Good faith vs Bad faith

Bad Faith is also Earth-2 George Michael's best album

my brain read this as Earth doing a George Michael cover album and if someone could get Dylan Carlson on the phone that would be great

xp - I don't think it's either. "Bad faith" (in terms of debate/argument/conversation) is pretty simple, IMO - arguing what you know to be untrue, to serve your desired ends. Bush/Cheney/Powell leading up to Iraq were arguing for it in bad faith, knowing that there were no WMDs or links to al-Qaeda. Your dimwitted cousin who was pro-war was most likely acting in good faith because they believed their leaders were telling them the truth.

The line becomes blurry when you can't tell if someone is stupid or in on it. Joe Rogan is acting in good faith because he's a numbskull; Ben Shapiro is probably acting in bad faith because he either has a career to serve or he's an ideological true believer who's happy to get his followers riled up to serve those ends. But he might actually just be as much of a numbskull as Rogan.

If we're going to accept the premise of 'bad faith' then some, most, or even all of this thread would now appear to qualify. It the 'obviously' in obviously intended is referring to this thread itself it definitely wasn't obvious to me!

If true then yes, soliciting opinions on a specific thing without stating it is a form of bad faith. The removal of specificity can be done with the idea of making something 'clearer' but it is a form of skullduggery. It makes an assumption that the specific is an example of the abstract and asks you to implicitly agree with the premise but without being told thats whats been done

Rogan's position can change of its own accord. Shapiro's would only change by design.

I think a lot of this might actually be about how zoomed in or out you are. eg if your position is scousers are thieves and you use a particular example of a theft as evidence knowing it not to be true. Its bad faith in that you're arguing something you know not to be true - but you don't care because its handy evidence and it will do, and you think bigger picture 'all scousers are thieves' is true regardless of this one particular scouser, so it becomes true in the abstract even if not in the specific.

So whether its bad faith or not starts to depend on your stance (pointing out this particular case isn't a scouser becomes nitpicking)

If true then yes, soliciting opinions on a specific thing without stating it is a form of bad faith. The removal of specificity can be done with the idea of making something 'clearer' but it is a form of skullduggery. It makes an assumption that the specific is an example of the abstract and asks you to implicitly agree with the premise but without being told thats whats been done

Anvil, you're very perceptive. I get caught out by this a lot. It's a form of bait and switch.

I took the topic of the thread seriously, thought about specific examples in recent conversations I had decided to have or not have (and weirdly, none of them were conversations on ILX? One was a private twitter DM thread I decided to engage; the other was a set of private DMs on another messageboard where I noped out of the conversation when it became apparent in which direction it was going.) That I was using it as a place to think carefully about my own actions, without realising that others were using it as a soap box to give their opinions on others' actions!

I did not see that possibility, and I now feel foolish about that. It's always a shock to realise that I am seeing one set of contexts, while other people are working with a completely different set of contexts that did not occur to me. (And it's completely mutual, that my context is as obscure and inexplicable to them, as theirs are to me.) As an autistic person, grasping the contents of other people's minds can be *incredibly* difficult. It's like being inside a very specific kind of philosophical solipsism all the time. (Which some people choose to read as narcissism, which... you know, whatever.) But the blithe assumptions that others make about the contents of my own mind, and put forward as the truth - since diagnosis, I am at least aware that I have little grasp on other people's interior worlds - but they seem genuinely unaware that they don't have a grasp on mine, either.

When I am having an Actual Discussion, and not just ~messageboard chit-chat~ I really do try to discuss the background and context of each word in the original question, to make sure that that the actual argument under discussion is clear to both parties. ("Do you belive in god?" well, what does 'you' mean, what does 'believe' mean, what does 'god' mean? Once we are in agreement on those words, then I can answer the question.) That a discussion where two people are using the same words with different contexts and interpretations may not actually *be* bad faith, even though it sure can feel like it. But an argument where one person is deliberately using one word or context in a way that obscures other meanings or contexts they are still continuing to draw on (or deny) is bad faith from the start?

