Good faith vs Bad faith

in general I think there should be more farting and belching

Natural remedies for the bloat that is our lot.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/9a/b8/719ab89b7eafa2050b8ecee378d564a5.jpg

xxp is deems darraghmac? his posts were often inscrutable but in a delightful way

Indeed, indeed.

in general I think there should be more farting and belching

Then we'd have contests such as who can belch press the most shitposts in a single day. I'd be down.

You’d lose.

Aw, thanks for the compliment. :) Don't think you'd win either fwiw.

also if it's a stranger on FB, usually I take 3 looks at profile pics and recent posts and that often gives away the game.

ie, if all of your posts are public cos u don't know how to set them to your friends list, and they're all poorly formatted pro-cop memes, im pretty much gonna know yr "just asking questions" on a BLM thread is not just asking questions.

If we're talking in the political sense, then there's a lot of crossover with the brainworms thread. The main difference is that the BadFaith people are the people who put the brain worms in the BrainWormed people, so are less likely to be people you know and more likely to be people with positions of influence.

That being said, there are crossovers between the two groups, but much of it is unconscious (at which point is it really bad faith anymore?). Either way a crucial component is misrepresentation, so you have to spend time not only defending what you think but also clarifying about some other things that you don't think, or some conclusions that have been incorrectly extrapolated. BadFaith is really an attempt to trip you up, and as with brainworms the best approach is to try keep things specific and targetted and not let conversation skit around multiple areas uncontrollably

There's a deeper issue though, which is easy to fall into, and thats the need to 'win', which is the territory a BadFaith actor is most comfortable on, replacing substance with appearance

But there are surely other scenarios that aren't this familiar one. A work scenario works in a different way, maybe the pretence that something is being considered when really its a charade. The mechanisms to force the showing of your hand. But perhaps this is mere chichanery, depends what is being asked here!

If you were going to act in bad faith - how would you do it? I might enthusiastically agree with every point someone makes but use them to come to a different conclusion that they obviously don't agree with, then say hmm I'm not sure this makes sense after all, and use that to discredit their arguments. Depends on context? motives?

bad faith = trolling/'just asking'/'debate me'/ppl who 'love arguing'

current ilx users may or may not be utter shitheads, but i feel like compared to the halcyon noize board days, there aren't as many people just shitposting to get a reaction? we have narcissists and automatons and people who resurface periodically to get their martyr on, but that isn't exactly 'bad faith' (okay maybe some of it is)

i don't read all the threads but like . . . andrew f unloaded on brad today, discovered he was wrong, and apologized. that's good faith, and i think there's a lot of it here now, relatively speaking

mookieproof otm

probably more accusations of bad faith than actual bad faith rn. but usually only in politics threads

more accusations of bad faith than actual bad faith

These are broadly the same thing? Or at least end up having the same effect? Once you get into this territory you're moving away from the topic at hand and into more existential territory around defeating an opponent, and thats a distraction and a dead end. Fighting a battle that actually an unstated other battle rather than the one ostensibly at hand is where things start to spiral!

As tetchy as things have gotten on ilx the last many months...if you zoom out and think abt how insane our lives are right now...it could be a lot worse

17 years ago, as no WMDs were found in iraq, a former friend of mine was all like 'so you're saying that the world would be a better place with saddam hussein still in charge there, right?'

i can only imagine the gymnastics he's performing these days

I always try to make it clear when I'm trying to defeat someone, in case anyone is accusing me of bad faith

This is touching on something else, which is the desire to be right, to win - which has some problems. Its not bridge building or consensus making, it focuses from a starting point of difference rather than agreement and can we build on that. Its difficult in a format which inherently rewards stridency, and we can all be guilty of that (and sometimes its merited)

If you think someone is genuinely coming from a place of bad faith, they most likely see you as the problem, rather than anything you are saying at that moment. Accusing them of bad faith (even if true) can't help in winding that down, that in itself is a trap and unproductive i think

17 years ago, as no WMDs were found in iraq, a former friend of mine was all like 'so you're saying that the world would be a better place with saddam hussein still in charge there, right?'

A classic of the genre! Though actually isn't he right? Weren't you saying the world would be a better place with Saddam in charge? Phrasing it like that is obviously weird and designed to provoke an emotional response but the conclusion is actually correct?

