yourself from bad faith actors by refusing to interact with them once you become convinced that they're bad faith actors. But at the level of society, many of the bad faith actors are in positions where their actions have large scale consequences that will affect you whether you like it or not. So the individual solution doesn't work for that case.
When someone posts completely wrong interpretations of events, a world view totally opposite reality and incompatible with the one you experience it’s really hard to think someone can actually be posting in good faith. And it’s not a case of blue dress gold dress sense type perception difference.
Yet there’s a good chunk of people posting incompatible realities, do you ever think that maybe it’s not them living in a mistaken reality but yours that are wrong. How does one test ones own views to be certain?
Do they ever wonder the same thing? If they aren’t posting in bad faith then surely they must wonder the same about you or I. How does one verify and test ones reality.
( you, I and they are all used in the general sense)
Most often when I perceive people on "my own side" as engaging in bad faith I sense they've made an "ends justify the means" calculation. I sense that they feel like they are deploying sketchy arguments in service of a greater truth.
I assume that it's the same for "the other side".
There are others who are truly at odds with reality (in fact that's more common), but they don't have the same vibe.
The short answer is, you can't. At least not about anything that you can't test for yourself by personal experience.
The longer answer is to ask why you care about whatever particular aspect of "reality" you are thinking about testing. What difference would it make to what you choose to do, if reality were one way rather than another? If the answer is that it would make no difference, then the correct thing to do is to not care how reality is in that respect. Have no opinion at all. (There's an old engineer's joke about running tests. Before you run a test, ask yourself two questions: What will I do if the test passes? What will I do if the test fails? If both answers are the same, don't bother doing the test.)
The problem is that our minds did not evolve to be comfortable with having no opinion about something. Our minds evolved to seek answers, not to leave questions hanging. That probably made sense in the hunter-gatherer environment in which we originally evolved, but it doesn't make sense in our world now. There are simply too many questions, too much information, and too little time for anyone to check it all, and there are no "trusted" sources of information we can turn to to just tell us the answers. But it's very difficult to accept having unanswered questions; our minds keep sending us alarm signals even though we might have convinced ourselves intellectually that we should leave those questions unanswered. So many people end up accepting some answer even if it's wrong, and even if the answer makes no difference to anything they actually do.
Your going to hate my answer because it makes the problem worse.
For about two weeks I was convinced my new roommate was a hallucination and I'd finally snapped. There were a number of uncanny cases where he knew the same incredibly obscure trivia and references that I knew. Things like "trap remixes of musicians that sold their soul". That's too specific to write off as just similar interests by men in a similar demographic. There were also a number of uncanny instances of not knowing the same exact things I didn't know. I had never seen him outside of the apartment. We had no mutual friends. We were both in the same unusual living arrangement, permanent temporaries at an Airbnb partially bartering code / home automation work as barter for rent. At some point the topic of eye color came up, and someone pointed out how all of us in the room have green eyes, and how that is the least common eye color and 3 of us is very statistically unlikely. Eventually I had to ask myself which is more probable, there really are two people with all these characteristics in common that ended up at the same place by coincidence, or I'm having a schizophrenic break and this is my delusion? My possibly imaginary friend had mentioned that he lived in Russia through the first grade and speaks Russian at a first grade level. I do not speak Russian. So I ask him to teach me some Russian grammar. He agrees but then changes the topic. I ask him to teach me some Russian. He says sure but avoids the question again. I ask him to teach me a bit of Russian. He agrees and evades again. At this point I am having some very serious doubts about my grip on reality.
Eventually we do meet other people from each other's circles. After a while there's been enough mutual third parties acknowledging both of us, that either a very large cast of characters are my delusion or this man is real. I can never actually prove one way or the other, but the scales are now tipped towards real by all the people standing on them.
And so we get to the answer to your question. "Reality is shared consensus." There's a shared consensus that my roommate was real, and that consensus may as well be reality because I can't distinguish it from the case where everyone has the same delusion.
Of course reality isn't the shared consensus per se. Reality is not subject to a referendum. However, shared consensus is the multimeter we use to read reality. Where is the difference between a 9 volt battery and "if I touch the proved to the terminal it reads 9 volts"? There isn't one.
In your example, my definition of "reality is shared consensus" becomes a big problem. If there are two groups with their own consensus then those are two realities. You are free to believe anything and everything is true right up to the point of fatally erroneous belief. For things where the consequences of being wrong are not so sure, there is nothing forcing a consensus around "objective reality".
Niels Bohr allegedly had a horse shoe in his office. When asked he said it was for good luck. One audacious visitor asked "do you really believe that?" He replies "no, but they say it works even if you don't believe in it." This was cheeky of Bohr. Plenty of people don't believe in quantum mechanics, but they say it works anyway. If someone truly insists on believing magic horse shoe theory and rejecting quantum mechanics, there is nothing that will force them to acquiesce to our objectively correct answer.
I think this is the hard part. How do you engage in good faith when everyone else seems to be engaging in bad faith tactics? How can you be open to changing your mind when no one else is open to changing theirs? Seems like you immediately lose every time.
I believe strongly in these good faith tactics, and I use them to engage with people I vehemently disagree with. Because of this I have a deeper understanding of them than many of my peers on the other side. But understanding doesn’t help the situation. The overall conversation continues to deteriorate year after year.
I think this page is a great definition of what is happening, but a poor prescription of what to do about it.
Besides really not liking the good/bad faith categorization as I described in another comment, another thing I think this article misses is the personal benefit of communicating more openly with someone else. I feel much more relaxed and proud when I open up and tell someone what I'm feeling and why I think I believe what I do than when I insult them for their beliefs. It may not "win" the argument and it may not even get them to open up, but it gets me to open up and I have seen so many benefits to that, even if the other person doesn't "play" with me.
> I think this page is a great definition of what is happening, but a poor prescription of what to do about it.
I strongly strongly agree. Notice how even in this, I'm not saying "you are 100% right", I'm still open to changing my perspective, and yes maybe partially it's because I find that even comments like this land better with the recipient when I express my perspective rather than assert a global truth, but mostly I feel much better saying it this way.
Anyway, I could talk about this stuff for days, it's what I do for work, teaching myself and others how to communicate to better resolve such conflict. Doesn't meant I'm "right" just means I spend a lotttt of time thinking about this stuff.
> Anyway, I could talk about this stuff for days, it's what I do for work, teaching myself and others how to communicate to better resolve such conflict.
How do you approach conflict resulting from bad faith interaction? How do you deescalate such conflict?
I find one of the most effective ways has been for me to try to feel closer to them first. I think a lot of conflict leads into attacks, such as blame, guilt tripping, rejection, etc, and so I practice replying to such attacks in a way where I might feel closer to them after than when I started. To get back on the same team, per say. It doesn't mean they will, but I've found that if at least think they're on my team, then I'm more likely to engage with them openly and they may come around to do the same.
I practice three main steps: 1) tell the truth about how I'm actually feeling 2) tell them how I imagine they might be feeling, and 3) say one thing to connect with love. If I do the first two steps well, then the third comes more easily.
There are other tactics, such as separating behavior from person: "I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at what you said, and I'm telling you because I care about you." Or really expressing uncertainty: "I don't know what to do anymore" (as long as I genuinely don't know what to do)
I'd say overall the goal is for me to feel closer to them, for me to resolve my conflict with them, and then maybe they'll resolve their side as well, but not required.
Oh it definitely was intentional and I'm grateful you pointed this out. I had no idea I had been using it wrong, probably most of my life. Thank you :-)
In looking more at the definition, I don't even know if it makes sense in that sentence even if I did spell it right lol.
The problem with "Don't feed the trolls" is that no matter what you do, the trolls never stop eating.
The assumption that trolls are only motivated by a desire for attention and that, if ignored, they will simply go away like frustrated children in massively naive. Trolls are networked and sponsored by states now. They're weaponized. They'll find your address and harass your family. They'll complain about you to your employer. They'll send SWAT teams to your door. And they know that the internet is designed in such a way that as long as they keep spreading their nonsense they'll win by default. A lie can travel around the world twice before the truth laces up its boots, as whomever said.
That rule was fine when the internet was nothing but nerds LARPing on USENET and there were no stakes to anything but personal ego, but it isn't enough anymore. The internet is real life now.