This comes up a lot in litigation — I tend to think of a “good faith” argument as one that has some reasonable basis in the law or the facts even if it could be wrong, whereas a “bad faith” argument is one where you just willfully ignore contradictory facts or law. Like the other day I took a deposition and I asked the guy “Did CrookedCo ever have a policy against doing x?” And he said “Absolutely not, we never had any policy against that.” And then I showed him an email in which he wrote “We at CrookedCo do not do x, please keep this confidential.”

He was trying to claim that it wasn’t really a “policy” but that email made it a bad faith argument imo.

This comes up a lot in litigation — I tend to think of a “good faith” argument as one that has some reasonable basis in the law or the facts even if it could be wrong, whereas a “bad faith” argument is one where you just willfully ignore contradictory facts or law.

This is consistent with U.S. tax practice as well -- though there are a bunch of different metrics about how "good" one's faith in based on percentages of likelihood that it would be accepted/accurate. ... Most of this w/r/t to the tax code is relevant to what type of citation and fine you can get if the IRS/tax court disagrees with your position. Basically the penalties for making a good faith mistake are much lower than those for making bad faith mistakes, which may/may not constitute "tax fraud" -- where the penalties for preparers / agents / attorneys are the equivalent often of being dis-barred from doing tax work.

example related to run-of-the-mill stuff:

tax pro: how many miles did you drive for your business?
client: 25,000
tax pro: that's a lot of miles! are you sure that's a good estimate of the total for the year 2019?
client: oh yeah
tax pro: *puts 25,000 business miles on client's return, which at the standard mileage rate is approximately a $13,000 deduction, and could save the client anywhere from $2k to $10k in taxes

tax pro is obligated to take what client reports in good faith, and assume that client is being honest ... unless there are facts and circumstances that indicate what the client is reporting isn't accurate, facts and circumstances the tax pro would be a complete idiot if they were to ignore. Like (these are common):
1. client told tax pro that they didn't own a car
2. client reported travel expenses with a lot of it being the cost of rental vehicles
3. client's business doesn't entail much driving, but they also have a job where they are paid as an employee and have a long commute
4. client tells tax pro their previous accountant used to help them make up numbers and invent expenses so they wouldn't owe taxes

If you were tax pro and got one or more of these answers from your client and still accepted that 25,000 miles number without digging further ... then that would probably be bad faith on the part of the tax pro

When I input everything into the Quicken nothing flashed red so... that's got to mean everything's OK, right?

hahah -- ok sorry for day job-posting

xpost hai Skylar

???

Kinder's quote is from Breaking Bad I think........or very similar

yeah sorry sarah! In Breaking Bad {{{spoiler alert}}}

Skylar avoids getting done for tax fraud or something by acting the ditz

ohhhhhhhh i need to rewatch that show

Getting threads locked where arguments are happening and genuine issues as to your behavior are being raised doesn’t seem like good faith imho

I can see why someone who feels entitled to set the terms of every conversation they are involved in would feel entitled to end those conversations too

There’s actually an easier way of ending the conversation though which is leaving

Which is what I was gonna do until we went around asking mods to lock a thread as soon as someone points out that we are being a dick

But as previously mentioned I’m a big idiot not earth’s most advanced thinker

So... lock this one too?

I dunno man!!!!

You tell me, the notorious dumbass

you could just move the argument to another thread if you want to continue discussing it ...

i mean, this is ILX, you can even appropriate a dormant sub-board for your purposes!

silbs, here ya go:
https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=74

What’s wrong with this thread tbh

i suppose, nothing, tbh -- just, y'know, I Love Computers could be yours if you have the ambition

I hate computers tho

I was hoping for the summarise Cerebus thread tbh

aardvark, surrealism, misogyny, profit?

ugh I did not know about the misogyny. Led Zeppelin? ugh maybe we should just move to I Love Computers.

wasn't that a major critique of Dave Sim/Cerebus -- the misogyny? I haven't read it in like 25 years

tbf I am pretty sure the “I Love Computers” board was named as such in bad faith

i realize i have an entrepreneurial spirit which is oft associated with capitalism and i apologize for suggesting silbs expand his domain to the dormant subboard of I Love Computers

the profit decreased sharply with the advent of the misogyny

my brief googling seems to agree. I didn't know before. I was just making a joke which has obviously failed terribly.

ha joke was fine

Sara Ahmed - "Rolling eyes is feminist pedagogy".