As tetchy as things have gotten on ilx the last many months...if you zoom out and think abt how insane our lives are right now...it could be a lot worse

― singular wolf erotica producer (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, July 29, 2020 11:13 PM bookmarkflaglink

this is otm. i was expecting a coup, with LJ possibly usurping control of the borads

you could occupy a very powerful role in my Council

Non internet it's easy because you can see when someone is playing devil's advocate and it's not smart so I just switch off.

And I think online and on a board where you get to know what matters or does not to a poster you can see how that plays out too. Although it might take a bit longer to figure out.

Charlie Kirk has been tweeting about why he’s done watching the NBA for seven years. pic.twitter.com/iaNk2wOWYj

— Chris Jackson (@ChrisCJackson) July 31, 2020

xp is this you admitting the tools of your trade?

I don't find "good faith" and "bad faith" to be particularly useful concepts in deciding whether to enter a discussion.

For me, there are two criteria for whether I enter a discussion. 1) do I genuinely think that there's a chance that *I* might learn something, through having the discussion? 2) is there a genuine chance that at least one of the people involved might be willing to change their mind? (And the person in criteria 2 might very well be me!)

Criteria 1 - I do often learn things from people I have (fairly minor, but important) differences from. Discussion, and teasing out the shape of those disagreements can be a very powerful way of learning. But there has to be a certain level of mutual respect, and mutual enjoyment for that to happen. (And a good way to discover whether you do have mutual respect, is to find out how each other handle small disagreements before you move on to the important ones.)

Criteria 2 - well, I have a pretty good understanding on the kinds of new information or new paradigms or new theory or different experiences I had not encountered, that could change my mind, so I'm learning to recognise whether other people display the capacity to provide me with those kind of things. In the other person, that's harder - have they shown the ability to learn and grasp new ideas before? Do they seem like *they* actually want to engage in a mutual learning process? Are they actually engaging with me, and the things I'm saying, or are they talking to some weird projection of their own issues somewhere six feet over my left shoulder? (I don't always manage that one myself, to be honest, so if I catch myself doing that, I generally find that it's a good sign that *I* am the one who should exit the conversation.)

But there has to be a certain level of mutual respect, and mutual enjoyment for that to happen. (And a good way to discover whether you do have mutual respect, is to find out how each other handle small disagreements before you move on to the important ones.)

This is true and also surprisingly rare ime

I wouldn’t say I use good/bad faith as criteria for engaging in a conversation but I do use it to determine whether I stay in a conversation, usually using questions similar to the ones Branwell posed.

Yesterday on Twitter, I engaged in some wild speculation about the potential for COVID-19 to create a large population of citizens with debilitating long-term medical conditions and some yahoo with less than 20 followers popped up to quote much smaller death statistics at me, completely ignoring that I wasn’t talking about mortality rates and that if his were actually correct, the size of the at-risk population I was discussing was actually an order of magnitude higher and the problem I was speculating about could be much worse than my already-and-admittedly handewavey numbers were making it out to be. Instead, he stubbornly insisted on quoting a death rate which, if accurate, has already been surpassed by reality. I engaged him solely to put my narrative out to others who might have more concrete information than my speculation then ignored him as he refused to engage the topic I was actually discussing and was parroting information cherrypicked to minimize the potential threat of the pandemic. It was a bad-faith conversation and I quickly saw my way out of it.

Conversely, I said some extremely harsh things about Jody Rosen’s article championing “Lean On Me” as the US national anthem on a mutual friend’s Facebook wall; he engaged me, stated further thoughts and intentions that were not evident in the article as presented, and thanked me for the feedback, which he viewed as valuable since I effectively took away the exact opposite messages of what he was trying to communicate. I thanked him for engaging me and, while I still disagreed with his article and the reasons he dismissed other anthem candidates, the conversation ended well and I think we both got something out of it. That is the definition of a good faith conversation, to me.

And sometimes it’s not even a “this person is in bad faith” or “that argument is in good faith” but it is about the chemistry between those conversants in that space?