That's a very small minority of trolls. Most of them are just regular immature and uninformed people who have been taught by the internet to interact in bad faith.
So true. I assume it's because modern social media is monetized so much more, so the incentive is to encourage any and all engagement, including troll feeding.
I think the key thing here is that the question is not about changing a single person who acts in bad faith. Indeed that may be impossible. How you act may not have any affect on the specific person you’re engaging with, but it will have a (likely very small) affect on the community as a whole. Engage in good faith towards all and others may slowly start to act similarly. Engaged in bad faith and you may encourage others in the community to act the same way.
Another important thing: you may identify 98% of bad faith actors correctly, but that’s still 2% of people acting in good faith that you’ll polarize against your cause.
I find myself really inspired by the work The Consilience Project and a few other people are putting out about sensemaking, consensus building, and maybe generally empathy.
I've started to feel that it might be my answer to "The Hamming Question." [0]
I'm a burnt out software engineer. Do you have any advice on careers to explore to work on the above societal issue?
[0]: > Mathematician Richard Hamming used to ask scientists in other fields "What are the most important problems in your field?" partly so he could troll them by asking "Why aren't you working on them?" and partly because getting asked this question is really useful for focusing people's attention on what matters.
I think that most social media is increasing the power of bad faith compared to good faith actors.
Normal perspective versus an extreme perspective then I fear that the more normal perspective people often has a more diverse situation with many other sources and influences.
A less extreme person arguing in good faith probably has many other things in his/her life to worry about, like children/parents/work/neighbours etc.
While bad faith actors often have much less distractions, and can more easily afford to just keep the point going. I think a bad faith actor will relative easy force out more moderate/normal people out of the forum or conversation thread.
Why keep going, if you got a family and work and .. to take cary about, and arguing in good faith will be hard to get anywhere good ?
I think this give a much bigger loudspeaker to people with more extrem views, and help shut up people with more moderate positions.
I suspect the the setup of social media and the tools they use, and the tools within forums influence this.
Engagement is probably increased if such extreme versus moderate is argued, and I think the more extreme position win is likely increasing income for social media.
One of the most important parts of the article is a footnote:
NOTE: All signs of good faith communication can be "faked" in bad faith.
Basically, in modern online mob communication, the winning side defines what "good faith" and "bad faith" are. The winning side defines a vague code of conduct, cloaks themselves in "goodness" and then openly uses the "bad faith" slander against anyone who disagrees on any issue (even purely technical ones).
I have sometimes seen rules that don't try to spell out every specific,
because most civil conversations don't require knowing exactly where the line is between good behavior and bad,
so you can get riiight up to it, then say in bad faith,
"but I was obeying the rules!"
Rather, I consider vaguer rules like "don't be a jerk" to be a feature, and one can use context clues to see what the community considers jerkiness
> Both ends of the political spectrum (the far left and the far right) express this view. Both sides believe that “the other side” simply can’t be trusted and therefore cannot be engaged in good faith. To do so would be to fall into a trap, serving only to validate the dangerous views of groups known to be acting in bad faith.
This is what I'm most tired of. Anytime you try to point this out one of these two groups will respond with, "both sides, both sides" like some edgy teenager sitting at the lunch table looking for a confirmatory laugh from their friends. People love this world that's developed to some degree; that's what the real uphill battle is.
It's interesting that you're making a both-sides argument while complaining about people making both-sides arguments. I mostly hear "both sides, both sides" coming from one side in particular. The other side just blames that one side.
I'm complaining about people who refuse to deal with the fact that these two groups cannot meet in the middle on a single thing. Everything is life and death, or some dramatic replay of a day time soap.
I'm not complaining about people making both sides arguments.
Yes, arguing in good faith is good but how do you deal with people who have no interest in arguing in good faith? I encounter this all the time and I just choose to stop engaging.
i've taken a clue from Jessica Livingston. she responded once to bad faith communicators by saying (not a quote): "i'm not inclined to engage with people who are purposefully trying to misunderstand me."
it both disengages you from the situation while also calling out the bad faith actors.
> how do you deal with people who have no interest in arguing in good faith?
The choices critically depend upon context:
1. Is the dispute one-to-one, or is there an audience? With skill, you may be able to turn the opinion of a reasonable audience against your bad-faith interlocutor.
2. Is disengaging a practical option, or are you compelled to continue the discussion under threat of yet more unpleasant consequences?
So, I'd say that's 2*2=4 "game" scenarios, each fundamentally distinct.
Really good article. Succinctly articulates and categorizes types of online social interactions I've observed over the past decade. I'm guilty of occasionally engaging bad faith communications myself. I'm trying to do better. For a while now I've felt this uneasiness that the escalating social discord we've been seeing over the past ~5 years could have disastrous consequences. I'm starting to think in terms of urgency, this year-over-year escalation of social discord needs to be addressed even before climate change.
This was a great article. A practical question came to mind while reading it: Now that bad-faith communication has become normalized, does it makes sense to keep bringing good-faith communication to a bad-faith communication fight?
Obviously it would be ideal to model the behavior that we'd like to see in the world, but what if this toothpaste can't be put back into the tube? Brandolini's Law suggests that this might be a cultural "innovation" akin to the invention of gunpowder.
The article implies that there are productive ways to engage a bad-faith interlocutor in good faith. It's a shame it doesn't go into any details about what that looks like.
Yeah, productive ways exist, but is that enough? Again, thinking of Brandolini's Law, it would need to be an order of magnitive more productive than before in order to reach parity.
I'm sure that to someone carrying a knife for protection also thinks it "makes sense" — and I'm sure it actually does in some contexts. In a gunfight, however, does it still?
Can someone point me to an example of a society where good faith communication has dominated? This article paints a picture that the issue is something new, but I don't know any human society where bad faith communication was not a norm. Differences are mainly related to power structures and who holds the Power to communicate. Besides, this is really a dualist perspective to communication. What if most communication is neither good faith or bad faith, but something in between?
Examples I would use would be sports teams, construction teams, hunting groups, military units, sailing crews, fraternal organizations, and other environents that apprehend consequences from playing games. These are environments where competence and integrity are moral virtues, and misrepresentation has real consequences.
Good faith communication is not the norm in bureaucracies, institutions, large cities, and other environments where there are no significant or collective consequences to being misleading.
By society I meant civilizations, such as ancient Greece. I think I articulated it poorly.
I believe that good faith communication dominates in ingroup discussion. Trust matters when you discuss with peers whose approval matters to you. Bad faith communication dominates in outgroup discussion. Trust is not important as you really don't care about the "others".
I'd just like to take a moment to express my appreciation for the discussion on this site. I believe there is a better ratio of good-faith to bad-faith communication here than on any other public forum where everyone is free to participate.
Is it just me, or are all of the listed bad faith communication mannerisms rife in government and the legal profession? I no longer trust the rule of law, because everyone involved acts in bad faith. From police, lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats… my experience has shown that are all untrustworthy in anything they say. The fish rots from the head.
I really wonder how much of it relates to how those professions often prohibit or strongly discourage 1st-person expression and encourage 2nd-person or 3rd-person. For example, police don't often say how they individually are feeling, often they refer to law and to the suspect and other parties. Politicians tend to talk about what their constituents want ("Americans want this! Americans hate that!") more than saying how they themselves feel and what they want.
So I wonder how much of the appearance of bad faith is because the people won't or aren't sometimes allowed to even share their personal perspective and experience.
"Bad Faith Communication: discourse that is intended to achieve behavioral outcomes (including consensus, agreement, "likes") irrespective of achieving true mutual understanding"
I would argue that nearly all advertisements fit this description. The field of advertising has achieved a massive technological leap over the past few decades.
Or religions, traditions, cultures, political slogans and reductionisms of apply sorts. Essentially, anything that fits within the realm of the Noble Lie.
This article is great at explaining many differences between good and bad faith communication, but repeatedly asserts that bad communication = wars, violence, etc while providing no proof or argument to support that claim.
In reality, we are in a world where there is absolutely 0 reason to be arguing in good faith for anything you truly care about. The most effective way you convince people of something is using all of the bad faith tactics listed here - you get no bonus points from the audience for avoiding these, since a very small amount of people are willing to say something about it, and by avoiding these tactics you are just letting your opponents use them to gain an upper hand.
If there is something you truly care about, something that you think swaying general opinion could make a real difference in your life, arguing in "good faith" is foolish.
