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The endgames of bad faith communication

consilienceproject.org

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Re: The endgames of bad faith communication

#291

Post by kazinator »

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.*

Re: The endgames of bad faith communication

#292

Post by hedora »

vlunkr wrote: post #42
tux1968 wrote: post #15

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…

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.

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.

Re: The endgames of bad faith communication

#293

Post by pdonis »

jimkleiber wrote: post #87
pdonis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 "…

> 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.)

Re: The endgames of bad faith communication

#294

Post by ModernMech »

hedora wrote: post #285
tux1968 wrote: post #15

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…

I once got in a long argument with a pro vaccine journalist about this (I am also for vaccines). The predominant viewpoint in modern day journalism is that a true headline that is technically correct and gets page views is a good headline. This is the first sign of bad faith communication in the article (misleading with facts). Example (ficticious) controversial headline: "Scientists extremely concerned that new vari…

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".

Re: The endgames of bad faith communication

#295

Post by colordrops »

bena wrote: post #264
watwut wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean, I don't think colordrops/gkaly is defending Greenwald in good faith either.

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.

Re: The endgames of bad faith communication

#296

Post by rootusrootus »

deadpannini wrote: post #244
usernomdeguerre wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 point…

> Speakers gain credibility and respect by [...]

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.

Re: The endgames of bad faith communication

#297

Post by naravara »

JoeEasy23 wrote: post #241
LichenStone wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: The endgames of bad faith communication

#298

Post by [deleted] »

tux1968 wrote: post #15

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…

[deleted]

Re: The endgames of bad faith communication

#299

Post by naravara »

Thiez wrote: post #281
newbamboo wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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 su…

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…

> 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.

Re: The endgames of bad faith communication

#300

Post by altcognito »

Jensson wrote: post #238
switchbak wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 can be as simple as a slogan.
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