I agree that it's a reductive framing of the interaction, yeah. Intentionally so; I find it easier to start a conversation within specific boundaries and then explore how those boundaries expand.

xp is this you admitting the tools of your trade?

― let them microwave their rice (gyac), Friday, 31 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Lol, "trade" implies a skill I could make a living from. I would if I could!

So yes.

i won't argue with anyone i am not 100% sure is a real person with honorable intentions
life is too short and i have more than enough argument on my plate, not hungry for more

what makes me sense that someone is arguing in bad faith? if they are arguing with me and do not know me personally, for starters!

i will settle for a real person whose identity i can verify; intentions are hard to determine but actually not that hard when a person who doesn't know me at all/hasn't talked to me in 20+ years is suddenly itching to argue.

Sorry, DJP, that was an x-post to kinder.

It was a bad-faith conversation and I quickly saw my way out of it.

I think this gets to the heart of it. It is much, much easier to recognise bad faith arguments, than it is to recognise "good" faith arguments.

If you're talking about structural racism, and someone starts "all lives matter"-ing, or if you're talking about structural misogyny and the other person immediately goes "oh, you just hate men" or if you're trying to talk trans stuff and your awful uncle starts up with "penis = man" you KNOW immediately that's a bad faith argument and you can make a swift exit with whatever energy you have left.

It takes something far more ineffable, and "you know it when you see it" to recognise the "good faith" arguments, even sometimes when you are already in them. (Like, when you started rubbishing Jody's piece, did you even know you were doing a "good faith" argument or were you just venting about an awful piece of criticism you read online?)

Something else that's quite important (and Anvil has kind of touched on in the brainworms thread before) - is recognising the terrain of the conversation. Recognising the rhetorical style, or whatever, of the conversant.

Some people are really swayed by logical arguments, by facts, by contextualisation, by understanding more about the topic. And for other people, it really is more of a feelings and emotions and social connections thing. (And, indeed, the same people can operate in different modes on different topics.) If you think you're in a logic, facts, contexts conversation, and the other person is in a feelings, emotions, social connections conversation, that is going to run into rocky ground very fast. And it's not even a good faith / bad faith problem. It's people operating in different modes.

(I've said this many times on the No Boys thread, if someone starts talking astrology, the correct thing to do is not to start debunking their terrible pseudo-science, it is to recognise that they are giving you *emotional* information about themselves and their relationship to you, and flip into "this is about social connection" mode.)

For the facts, logic, contexts person, it is sufficient to be Right! All that is required is to provide data and prove the thesis statement, and then you have won the argument, Q.E.D. For the feelings, social connections person - a far more effective and persuasive conversation would involve, "well, this would be the *kindest* thing to do" or "wouldn't this be fairer to everyone involved?" or "this would promote peace in your social circle and bring you closer to your friends and loved ones." I really struggle with the latter style of conversations (and I thank my therapist for teaching me how to *do* them, at all) but for many emotive topics, these kinds of conversations are far more persuasive - and far better at counteracting actual propaganda, which always works on an emotive level, and not a rational level.

I think I conflate concern trolling with bad faith. Or is concern trolling a form of bad faith? I'm specifically thinking of conservatives who are deeply concerned about murder in Chicago.

And it's not even a good faith / bad faith problem. It's people operating in different modes.

I think this is largely true, or at least there is overlap. For instance a key part of 'bad faith' delivery, for me, is misrepresentation. Someone intentionally misrepresenting what I've said, or misunderstanding. But my RW cousin consistently 'mishears' what I've said in such a way that I don't think its intentional. Its more that he has decided what I've said before I've said it. The exchange for him is more of a big picture exchange, and the detail is an obfuscation (weirdly inverting the concept of bad faith almost to a point where he might see my 'detail' as the bad faith, intended to trip up a more obvious big picture truth which is self-evident to him)

Which comes back to this idea of modes. Its also why I think 'debates' don't really work, why challenging often doesn't really work. Its focused on an end goal and working backwards, instead of fixing on a starting point of what is shared.

if there is enough shared (and that might be as little as 20%), perhaps there is the possibility of moving that forward to 30%. This seems more productive than starting at oppositional points

This is all complicated by the fact that on TV, youtube, print and elsewhere, people are paid to do this, and many of those wheeled out on 'the other side' aren't really equipped, and often end up flustered and frustrated (in some cases leading to the well worn eye roll)

Sara Ahmed - "Rolling eyes is feminist pedagogy".