It's not foolish. Aldous Huxley explained why in his Ends and Means, more than eighty years ago.
Ends don't justify means. On the contrary, if the only way to achieve some end are nefarious means, it's a very strong signal that the end itself is not as desirable as it seems.
Most times, people sell their souls only to find later that they can't get what they paid for.
Game theory 101. You want to build a good/better world? Then don't be shit. Don't contribute to shit dynamics. Build a sustainable culture where people listen to each other. I'll never get how this isn't ingrained to reasonable people from the get-go
Facebook is suffering a slow death from burning up all it's good will on bad faith money grabs. The news feed could still be the place where people discuss their lives, but close to zero people trust facebook anymore.
I'm not saying that is how it should be. I'm saying that's how it is. You earn no sympathy from the audience by only using logic and reason - in order to make change in the world, you must additionally use fallacies, diversions, personal attacks, false equivalencies, and every other trick in the book. If you refuse to use these, you will lose to those who do, every single time. It does not matter how well thought out, reasonable, logical, or correct your argument is if you can't convince anyone.
You think I'm playing any side? Of what argument exactly? I'm just telling people how the world is working. I don't really care what you think of me in particular lmao
I looked through some of your comments and I agree with the sentiments expressed in many of them. I had actually already +1'd a small handful of them. I do have to wonder what you actually believe though since, in your pragmatism you have already stated a maxim to sacrifice truth/honesty for power. Regardless of which side(s) you are actually on, you are playing yourself if you are going to live by this model of reality and doubly so if you then go on to openly espouse it. In my absolutist mentality, it is better to be 100% honest, for the sake of the truth, because in it you can prove your trustworthiness to somebody and have a real connection at least with them, even if the whole rest of the world totally sucks. Even if your enemies do cut you down one day through grimy means, you still at least lived some of your life in truth. That's a life worth living. A life spent consciously engaging in dirty tactics is not.
You have said you don't care what I think, but I have little certitude to believe you really mean that, so I will say it; I think you are totally lost until you back up and reconsider this line of reasoning.
Neither world war was caused by bad faith communication nor could have been resolved by any form of communication. This is a hopelessly naive take.
Yes, in times of war the truth and with it good faith communication is one of the first things to go. This is a symptom, not a cause of war.
The view that every conflict can be solved by good faith communication in a for both sides acceptable manner is insane.
If one side wants to murder all people with a certain intrinsic attribute be it race, sexual orientation or whatever and the other side does not want to be murdered, there is no compromise to be made. The people of the first group will never engage in good faith with the later group that they view as subhuman. Any attempt to establish good faith communication will only HURT the later group.
Another lesson from Munich etc. is that it might be a good idea to go to violence pre-emptively when it becomes clear someone is communicating in bad faith.
What an interesting and thoughtful article. However we will not restore good-faith communication in public spaces. It’s a 1-way process. This is why the future will be (I think) smaller and more selective communities where good-faith discourse can occur between a select sub-set of people. Probably the sort of people who do not feel threatened intellectually or otherwise in indulging in such an exchange. You are not going to educate or persuade “the mass” to change their approach now.
If you disagree with me then you are evil and on the wrong side of history and I will summon a mob against you. ;-)
No I think that’s the dangerous part. It used to be hard to hold radical fringe opinions. If you openly identified as a Klansman you would likely get shunned in most communities. Your exchange of social power for your idiotic beliefs was made open and clear.
Now it’s very easy to find a large safe space to discuss these beliefs and organize without social ridicule. And by doing so, it becomes easier for others to join in.
We have lost the power of the shun. Cancelling is the awkward and unwieldy big brother version. It’s not nearly as effective.
Is "bad faith communication" always in bad faith (ie, socially undesirable)? Some people are just wrong because they are talking out of their arse, and need to be put in their place.
Depends how they are talking out of their arse, are they open to new ideas? The other side, is the dialog more to put them in their place, or more to illuminate the depths of their arse?
The bad faith is more about how the communication is done and the end goals
Generally a good article, but unfortunately it falls into the political trap.
> Both ends of the political spectrum (the far left and the far right) express this view. Both sides believe that “the other side” simply can’t be trusted and therefore cannot be engaged in good faith.
I find it unfortunate that they blame this behaviour only on the extremes, because it is prevalent amongst moderates who often even state "you can't discuss/negotiate with extremists" and engage in bad faith communications towards the extremes.
I thoroughly enjoyed this article, it was a bit of a breath of fresh air.
Some quotes that resonated:
> There should be no illusion: today’s culture war cannot be won by any side.
> Good faith communication is both a complex skill and a value commitment that shapes personal identity. In other words: doing it is sufficiently difficult that getting good at it will change the kind of person that you are.
> Delicately transforming a situation of escalating bad faith requires the slow establishment of previously unrecognized shared interests, often on issues as basic as self-preservation. The goal in most cases is not agreement—that would be naive—the goal is simply to preserve the possibility of communication itself.
Also learned the term "steelmanning," which seems to be pretty much identical to the hacker news guideline:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
This is an extremely dangerous (and quite frankly stupid) way of thinking. Discourse is discourse, regardless of how you feel about it. When people feel as though "bad" faith discourse needs to be controlled through curation, censorship, or through some other means, you end up with idiots like Twitters Parag Agrawal saying things like "Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation." https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/18/1012066/emtech-s...
The "endgame" of "bad faith" communication is the endgame of your freedom of speech and expression. I agree that people ought to be more compassionate and open-minded, both on the internet and in real life, but I am in no position to control what another person thinks or says, and I'm certainly not in a position to make the judgement of what "good" or "bad" faith discourse is. No one is.
This entire article is buzzword trash, using terminology such as "post-truth" and statements such as "Seeking to understand others and communicate honestly is an essential democratic virtue".
Yes, all these "bad faiths" and "good faiths" just add confusion. As is using the word "communication" for unidirectional propagation of information.
The article should go deeper with that MAD line of thought. A step forward is a strategic arms limitation treaty, where all the sides agree to ban the most effective forms of propagation.
The goal would be to put back the steer of our ship into the water, bit by bit.
The problem isn’t the prominence of bad faith communication. That’s a symptom. Bad faith communicating happens because one party becomes cornered when their standpoint is indefensible, and they know it.
Once one side renounces good faith communication, the other sees no point in maintaining communication in good faith, so they throw it away too. So the problem isn’t communicating in bad faith. By the time you’ve gotten there, the battle for good faith communication was already lost.
The problem is pride, plain and simple. If people could detach themselves from their views and not make being wrong anything more than that, then we could once again open the door to good faith communication.
There's no way to win an argument anymore because the goalposts don't even exist anymore. All of the groups that exist have decided to remove them so that instead of winning small battles, they win the entire narrative by removing all goalposts (the thing that locks some conversation or argument inside some constraint). Without those constraints there's literally no argument to be had. At that point people just talk past each other so all that's really left in America is if your local radio stations tend to be more left or right. And whether you have Fox or CNN on your TV.
Propaganda and bad faith has always been normalized, it is not new, read Edward Bernays' Propaganda.
Human nature is that of a predator. Powerful get advantage of the weak, and always has been.
Take for example the USA, it was created by the "expansion" to the West, "expansion" meaning taking ownership of the land others inhabited, and killing them. That needed a propaganda machine to justify it, Manifest destiny.
There were two parties, one won, the other lost. We are not mentioning slavery.
When the US could take advantage of the remains of the Spanish Empire, they did, there was a man called Pulitzer that became rich and famous inventing lies like "remember the Maine"(probably a false flag attack) in order to take control of their colonies and colonize it themselves.
Germans and French tried to do the same. England, Russia, Turkey and Spain did that before, because it is human nature.
Pulitzer never wrote about the US extermination of Spanish teachers in Philippines for example, like modern Media did not inform about the abuses in US created wars like Libya, Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan.
Media owners today have lots of business to do, they need the masses to support them.
Most democrats were ok calling Trump Putin's puppy with no proof(because they hated the guy and benefited from removing a President using lies if necessary) and then Trump did the same thing with them(accusing them without proof of stealing the elections).
The first thing you have to do in order to be free is to read, and not see the world divided in good and bad guys, because if you do you always will consider yourself in the good guys, even when you are the bad side. Then there will be no difference between you and the rest.