This got missed at the time. I'll have to read this in context to see what it is - but something here about the role of non-verbal communication. That which is communicated intentionally, and that which is elicited as reaction. Watching debates in foreign languages is interesting to see, because the dynamics are familar. Even if the topic is alien and unknown the positions of the protagonists are guessable

Answering the original question I don't know that responding to good faith and potentially bad faith actors in different ways really leads anywhere

Here’s the original essay, Anvil:

https://feministkilljoys.com/2014/12/05/complaint/

Thanks, I was confused by this at first because its a reversal of roles from what I was thinking (right wing guest says something like racism doesn't exist, with at least partial intent of eliciting an eye roll). The principal difference being that seems to be done with the intent of goading, whereas the ones in the piece are defensive responses. But in both cases a form of moving from the verbal to the non-verbal.

The racism isnt real guy they'll role out on the BBC is equally likely to eye roll himself or goad the guest into it, the end result is the similar (us vs them, we are enemies) but the path there isn't. The elicited or goaded eye roll is meant to diminish the roller by separating from audience, the intended roll to bond with audience. But thats a level of performativity not present in a domestic situation (at least not on same level)

body language so important!

But this is also the problem with body language - there really isn't such a thing as a universal gesture, that always means the same in every case? How body language is read depends so much on who is performing it, and in what context.

That the eyeroll of performative white supremacy, is different from the eyeroll of feminist solidarity. And it matters who is making the gesture, and with what intent. (Intent is not always clear, depending on the viewer's subjective position to the gesturer.)

And so much of good faith / bad faith is about intent. And intent, like eye-rolls, looks different from where one is sitting.

Absolutely, body language a language like any other. In some ways the most performative, but also the most involuntary and unconscious.

I was struck in the piece by where the author says about being judged before you even say anything (but also in any exchange we can be as liable to do the same). Which leads to exchanges where everyone has already decided and judged others before, not after, they have spoken. Viewed through this lens I want to back away from the idea of bad faith, at least on practical terms (even when I know it to be true, to try and not take that shortcut and let go of pattern recognition)

That's why I thought you would appreciate the piece - that she writes about that pre-judgement, of judging before the speech act has even happened. In some ways, the speech act doesn't even *need* to happen, it has been pre-determined.

I've read this intensely valuable / frustrating book recently, by Sarah Schulman, called Conflict Is Not Abuse, and I think it's both hugely important to this discussion (but also so inherently flawed by her own 'OK boomer'-ism that any reccommendation would have to come with a million caveats that she is trapped in her own generation's ways of thinking) - how she talks about the same actions (eye-rolling, fragility) can come from either place, from a place of Supremacy Ideology OR from a place of fragiligy-from-having-been-abused, and still look and function and behave in the same ways. It's not always clear which is which, especially to the person having the fragility-reaction, let alone to onlookers.

I really want to discuss the book somewhere, because there's so much *deeply wrong* with it, and also so much *deeply right* about it, often at the same time, that she is almost an example of the Thing She Is Trying To Describe.

I don't know that ILX is that place, tho.

I think there are some ways around the pre-determining! Depending on the context. One thing I notice is she talks about how it doesn't matter how you deliver the critique/content/answer. Whether its 'shrill' or 'pleasant' doesn't really matter (and associated questions of tone policing etc which is sort of a red herring)

This is well covered ground, but I think misses something crucial. These are all variants of delivering Answers (to people who don't want to hear them?). The style and format may change but the mechanism is the same. Leading with answers is really tough and generally doesn't work! I think you have to lead with Questions where possible, open questions with interest in the answer. This is how guards are dropped, where the 'ins' are. That you have to show you're listening to someone else, before expecting they're going to listen to you

I was thinking about the guy that wrote the Trump Train song there was an interesting piece on him, will try find it

I really want to discuss the book somewhere, because there's so much *deeply wrong* with it, and also so much *deeply right* about it, often at the same time, that she is almost an example of the Thing She Is Trying To Describe.