Its more that he has decided what I've said before I've said it.

Yeah, this is definitely a thing. (Again, something I know I have done myself, too, so I know how easy it is to do.)

I think it’s possible for people to hold un-PC beliefs / beliefs that I find reprehensible and not necessarily be acting in bad faith when they argue them. But maybe I don’t understand what bad faith means.

So yes.

― let them microwave their rice (gyac), Friday, 31 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Feeling this is bad faith from you

Its more that he has decided what I've said before I've said it.

I initially put the 'blame' on him for this (and there is some to go there don't get me wrong). But I've also had to think, well what can I do to try and make that not the case). In some ways the phyiscal reactions, body language, signs of irritation, tone of voice, he's using those as cues and much of the conversation is actually happening there (and for me it must be too). So when I say he's already decided what I've said before I've said it, maybe thats only partially true and whats actually happening is he's listening to my mannerisms and speech patterns more so than my words, And even if I'm speaking as neutrally as possible and aiming to not give away visual cues, if my underlying mode is to win, then thats still obvious, more obvious than any words that might be said

This is really what I've gradually tried to jettison, the focus on being right, and to try and get more towards understandings

I think it’s possible for people to hold un-PC beliefs / beliefs that I find reprehensible and not necessarily be acting in bad faith when they argue them.

Of course it is. Most people would say Richard Spencer argue in good faith? Its right there on the tin. Someone like Tim Pool on the other hand..

I assume everyone is arguing in good faith unless they’re obviously trying to speak to/influence an audience - ie arguing with one person on Twitter but it’s actually for the benefit of 500k followers who will see it.

'bad faith' to me is when you really believe one thing, but you aren't comfortable admitting it, so you go for the plausible deniability of objecting on procedural grounds ("I don't have a dog in this fight, but I question the logic you're using here!") or sea-lioning ("I'm not against Black Lives Matter, but why not a more open-tent approach?") in an attempt to chip away at the opposition so that you can win the debate through attrition (the other person flipping out at you or retreating).

like that one Hendrix vs Van Halen thread when a few people were saying it was obviously Hendrix who was a better guitarist, and St3v3 Goldb3rg started arguing with these people, saying that it's fine to find Hendrix better, but you can't use bad logic and poorly constructed arguments like he alleged they were. but then after pushback he admitted he just thought Van Halen was better and that was his real M.O..

In my lexicon, arguing in "bad faith" does not equate to employing an indefensible argument, based in ignorance. Ignorance itself is not a form of bad faith. Rather, it means knowingly employing a weak or false argument and adhering to it in the face of contrary facts and a stronger argument structured around those facts. iow, at the point where your interlocutor begins to deny the relevance of a reality contrary to their position they've entered the wonderful world of bad faith arguing.

An example that comes easily to hand is when "death with dignity" laws are being opposed on specious and false grounds, such as the slippery slope argument that it is just a preliminary step to euthanasia of the old and disabled. Such laws have been in existence for decades now and no such slippery slope has appeared. Pointing out this reality should result in their rethinking and retracting the slippery slope. If they say "that proves nothing", then they are committing to asserting a non-existent reality, based on no facts observable anywhere. That's instant "bad faith".

'bad faith' to me is when you really believe one thing, but you aren't comfortable admitting it

Contra my boundless optimism in this regard, it does happen all the time on ILX, i.e.

The Official, 100% Anonymous ILX Self-Censorship Poll

Re sarahell, yeah, you're right about the Bottoms, but this discussion was focused on SF. Took place in the old Luggage Store Gallery in 2012, I think.

Like many of these people were essentially saying that poor people shopping at Safeway or 7-11 instead of one of the local delis or Bi-Rite or the Co-op were wrongheaded.

hahahahahah -- so telling that a discussion focused on SF would not even consider the vast urban civilizations right outside its borders where the overwhelming majority of people that make San Francisco function actually live ... but the solipsism and arrogance of San Francisco is another topic ...

xp - didn't San Francisco only start getting a significant number of 7-11s only around 2012? Maybe a few years prior? ... Like, San Francisco's planning code is potentially one of the strictest in terms of banning chain stores in the country?