If you want to see some great examples of politicians engaging in good faith communication, check out the series "The Constitution: That Delicate Balance" that Annenberg put out in 1984.
I wish they'd repeat it with new participants. I'm not sure which politicians I can imagine taking part though. It does seem like we've declined from the level of discourse shown there.
Like it or not, believe it or not, this is true of all actors. (In the USA) it's not just Team Red, or Team Blue. Both have become masters of the slight of information hand (i.e., propaganda).
If you choose to go binary and take sides then at least try to avoid hyprocricy and hold your side to the same standards you hold the other.
At the moment, bad faith comms and hyprocricy go hand in hand.
I see a dynamic on Twitter a lot where a person who is probably aligned with the retweeter is thrown under the bus to demonstrate the purity of the retweeter. The retweeted person is usually misrepresented or uncharitable interpreted.
Why so much friendly fire? It is hard to imagine we can truly heal discourse across a political divide when we cannot even do nice to our neighbors on the spectrum.
I think the issue is trying to have individualism, and team work at the same time.
Good performance is team effort, bad performance is 100% individual. Seems to create incentives similar to an ultimatum game. If you work together you get nothing, the only strategy that will serve your own interest, is to step on other people.
In my opinion, the main issues with bad faith versus good faith communication is that the later is only used within what speakers consider their tribe.
Tribalism (and thus trust) is the deeper issue, and is unfortunately deeply rooted in human nature.
I think that the problems arising with tribalism can be seen as a drawback to diversity.
I think the issue is that many people are emotionally invested in not understanding things, in other words you assume people want to understand things. In my experience there is a significant portion of the population who doesn't (and that crosses through all social and political spectra).
IME, it's because a.) it requires one to first admit one doesn't understand something (and hubris prevents this in some people) and b.) learning something requires putting forth the mental effort to understand it. The same reason people don't like reading source code they didn't write: it's hard, and you have to try.
And to a degree and in some contexts (particularly work/in a company), c.) under too much time pressure to take the time to understand. (I.e., too little time is available to them; the dysfunction is higher up the ladder…)
I suspect engaging in bad faith communication goes along with not being too interested in understanding things. These tactics seems to say "Your perspective is unworthy of consideration. I want to ridicule or destroy it."
> Both ends of the political spectrum (the far left and the far right) express this view.
I'd strike this phrase, because it's far from clear what the "far left" is. Is it wealthy Silicon Valley liberals with radical ideas about gender? Or is it for instance the trotskyist World Socialist Web Site, which buy Russian false flag conspiracy claims but are free speech absolutists? And "far right", are we talking about Ayn Rand fans, neo-traditionalist catholic populists like JD Vance etc, or neonazi militias?
Last of all, is the political center necessarily more honest or devoted to good faith public debate? Not that I can see. Their strategies can be different, since they can get away with just never acknowledging disagreement, which makes little sense for small fringes, but there's nothing inherently honest or good-willed about centrism.
I thought this was a pretty good book despite the seeming brevity to it. Anyways to really expand for those who haven't read it, Dethmer talks about an internal mindset dial between judgementalness vs curiosity. There are other dials like victim vs agency, emotional acceptance vs denial, etc.
I appreciate you both bringing him up. I had forgotten about his work and may dig more into his book. I had learned of him from the Tim Ferriss podcast, perhaps this episode: https://tim.blog/2020/06/09/jim-dethmer-transcript/
Ah yes I remember that one. A few weeks later I believe one of his colleagues in Conscious Leadership Group goes on the show too and she brings up more details.
At this stage I just reject communication anyway, I am never going to reach some dumb compromise with conservatives, [homo,trans]-phobes, racists, oligarch supporters, climate change deniers etc. In my view they are morally, ethically, scientifically wrong so there is absolutely nothing constructive to even engage with. I don't think the fundamental problem is:
>wow if only you just were good faith and were able to engage with these people!
They are fundamentally opposed to everything I stand for. I don't think communication is possible. Maybe there are unaligned or uniformed people that are still to pick, but the only solution is actually building a better society, and one side winning.
I think the fundamental mistake this article makes is in assuming that bad-faith tactics are non-partisan. It's not as if fake news is coming from equally both sides of the spectrum. It's not as if there can be any equivocacy between Trump's administration and Biden's administration in terms of their willingness to lie. Right-wing media and left-wing media do not manipulate the truth to equivalent degrees. Science does not equally support liberal and conservative ideas about medicine and the environment.
I'm not saying that no elements of the left operate in bad faith, or that elements of the right do not operate in good faith. I'm saying that (as the saying goes) reality has a liberal bias, and the question is not "how do we fix the discourse," but rather "how do we fix what conservatives have deliberately done to the discourse."
There's also the advent of the political dogwhistle, which is a pretty effective form of doublespeak invented by the right to court fiscal conservatives and racists simultaneously [1], that's done tons of damage to discourse. Part of the reason many on the left are trigger-happy with accusations that seem to come from nowhere is because Trump mainstreamed far right dogwhistling into American politics.
Steelmanning is a bad idea that needs to go away. It’s pretty condescending to say “your argument was bad I fixed it for you”. It’s also confusing when someone tries to improve an argument before responding to it. Lastly, steelmanning done poorly changes an argument into something that’s easier to respond to without necessarily improving it. It might be a good concept for academic debates in ivory towers. In general, it’s confusing and wildly impractical.
There's a risk that steel-manning can veer into condescension, but the real goal is to find a version of an argument that all parties agree represents it accurately and fairly.
(As opposed to wasting time on superficial contradictions, reductio ad absurdum variations, and other hazards of bad faith conflicts.)
I'd argue that if one side is using bad faith techniques and creating a bad faith conflict, no amount of steel manning is going to make the debate into a good debate. You need good faith efforts from all sides to have a good result. Nothing can replace this.
Maybe the underlying reason is that there is no more common interest between groups that fight each other? That is, no more "society" as something common, most importantly, right-wing electorate can't benefit from what can benefit left-wing electorate, and vice versa? Indeed, the discourse has become quite ugly, but maybe the reason is not the form, but the substance: that it's no longer about arguing about what's better for society as a whole, but winning over the other side to achieve what's good for "us", by defeating the interest of "them".
I believe this is the case, and core reason is that we are increasingly in the slow-growth world. Most people will not benefit greatly from overall progress of economy in their lifetime, just because it is now too slow. It's more and more about taking over something for "us" from "them" as opposed to "making the pie bigger".
Same is the reason for rise of dictatorship. In a slow-growth world, there is no way a democratic government or leader can achieve any tangible goals in one electoral cycle. So they have to resort to bullshit of one sort or the other - nothing which is not a deliberate lie, can be attractive enough to their voters. Only a lifelong dictatorship can hope to get things done.
One hope is that once the renewable energy takes over from the fossil fuels and we start seeing our worldwide energy base grow exponentially again the way it did through mid-1970s, quicker growth will return and things will gradually fix themselves.
Trolling is absolutely a form of bad faith communication. However, you needn't look far on twitter to find that trolls are pretty high hanging fruit compared to ideological flamewars perpetuated by non-trolls fighting to score points for their respective ideological teams.
Upon further reflection, I realize that there are many "true believers" of one sort or another who aren't trolling but whose minds are completely closed and aren't looking for good faith dialogue but to proselytize their belief or attack those of their opponents.
Trolling often involves bad faith communication, but bad faith communication isn't necessarily trolling. Consider politicians, salespeople, and advertisers who are willing to convince by any means possible.
"Plain old trolling" in the traditional sense (e.g. back with newsgroups) is seeking to provoke an emotional reaction, but without regard to the truth of falsity of the statement, and not necessarily with any grander agenda.
It was only later that it came to be (mis?)applied toward organized disinformation campaigns.
Because "bad faith communication" is about the talking head on the TV sowing doubt in your mind on complex issues. It is oil company shills telling you that climate change is not man made and it is Malthusian environmental activist that it is impossible to get safe and carbonfree energy from nuclear. Neither of these are communicating with you in good faith because they have an agenda.
By strict definition it is bad faith because the troll's goal is agnostic to the position advertised and the only real intention is to provoke people.
However I think that like art, trolls can use a lie to tell the truth. My preferred example is James Randi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi, see also the documentary An Honest Liar). You might say that his goal was not to provoke a reaction, but given the repeated humiliations of the conman he exposed I beg to differ.