I read an article about the author and the book recently, and I actually have been meaning to get the book and read it. ... I must have been on a sociological bender that day because it also reminds me of that thing I read that people were sharing about "ask culture" vs. "guess culture" -- which definitely plays a role in conflict and assertions/assumptions of abuse

Couldn't work out why I'd also read that piece - someone linked it on the I May Destroy You thread
Sounds interesting!

This one, yeah? https://www.thecut.com/2020/08/sarah-schulman-conflict-is-not-abuse.html

It ended up on a couple of ILX threads (I thought it was posted on this one, but I guess not).

I was really expecting to enjoy it, because we've read a lot of Sarah Schulman in queer theory reading groups, and she's generally very smart. But reading this book was such a frustrating experience - I got out a pencil and started arguing with her in the margains. Just skip the first chapter, it is *terrible*, but there is a lot to be gained out of the rest of it, but what you can get out of it is generally better absorbed (for someone of Gen X or below) by reading Captain Awkward and living the maxim of "Use Your Words". (pretty sure Ask Culture vs Guess Culture is also something that came out of Captain Awkward, and super useful as a way of understanding or avoiding conflict.)

1) Her insane Boomer insistence that telephone calls are 'real' and 'authentic' and 'totally unmediated' but emails, texts, chat, blogging, etc. are somehow 'inauthentic' and 'over-mediated' and ~inherently problematic~. Please understand how people communicate today, rather than blanket dismissing any technology that arrived after you turned 35.
2) She flat-out accepts without interrogating in any way, the shitty right wing boomer assertion that 'triggered' means 'mildly upset, annoyed or uncomfortable' in a way that totally diminishes the impact of the more proper and specific psychological usage of 'triggered' in a PTSD sense. In a book about overcoming collective trauma, this kind of mis-use of terminology *MATTERS*.
3) Because of number 2, of course she doesn't understand what Trigger Warnings are, or what they're for. No, they don't mean that students can refuse to read things they find 'upsetting' - it means you provide context and warning, so that people with trauma backgrounds can choose when and how and in what state to interact with material that may cause damage if they are blindsided by it.
4) The level of accountability and authenticity that she demands from even casual friends sounds, frankly, exhausting! No; a person who has cancelled a lunch date during a busy trip does NOT owe you a 20-minute FEELINGSCONVERSATION via telephone. She seems to think that boundaries are something bad, used to punish people, in a way that often sounds... wow, Sarah Schulman seems like a small doses friend.
5) Her repeated insistence on privileging spoken speech acts over written speech acts is... really, super autistic unfriendly. Not everyone is neurotypical, Sarah!
6) just reproducing verbatim arguments that people had on your Facebook wall is a lazy bad way of rounding out a chapter. Ugh.

And it's a shame, because she is actually getting at the core of something important - *dealing* with collective trauma, among marginalised people, and explaining the mechanics of the victim-bully switch, how people who have been frequently bullied, traumatised and victimised, *DO* often turn around to lash out at others. This is a real and genuine psychological phenomenon - however, the psychological term for this phenomenon is not 'Triggering', it is a form of 'Projection'.

People who have a history of being traumatised or abused *are* often lacking in the psychological tools necessary to handle normal conflict. When your life has been one long series of events of being unjustly attacked, any kind of conflict *does* start to look like an attack. And learning to use your words, ask questions, go back and re-read (and I *do* mean re-read, it's much easier to get distance and re-read written text, than it is to ask someone to please re-state what you just misheard.) is a big part of recovery from trauma, and learning skills to discern Conflict from Abuse (good faith from bad faith, in the context of this thread) is a neccessary skill to learn.

The chapter on domestic abuse (what is abuse? it is "power over") is great. The chapter on the abusive dynamics that can develop in queer and specifically lesbian relationships, is phenomenal - in a way that heterosexual advice paradigms just do not fit. Her reflections on collective shunning as a form of abuse are absolutely on point, and reflect a lot on ILX during the Suggest Ban era. Her comments, as a Jewish woman, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seem, to a total outsider, really astute, and show a complex and nuanced understanding of the issues.

But you have to read through so much lazy-bad ok boomer assumption to get to those points that... well, I do wish that someone else I know and trust would read this and see if they had the same problems I did.