So Schulman’s work “sucks” because ... her *audience* disagreed with you?

Like, this is so far from a good faith engagement with Schulman or her work, it couldn’t even find one on a map?

Can you read?

Let's try and avoid a hundred-post pile-up, shall we?

It seems to me that table is going out of his way to separate his critique of Schulman from his critique of the hostile audience at a panel discussion where she was one of the panelists. His dislike for her work is detached from his anecdote about the event in question.

Am I right or wrong about that, table?

there are food deserts in nyc fyi

Over the course of several posts, I said I liked her fiction, which is actually quite provocative at times-- she wrote a novel about a precocious queer youth in a relationship with an older person that got her into a lot of trouble-- but that her theoretical writing seems mean-spirited and hyper-specific in its contextual framing. And that I don't feel the need to engage with it as a result.

And unperson, yes, that is what I was attempting

And re: BradNelson, I know that there are food deserts in the five boroughs, don't know who you were addressing.

just reacting to the idea that schulman is blinkered about food deserts because she's a lifelong new yorker

idk if it's a food desert issue and more about the prominence of mom-and-pop stores in NYC vs. in other parts of the country where there tend to be fewer of these, partly due to culture and partly due to population density

yeah lol i'm making a selective argument bc i'm annoyed. doing a really good job of living up to this thread, gonna bounce

I mean -- I kinda did a similar thing in terms of changing the subject to the chain store/classism -- so idk

I don't think it's bad faith to change the subject of a discussion ?

Right. Like the nearest place to get affordable food for many of the people living in the largest homeless encampment in Oakland is Target, not the small cooperative grocery only a few blocks further.

What I object to is the idea that these are moral or ethical failings on the part of a beleaguered mass of mostly poor people rather than the hegemonic prowess of capital and its logistical frameworks.

One of the reasons that I am reacting the way that I am, is that there is a long history of judging authors who are considered ot be women by how *likeable* they, or their work are - whether they are agreeable, whether their work makes people feel good after they have read it. (And writers who are considered to be male are not expected to meet this 'likeable' criteria, not in anything like the same kind of way.)

And one of the reasons I like Schulman, and the reason I keep persisting with her, even though such a mixed bag as this book, is because she makes absolutely no pretense as to being likeable, or agreeable - which is an unbelievably freeing thing to read in a female writer, someone who doesn't GAF if they come across as likeable or not. There is no wink, no sugar-coating, there is no handholding or making you feel OK about challenging stuff. She *IS* disagreeable. I often come out of reading her theory books feeling like I have been challenged, maybe even called out - perhaps sometimes attacked.

And working through that feeling of 'why do I feel so attacked by this disagreement' is part of what *I* get out of it, puzzling through difficult and complicated phenomena, in which I feel I may be complicit. She's a really good author, for me, for learning to sit with discomfort, and winkling out discomfort from mere difficulty. And she works for me, because of those things.

Her arguments do not scale. They are not universal, and she falls down where she tries to make them universal. But that doesn't mean that she "sucks". And Table, your post really did seem to boil down to your finding her - or, it turns out, her audience - disagreeable. Which to me, is the point.

But I'm not actually interested in local politics of SF, so I'll bow out and you can carry on with your derail.

Your willful misreading of my follow-up posts is laughable.

Like the nearest place to get affordable food for many of the people living in the largest homeless encampment in Oakland is Target, not the small cooperative grocery only a few blocks further.

<pedantic> actually one of the food banks has a massive site a few blocks past the co-op grocery as well and there tend to be long lines there. </pedantic>

Yeah, there's also the bank on San Pab at 34th or so, if that's still around...

Anyway, enough derail. After being accused of being a sexist because I don't like a famous author's theoretical frameworks, I'm going to leave this thread.

Yeah -- San Pablo & 34th! ... awww don't leave, let's just try to have better arguments.

Rhonda????

*sigh* ... where?

The real bad faith move was that bollox djp starting this thread during my hiatus imo

Thought this was a deems revive at first.

The great revivals of 2022 are in motion dont worry, rhonda has the green paper