Personally I like to tell the exact opposite of the truth that nobody knows or most people ignore but would make them change their mind. For instance, it is known vaccines are used to only prevent hospitalizations.
The root problem is: the 90% of people who are not inherently driven by curiosity want to contribute/validate their viewpoint/seek peer confirmation.
This, left alone, leads to nothing good, which is why we came up with this funny concept of "culture".
But culture is dead, courtesy of
* the social-laissez-faire-boogaloo of the US' concept of "total freedom"
* the decay of stability-providing social structures
* existential dread/people trapped in the lower levels of Maslows pyramid
Imagine how smart the smartest people out of one million are. Pretty smart, huh? We have 7000 of them, and they have lots of things to say, but nobody gives a fuck, because people don't actually seek to understand. They seek validation, righteousness and stability. And you don't have to be the smartest out of a million to be worth listening to, but the simple fact that our "culture" (which is decayed to complete archaic groupthink) sets up the wrong reward incentives should paint a clear picture and be accessible to understand for everyone. Its not that stupid people get famous, its that people who are not curious get famous. That is where we fail.
The answer to this must be culture, again. But this time one that matches the world we've built since the last one collapsed, namely one that provides the stability people seek across the board. When the framework for that stability was religion, critically relevant people could not find social stability when they questioned god. That's why religion as a framework sucks, it doesn't capture the entire group.
The solution is easy: curiosity. Curious people are worth listening to, everyone else is not. This is something we have to cement in every piece of art and work we create. Literally: show the people who's minds are trapped in a simpler place their limits, very gently, and offer salvation: man, there are lots of intelligent people out there who try to make the world a better place. You don't have to understand it all, and you wont anyway, so don't stress yourself. We can do this, together. This, roughly, is the rhetoric picture we'll have to paint over the last decades. That, and only that, fixes the problem at its root.
>Curious people are worth listening to, everyone else is not
Exhibit B:
>The answer to this must be culture
>The solution is easy: curiosity.
It's an interesting model, but there's a serious contradiction here. You're claiming curiosity to be the 1-to-1 justification for being given an audience, yet making dogmatic assertions and setting out a viewpoint-driven agenda - you are not curious about curiosity, you dive right into how to . Therefore there must be a value that makes a non-curious person with a viewpoint-driven agenda (in this case, you) worth listening to.
For brevity, the "90% of people who... want to contribute/validate their viewpoint/seek peer confirmation" can be more or less labelled "vainglorious".
I think you're right about vainglory leading to nothing good. But, the hope of enacting that "something good" that there should be instead is the real reason to listen to non-curious people. And most everyone hopes to enact "something good", so now we're back where we started, listening to ideologues, be they curious or not.
My suggestion is to modify the model by instead seeking to listen to people who are not vainglorious. I think finding people who aren't vainglorious to listen to, and finding out how to not be vainglorious myself is the right direction to point my curiosity.
We've trained society to believe they are bringing in some form of enlightenment and all who disagree with the orthodoxy portrayed by popular media are quite literally evil and held with contempt. We've banned, censored, demonetized and ostracized people who disagree by finding even the most minuscule lapses of political correctness and excommunicating them from the public sphere or our own personal communities. We are training the youth (children books to graduates) that politics and culture are black and white (sometimes quite literally...), that people are divided into oppressed vs oppressors, privileged vs victims, good vs evil, activists vs status quo, rich vs poor.
There is nothing you can do at this point on an individual level in 90% or more of interactions where you are in a political or social disagreement with someone using good faith communication without it being used to crucify you and be seen as naive, uninformed or apathetic. People have not arrived to their own opinions based on good faith communication or information, they have found themselves there through over socialization, indoctrination, bullying, media bombardment, and fear of not being part of the in-group that they are told are on the right side of history - and so they can only operate on that level of thought and "reasoning". Entitled "activists" and cultural busy bodies aren't going to suddenly find a viewpoint that has been deemed to them by authoritative figures (professors, celebrities, peer group majorities) as the views of an "SJW", "Nazis", "Fascists", "Rednecks", or "Libtards" as a suddenly viable option without suffering massive cognitive dissonance and you showing humility for/steelmanning their opinions will not change that, it will only further cement things for them if they are even listening and not just waiting for you to finish in order to pop the cork off their next manufactured talking point.
It has been quite instructive to watch what Russia has said and done about the war. Various tactics in their media, that once you think about them, are more common in every day use.
1. Euphenisms: "Tactical military operation" invent all kinds of word games that hide the true nature of actions committed.
2. Mirroring: Blaming the victim for doing the same thing you are already guilty of.
3. Hate speech: Saying you are a Nazi (or otherwise a bad person, insert any emotionally effective, hard to defend against bad word here) and therefore deserve to be murdered/silenced.
Which also makes me question which comes first: authoritarianism and oppression, or the collapse of speech to these kinds of low levels.
I like the part where the author mentions having heard “you can’t argue with Nazis!” and then just sort of wanders off into theoreticals about being polite or whatever.
I was really confused about what the author’s actual experience was like until I realized that this was published by some sort of think tank. This whole article is basically a big bongrippy, chin stroking hand-wave about the importance of Decorum.
Props to whoever got paid money to write this silly piece. Whoever is funding this stuff clearly has too much money to interface with reality and it’s a good thing that they’re (hopefully) being fleeced to the max by writers that are happy to churn out drivel
There is no room for a truce. To oversimplify it, liberal democracy was basically a 200 year armistice between liberals and conservatives. Now, both sides see the imminent prospect of either final defeat or final victory. The only thing that matters is winning. On this, both sides are right.
The liberal-conservative dichotomy is a modern invention that only came about sometime during the 60's. There have been various parties and coalitions within parties throughout American history.
I'm not sure about that. Polarization in the United States has certainly ebbed and flowed over time, but if you study history, there has been a rough liberal-conservative dichotomy in nearly every society I can think of, going back at least hundreds of years. There's a great podcast actually, Revolutions, by Mike Duncan - it devotes a season to each of several famous historical revolutions. Currently it's in the last season, on the Russian revolution, which is particularly interesting in the present day, as it plants the seeds for modern Russia. But given that these revolutions span centuries, it's really striking how many commonalities they have, and the echoes you can hear in modern discourse.
For example, liberals are generally agitating for greater democratic freedoms, or in non-democratic societies, at least freedom from oppression. Conservatives are, as the name suggests, generally dissatisfied with the pace of change, and in favor of maintaining current power structures. Also, revolutions are generally presaged by exactly the kind of breakdowns in communication described here. Increased polarization, unwillingness to give the 'other side' any kind of a political win, even if it's beneficial for everyone, etc.
So yeah, while I could see that digital communication might have been a catalyst for our current situation, for the most part this all looks very familiar. And as the article describes, the likely result doesn't look good.
There's also reactionaries who want to run the clock back - traditionally these would take the form of loyalists after a monarchy was already deposed, like the Bonapartists in France.
The battle isn't always being fought in interparty electoral competition. The left-wing project to replace all traditional hierarchy with radical egalitarianism has been in motion in Western society since at least the French Revolution, with some elements appearing in the American Revolution and Protestant Reformation. The right-wing project to preserve the traditional order has been around for longer, at least since the merchant classes threatened the power of the old aristocracy. This conflict has been sometimes dominated and drowned out by more particular, parochial, and pressing disagreements. The US, and to a lesser extent, England, through liberal democracy were able to contain the jacobin forces much more than societies on the continent were. But a 100 year streak of leftist victories has basically put them on the cusp of completely eradicating the old order. Even today, a conservative's mindset has little in common with the thoughts of a monarchist from the late 18th century. Those ways of thinking have been eradicated by political force. Some have tried to revive it, but it is just a faint echo, like trying to recreate a song from a critic's review of it.
What does winning mean for either side? The other side doesn't just cease to exist. Nor do the people in the middle our outside the dichotomy. Does it mean autocracy? And how will the prevent revolution? How does it prevent an ongoing, unwinnable civil war which fizzes out to another armistice after everyone is sick of not winning?
Opposition to homosexuality and racial integration did not disappear in America, but they substantially waned. Even the minority of people that privately hold opposite sentiments, they will not express them publicly for fear not just of public condemnation and private sanction but also legal liability.
