I think it’s worth distinguishing the general phenomenon where people can have opposed interests to varying degrees (which happens everywhere) from the more specific question of what attitude a person should have or does have towards the people they’re arguing with.
Your interests and those of a police officer who’s just pulled you over for speeding (or, staying closer to Zack’s example, the interests of more-bribeable and less-bribeable police officers in such a situation) may be more or less in conflict with one another, but I don’t see how it helps anything to try to fit that into the same framework as we use for assessing different attitudes to political debate.
There’s definitely lots of distinctions that can be made. The aspect of conflict that I find most important to know about is the “epistemic” part of it. Basically, does Aumann’s agreement theorem apply?
In ordinary non-conflict conversations such as asking someone you are visiting where you can get a cup of water, you can simply copy other’s beliefs and do reasonably well, whereas in conflict conversations such as politics, copying your opponent’s beliefs about factual matters is a serious security vulnerability.
(It doesn’t seem uncommon for mistake theorists to come up with explanations of why Aumann’s agreement theorem wouldn’t apply to politics despite both sides being honest, but nobody has come up with compelling explanations, whereas the conflict theory analysis of it seems compelling and commonly for people to self-endorse.)
I think it’s worth distinguishing the general phenomenon where people can have opposed interests to varying degrees (which happens everywhere) from the more specific question of what attitude a person should have or does have towards the people they’re arguing with.
Your interests and those of a police officer who’s just pulled you over for speeding (or, staying closer to Zack’s example, the interests of more-bribeable and less-bribeable police officers in such a situation) may be more or less in conflict with one another, but I don’t see how it helps anything to try to fit that into the same framework as we use for assessing different attitudes to political debate.
There’s definitely lots of distinctions that can be made. The aspect of conflict that I find most important to know about is the “epistemic” part of it. Basically, does Aumann’s agreement theorem apply?
In ordinary non-conflict conversations such as asking someone you are visiting where you can get a cup of water, you can simply copy other’s beliefs and do reasonably well, whereas in conflict conversations such as politics, copying your opponent’s beliefs about factual matters is a serious security vulnerability.
(It doesn’t seem uncommon for mistake theorists to come up with explanations of why Aumann’s agreement theorem wouldn’t apply to politics despite both sides being honest, but nobody has come up with compelling explanations, whereas the conflict theory analysis of it seems compelling and commonly for people to self-endorse.)