Consider that in 2008, a majority of the country opposed gay marriage, but in 2022, a majority support and it is considered completely unacceptable to advocate for a return to the old order. That's what victory looks like. Consider too that in 1990, a majority of the country was still against interracial marriage. Today, those same people would probably deny they ever felt that way, maybe even convincing themselves of that lie. That's what winning looks like.
Today, a biological male can win women's sports competitions and a five year old can be recognized as transsexual. A robust majority of the country opposes it, but everyone outside of Republican electoral politics[1] is scared to put their face to any opposition to it. This is starting to look like final victory.
[1] And even then, many Republican governors have vetoed bills that would ban this.
FWIW, I agree that 4-5 year old transgender kids are something that strike most people as absurd. That is, unless they know some transgender people and talk to them about their experiences. I have a couple of close friends who are trans, and know several others (including a good friend of my son's in elementary school). All of them describing knowing their true gender with just as much certainty as you or I know ours from about age 4. Obviously that's just a second-hand anecdote, but it's enough for me to be confident that it is extremely common for trans people to experience strong gender dysphoria from essentially as soon as they become aware of the concept of their own gender.
There is also research that shows suicide rates for transgender people are far higher than the general population—except for those who receive acceptance for their gender identity from childhood, in which case the difference is drastically reduced. And that's not hard for me to believe. Try imagining yourself in that position. You're a young boy, but for some reason you're in a girl's body. You know that's not right, but no one believes you, and instead they pressure you to act the part of someone you're not, and imply (or outright state) that there's something wrong with you for feeling otherwise. That's got to be a tough life. Contrast that with the same initial condition: you're a boy in a girl's body. But instead your parents and other people you trust understand and tell you that's OK and there are lots of other people experiencing the same thing, and if you're confident you want to live as a boy (or vice-versa the whole thing, obviously) then of course you can do that and they'll help. Sounds a hell of a lot better to me.
I really appreciate the substantive comment. I disagree, but I don't think it's worth arguing about here. My point really doesn't have anything to do with the merits or demerits of young childhood gender transitions. Fact is, it's a position held by a minority, but the majority is powerless to do anything about it because they are absolutely terrified of the left's political power. They're afraid to even say something about it. Certain political groups are getting close to completely transcending the liberal democratic truce.
And I appreciate that, especially in the broader context of the article we're commenting on! I agree with your broader point that there are topics in our society where one might be ostracized for expressing or even exploring a view outside a certain consensus, even if it might be one held by many people. And obviously that does make good faith communication difficult. Of course some might say that certain views are so vile they shouldn't be given any consideration. Something like expressing overt racial slurs for instance. And I can see the argument that it's beneficial for society to shun those who express such things. But it can certainly be taken too far, and often is. And the effect is even more pronounced I think within a political coalition than across the spectrum, because there's even more pressure to conform to the consensus view.
I realize the gender transition thing was beside your main point; you just seemed like a reasonable person with a differing view who might be open to my perspective there. I wouldn't expect you to change your mind based on an anecdote from a random stranger, but I hope you'll keep it in mind. FWIW I'm more sympathetic to your other example: trans athletes are a difficult issue IMO. In general I wouldn't want transgender people to be deprived of any of the rights anyone else of the same gender would have. I think bathroom bans are ridiculous and cruel for instance. But in the context of sport, there is also a legitimate concern regarding fairness for other athletes. I honestly don't know what the best outcome is there, but I do think it's something reasonable people should be able to discuss without being vilified.
> All of them describing knowing their true gender with just as much certainty as you or I know ours from about age 4
Did you? I don’t recall “knowing” my truer gender from age 4. That’s something that I took years to grow into, and didn’t become a question at the fore of my mind until teenage years.
I meant as much as we know ours now, not at age 4. I don't recall what or whether I thought about gender at all at that age. But I don't remember ever really thinking about my gender except in the context of conversations around gender topics like this one. Presumably for cisgender folks there's not normally any motivation to do so, any more than you'd spend time specifically thinking about other aspects of your person. But I can see how one would be much more likely to think about it if the gender they experience doesn't match their physical body and how others perceive them. And I've spoken to enough people with very similar experiences that I have no reason to doubt them.
And I guess that's what I don't understand about those who find transgender kids implausible. From what I can tell, the vast majority of transgender people will tell you they became aware of it in early childhood. Why would they lie? I can't come up with a speculation that doesn't sound like an absurd straw man.
* "We" had a weak sense of our true gender at age 4
* "We" have a strong sense of our true gender now
* Transgender people had a strong sense of their true gender at age 4
> From what I can tell, the vast majority of transgender people will tell you they became aware of it in early childhood. Why would they lie? I can't come up with a speculation that doesn't sound like an absurd straw man.
I think it would strengthen your argument if everyone who had a strong sense of being transgender at age 4 maintained that sense into adulthood. I don't know how one would find that out though.
Ah, is that the main point of disagreement? People are thinking back to their own experience of gender at that age, and then expecting it to be the same for trans kids. I think, as I mentioned, a logical explanation for that is that cis people don't have any reason to think about it. Or at least didn't when we were kids. I've asked my kids, and they're both confident in their gender at a young age.
Ah, gotcha. I bet there's something to that though. It seems natural that having a very strong sense of gender at age 4 would appear ridiculous to most people given that it doesn't fit with their own experience. I do expect over time mainstream opinion on this will shift much as it has for homosexuality. Likewise there I think it was initially difficult for straight people to relate, because it just didn't fit with their own experience at all—sexual attraction is something for people of the opposite sex; if you think you're attracted to people of the same sex, that doesn't make sense, so something must have happened to you. Over time, more and more gay people were out, more people came to realize that they knew gay people, and those people truly did experience what they said they experienced, and mainstream belief shifted.
Per the original comment here though, I hope it doesn't happen by one 'side' winning and beating the other into submission, but rather through that process of understanding.
I don't agree with certain important points of this article. It is rooted in what seems to be the following unwritten tenets:
1. There is no truth; everything is relative. Therefore anyone who becomes convinced of anything (even if rationally so!) and remains in a debate is a bad actor.
2. People who disagree can continue to debate forever, forever doubting their own positions and maintaining a willingness to change to the other side. The debate is just a game; there are no consequences as to who is right or wrong, therefore anyone who believes they have "skin in the game" is like a child who gets carried away with a game.
3. Because the truth is relative, and debates are just a game with no consequences, whenever some claim of truth is used to establish guidelines regarding behavior claimed to be harmful to the world, that is just an unproven suggestion: those who are not convinced of the debate should be free to carry on as they wish. The slightest coercion in this constitutes totalitarianism more befitting of North Korea than a constitutional democracy.
Note how many of the examples of the "Common Strategies of Bad Faith Communication", those that are not about general poor debating tactics anyone uses, are drawn from the behavior of some of those whose belief is based on rational information, e.g. from science. The list is not balanced by mentioning the specific strategies of other side: such as
- the willingness to reject a mountain of evidence (e.g. as "fake") against one's view in order to cling to a teaspoon supporting one's view.
- making up statements and believing in them
- referring to irrelevant authorities.
- general disdain for learning and intellect.
This article is a manifesto for those who want to be forever doubting facts, and forever to be treated with silk gloves, forever to be implored to think, forever to require extraordinary effort on the part of others to find ways to convince. And most importantly: forever to be excused from following any inconvenient rules for avoiding harm, out of the utmost respect for one's non-acceptance of an argument.
"Rules are based in truth. Truth is relative, therefore, the rules have no validity; I will conform to them if you find a way to convince me you're right (which is unlikely to ever happen) but please always behave toward me without a hint of contempt while you choose to engage me. An acceptable 'end game' of a debate is that we 'agree to disagree' with the utmost debating respect, and go our separate ways without changing any behavior that is contingent on the content of the debate."
Also, I would add the following as a genuine bad-faith strategy in online debating:
Posting key arguments not as plain text, but images of text from which excerpts cannot be easily quoted without retyping or OCR tools.*
With the caveat that I very much believe in civil, good faith discourse, I find that in being a formal critique of the discourse, it can nevertheless introduce the author's own ideological preferences (fine) in a way that appears neutral (not fine) or purely formal (very not fine). Here are two examples:
> Calls for good faith communication are understood at best as naive requests to calm the outrage and conflict that now runs rife in political discourse. Both ends of the political spectrum (the far left and the far right) express this view. Both sides believe that “the other side” simply can’t be trusted and therefore cannot be engaged in good faith.
This phenomenon exists, it permeates the spectrum. However, the use of the word "far" here sticks in my craw. It implies, without outright suggesting, that the center is the reasonable referee, rather than existing on a spectrum that has a history. What is center today may very well have been "far left" or "far right" 40 years ago, and its relative distance from other ideologies is irrelevant when it comes to objectivity. You have a home base. It's not just "Liberalism". No one is a contentless unit of democratic formalism.
> Given well-documented advances in the field of information warfare, there should be no illusion: today’s culture war cannot be won by any side. Mutually assured destruction is now the name of the wargame.[6] The saturation of bad faith communication throughout culture is steadily increasing, like a kind of dangerous background radiation emitted from scientifically engineered memetic weaponry. Public political discourse is quickly becoming a toxic warzone, leaching externalities into families, friendships, and identity structures.
"Culture war" is a slur for a particular kind of vitriolic discourse, but it is in fact a war over what we consider the common good. In other words--politics. This is the meat and potatoes of democracy. Liberalism says the state shouldn't have an opinion on it. The "common good" is what we all agree it is. People will disagree. So then it stands to reason that whoever has the most influence (defined as broadly as you'd like) gets to decide what the common good is. This war has high stakes.
This also smuggles in the notion that so-called information warfare has in fact warped political outcomes, which is far from being well-documented. The cause->effect sequence is not established. But let's say it is--who are the actors, and why are they doing it? Those motivations have political causes. What are they? Or is misinformation just metastasized communication, chaotic irruptions that happens over a long enough time scale?
Overall, this presents a primarily formal and cultural diagnosis of political chaos and fracture as the root cause, couched in objective language, when that is itself an ideological position. There are other analyses. One might argue that the fractured discourse is an effect, not a cause, but it's taken for granted that _formal_ misbehavior is the cause of the fractious political atmosphere, rather than... well, anything else, I guess. Substitute your favorite diagnosis here.
It's fine to have this analysis. It's not fine to pretend it's anything but an ideological, non-objective analysis. I get the impulse to try to rise above the fray. Politics is ugly, but it's ugly because the stakes are so high. Getting lost in the weeds of formal objections isn't going to fix anything. There's more going on than just procedural fuck ups.
Just my take. I might be imbuing this article with the sins of similar pieces it doesn't commit (although I don't think so), but I think this tendency is common enough that it's worth bringing up. It happens fairly often on HN. Nerds love rules. I'm no exception.
I agree that this article perhaps veers a little too far into the kind of 'objective' territory that you mention, it's something I see and dislike often in similar pieces, though to be fair I think it's probably quite hard to avoid while remaining personally relatable to many people.
My strategy in general for taking in ideas is to simply pick and choose the bits that seem interesting and productive, and internally reinterpret those parts to remove the author's biases and excessions that don't seem relevant.
This tends to cause issues when I share things like this article though, people often seem to prefer to interpret the tone of the piece as a whole, and that overall or initial reading colours their view of the individual ideas that were espoused, making it harder for me and them to have a productive discussion about it.
>Decades of culture war have degraded civic discourse,
The culture wars or the neoliberalism stuff is over. It's surprising how many still believe this is happening. Culture wars ended 2009-2014 or so.
>Bad faith communication has become normalized.
Before social media we had newspapers and when tv news came along they were extremely regulated. Bad faith was the standard. The newspapers publish lie after lie and they got away with it for decades if not centuries.
>When open communication cannot be used to resolve conflict and coordinate behavior, societies are driven towards chaos, war, oppression, and authoritarianism.
Everyone knows this, it is diplomacy/talking that ends wars. The entities like Twitter who are censoring communication under false pretense knows they are breaking this rule. They also understand their objective and how this is their intention.
>There should be no illusion: today’s culture war cannot be won by any side.
The author needs the realization is that the culture war is over. They need to analyze and discover who was the victor.
Let me show the battles:
Climate Change: would you say we are doing much of anything for climate change? Even fake efforts like carbon taxes that dont do anything?
Gamergate: would you say mandolorian boob armor was a problem?
BLM: Fundamentally police brutality and racism is a problem but did BLM achieve anything? Are there any defunding police? Did the democrats pass anything?
Comicsgate: Did red skull jordan peterson really work out?
LGBT: Dave Chapelle put an end to that one single handed. LGBT can rejoice.
UBI/MMT: Just tried it in limited fashion. Nobody seriously bringing this up anymore.
White fragility: Yep, white people are all racists. We totally need to teach that to our children.
There's 1 side who won basically all of those in the end. When you lose battle after battle during the culture war. You eventually lose.
What happened is in their failure they became a religion. There are now heresies and the heretics must burn. You must pay penance for your sinning.
I have never seen the government arrest so many religious leaders in my life. Our law in canada explicitly makes it illegal for police to arrest clergyman.
"arrest of officiating clergyman" is a crime that police are subject to, yet you can watch video on youtube of police breaking this law.
None of this is surprising. It's a new religion, new religions normally look to destroy their competitor religion.
Edit: for those downvoting, I'm ok with you disagreeing or even feeling annoyed or angry with what I said. I sincerely also wish you would comment below so that I better understand what led to you downvoting. Currently I'm not sure what I did to lead to that and I'd like to know so that I might prevent it in the future.
Ooo, I feel really frustrated by the labeling of them as good or bad faith communication. In their box explaining good faith communication, they say that all those behaviors can be faked if someone is engaging in bad faith communication, so it leaves me wondering how does one actually know whether another or oneself is using good faith communication? I think this harkens back to the discussion on here the other day about always assume good intentions. After reading this article, I almost left it feeling more hopeless, as if it were saying most people communicate with bad intention (bad faith) and by using good and bad as labels, further ingrains the concept of binary good/evil, falling somewhat into a "bad faith" aspect of black/white polarizing categorization.
However, I feel grateful that they started this conversation and overall address the challenge that we have in communicating to resolve conflict. I personally believe they could simplify their good/bad faith classification by focusing more on how open people are communicating about what they're feeling and thinking and how open people are to hearing/imagining how others are feeling and thinking. I think underlying much of their distinction between good/bad faith is an element of more open or more closed, and that such language, especially with the more qualifier included, may not carry such connotations of good/bad.
I feel very confident that one of the largest challenges we face as a society is how to communicate more openly with each other—to say how we feel and think—when anything we say can be shared around the world, recorded, aggregated, etc.
Even after writing this, the idea of "good faith" vs "bad faith" communication really irks me lol. I believe most of us communicate out of how we are feeling based on the things that have happened and are happening in our lives and we are trying our best. In that way, I assume even the people acting in "bad faith" are acting out of "good faith" and perhaps that's the main issue I have with this. I have found assuming people to have good faith even if they and others assume they have bad faith, can drastically improve how I feel in conversations, relationships, and resolving conflict.
> how does one actually know whether another or oneself is using good faith communication?
By what goal is to be achieved. That's how the article defines the two categories. In a nutshell, good faith communication has the goal of mutual understanding, whether it leads to "agreement" or to the other person doing what you want or not. Bad faith communication has the goal of getting the other person to do what you want, by hook or by crook.
> After reading this article, I almost left it feeling more hopeless, as if it were saying most people communicate with bad intention (bad faith)
I don't think that's true, nor do I think it was the intent of the article. I think most people try to communicate with good faith. But in the world now, with instant mass communication, the small minority of people who do communicate in bad faith can often dominate the communication process. I think one way of looking at the question the article is asking is how that can be fixed.
> I assume even the people acting in "bad faith" are acting out of "good faith"
As above, it's a matter of the goal the person is trying to achieve, not whether or not the person is sincere in their goal. I think most people who communicate in bad faith are perfectly sincere. They may even believe that they are doing something good by getting other people to do things those other people would not choose to do if they were communicated with in good faith.
I do think, though, that the choice of "good faith" and "bad faith" labels does have a reasonable basis: communicating with people to get them to do what you want by hook or by crook, not by convincing them through reasoned argument but just by manipulating them in whatever way works, is not a good thing to do. Even if you think you're doing it to achieve a good goal, human history shows that we humans don't work that way: we can't be trusted to use bad means to achieve good ends.
> In a nutshell, good faith communication has the goal of mutual understanding, whether it leads to "agreement" or to the other person doing what you want or not. Bad faith communication has the goal of getting the other person to do what you want, by hook or by crook.
But who defines what the goal is? I guess I'm confused as if this is more about a self-reflection question: "Am I trying to come to mutual understanding with this person or trick them into doing what I want?" Or is it about asking this of others: "Are they trying to come to a mutual understanding or trick me into getting what they want?" I think in conflict, very very often we can assume we have good intentions and the other has bad intentions. I'd argue that's one of the most commom things I see in conflict: "I'm trying my best and they don't care about me, they only care about themselves," said by both sides.
> I don't think that's true, nor do I think it was the intent of the article. I think most people try to communicate with good faith.
I hear you and appreciate that. I may have got wrapped up in the frustration I was feeling towards the categorization and exaggerated how much they were assuming that, so thank you for providing your perspective.
> But in the world now, with instant mass communication, the small minority of people who do communicate in bad faith can often dominate the communication process. I think one way of looking at the question the article is asking is how that can be fixed.
Ah, I guess what I took from the article was less that they were asking a question and more they were giving an answer. Maybe I misread the amount of certainty they had in presenting of the solution or maybe I disagreed with the certainty they had in describing what was the specific problem.
As for how to resolve such things, I've often wondered if the solution is for many of us to communicate more openly and loudly. I remember watching a news report on a pharmaceutical sales guy who I think sold painkillers and it seemed to me that he was so focused on making a ton of money because he was quite emotionally numb or lonely. I think so many of us don't open up emotionally to others and start thinking others are out to get us and don't care about us so we preemptively try to get them and not care about them, further distancing and closing ourselves off from them and even ourselves.
The person doing the communication. So if that's you, you ask yourself the self-reflection question. If it's the other person, you have to try to figure out what their goal is in communicating with you: are they trying to achieve mutual understanding, or are they trying to get you to do what they want by hook or by crook?
Of course any actual conversation is two-way, so you need to ask both questions.
Ah ok, I think one of the hardest things I've worked on is trying to defend/believe in my own good intentions. I had an ex who somewhat insinuated I was manipulating her and it almost broke me, because I started to believe it. The next day, I reflected and came to the belief (not answer) that if I can't defend my own good intentions, who the heck would? And have been working on this since, 7 or so years ago.
I guess I just think it's a really hard problem to definitively know whether I or someone else has such intentions and goals, so I often default to assuming that even if their or my behavior appears to be trying to manipulate, that underneath there may be something wanting mutual understanding, or actually, connection. I have seen so many conflicts resolve in my life when I have the courage to go deep enough to foster that connection. I got covid a few weeks ago and this woman called me weak and a baby and other things...then I found out a week later that she was struggling very hard with her relationship and broke up with her long-term boyfriend. So the name calling, which hurt and angered me in the moment, later revealed itself as stemming from deep pain she was feeling and maybe even the same language she was using towards herself as she struggled to make the decision.
So I just don't know how easy it is to figure out these intentions.
I've generally found that if someone accuses you of manipulating them, they're projecting. (By which I mean "projecting" in the sense in which psychologists use the term: the person senses the presence of a quality they don't like, but they don't want to admit to themselves that it's coming from them, so they project it onto someone else. In this case, your ex correctly sensed the presence of manipulativeness because she was actually the one being manipulative, but she didn't want to admit to herself that the manipulativeness she sensed was coming from her, so she projected it onto you.) So in the case of your ex, I would say she was engaging in bad faith communication (though possibly without consciously being aware she was doing so).
In the case of the woman you describe, I don't think she falls into either category we've been discussing. She was just expressing her own pain. I don't think every single human interaction has to fall within one of the two categories we've been discussing ("good faith communication" or "bad faith communication".)
Oh I agree with the projecting and I appreciate how you described it there, helped clarify it more for me.
> So in the case of your ex, I would say she was engaging in bad faith communication (though possibly without consciously being aware she was doing so).
I think it's mostly the label of "bad faith" that frustrates me. I don't like the communication techniques that she used, but I still question how it could be "bad faith" if she doesn't believe she's acting in bad faith. It's almost as if she believed I was communicating in bad faith. So bad faith communication is assuming the other is communicating in bad faith? I don't mean to run in circles, I really just don't think labeling communication as bad faith will help me resolve most conflicts.
> I think it's mostly the label of "bad faith" that frustrates me.
You can re-label it if you don't like the label. To me, if a person is trying to manipulate you, the label "bad faith" is not unjustified. But if that label doesn't work for you, pick another one.
> I still question how it could be "bad faith" if she doesn't believe she's acting in bad faith.
Because people's intentions and beliefs are not the same as their actions and the actual impact of those actions on others. It should be the case that if we have good intentions, we take good actions and our actions have good impact on others. But unfortunately it isn't always the case.
(Note also that I only said your ex "possibly" didn't realize that she was being manipulative. It's also quite possible that she did.)
> You can re-label it if you don't like the label. To me, if a person is trying to manipulate you, the label "bad faith" is not unjustified. But if that label doesn't work for you, pick another one.
Yes, I agree if the person is trying to manipulate you then it'd make sense to label their intentions as bad faith. I guess I choose to believe that people have good intentions even underneath their bad intentions because I feel more at ease and less afraid that way.
> Because people's intentions and beliefs are not the same as their actions and the actual impact of those actions on others. It should be the case that if we have good intentions, we take good actions and our actions have good impact on others. But unfortunately it isn't always the case.
I agree with you that good intentions, or as I'd say, intending to help someone, doesn't always equate to good results, or doesn't mean the person won't feel harmed. I think I get stuck on "bad faith" because from how I understand the phrase, and how the American Heritage Dictionary defines it[0], is "the malicious intention to be dishonest or to violate the law, as in negotiations over a contract." In other words, having bad intentions.
However, as I see the long article on Wikipedia, I'm just realizing that many fields seem to define it differently, from insurance law to Zen Buddhism, to feminism and negotiation theory[1].
EDIT: This has me reflecting on why I'm engaging in this thread. Am I trying to convince you and others that labeling "bad faith" will likely be more harmful and less effective in resolving conflict? If so, am I engaging in "bad faith" communication because I'm trying to convince you of my perspective and not fully understand your perspective? I think I feel very confident in resolving conflict and yet often slip back into such a mindset of trying to "teach" people things, instead of just letting them do what they want to do. In a way, this can be what trips me up the most: I believe I have found ways to communicate that can really help people in conflict, but instead of using those skills with people, I can default into teaching them those skills, even when they don't necessarily want to be taught. With that in mind, I find that some of these conversations on conflict resolution technique frustrate me because it seems that we, the ones who talk about them, often feel very confident in our approaches and may try to convince the others to do it the way that seems to work for us, even if the others don't want to learn.
This thread has helped me realize how I want to get much more intentional about explicitly asking people if they want to learn how I approach conversations and conflict, and creating environments where that consent is more clear to everyone, and in the other spaces doing the skills rather than talking about them.
Was this "bad faith" communication on my part? I think my intention is good in wanting to help people feel more confident in communicating in conflict and resolving it. But perhaps the effect matters more and I still feel lost on the approach they take in their article and maybe that's OK. I keep trying to remind myself: more loving, less saving. I think I have a tendency to jump in and "save" people when they don't necessarily want to be saved.
Anyways, I'm grateful that you went back and forth with me on this and I feel excited to much more express how I'm feeling and how I approach things and explicitly say how it's OK if other people want to do it different ways.
> Am I trying to convince you and others that labeling "bad faith" will likely be more harmful and less effective in resolving conflict?
Possibly, but trying to convince other people by making reasoned arguments is good faith communication, not bad faith communication.
> If so, am I engaging in "bad faith" communication because I'm trying to convince you of my perspective and not fully understand your perspective?
Good faith communication doesn't require you to "fully understand" the other person's perspective. Nor does it preclude trying to convince the other person of your perspective. See above.
Consider this example: Person A, displaying some humility, says : "You might be right, there is a chance politician X is in the wrong". Person A assumes this is interpreted by Person B as: "There is uncertainty about politician X being in the wrong" Person B actually interprets this as: "Person A has admitted, without any doubt, to politician X being completely in the wrong"
If I ever find myself in a conversation where I'm in the shoes of Person A, using good-faith communication means actually risking a complete failure of communication. Why even bother to communicate?