I agree that self-deception is common. But there are at least three reasons why assuming good faith is still a useful strategy:
You shouldn’t just think of the assumption of good faith as a reaction to other people’s lack of self-deception; you should also think of it as a way of mitigating your own self-deception. If you assume bad faith, then it’s very easy to talk yourself into doing all sorts of uncharitable or uncooperative rhetorical moves, like lying to them, or yelling at them, or telling them that they only have their position because they’re a bad person. You can tell yourself that you need to work around the self-deceptive parts of them, by pushing the right buttons to make the interaction productive. Yet a lot of these rhetorical moves will in fact be driven by your own hidden motivations, like your desire to avoid backing down, or your desire to punish the outgroup. So assuming good faith gives those motivations less cover.
Discussions are an iterated game, and it’s easy for one person to accidentally do something which is interpreted by the other as a sign of bad faith, which causes the second person to respond in kind, and so on. Assuming good faith is like adding (limited) amounts of forgiveness to this tit for tat interaction.
While everyone has hidden motives, it’s hard to know which hidden motives are at play in any given discussion. So when Zack says “This is difficult to pull off, which is why most people most of the time should stick to the object level”, this can be seen as another way of saying “actually, as a strong heuristic, assume good faith”.
Having said all this: some people should assume more good faith than they currently do; others less; and it’s hard to know where the line is.
I agree that self-deception is common. But there are at least three reasons why assuming good faith is still a useful strategy:
You shouldn’t just think of the assumption of good faith as a reaction to other people’s lack of self-deception; you should also think of it as a way of mitigating your own self-deception. If you assume bad faith, then it’s very easy to talk yourself into doing all sorts of uncharitable or uncooperative rhetorical moves, like lying to them, or yelling at them, or telling them that they only have their position because they’re a bad person. You can tell yourself that you need to work around the self-deceptive parts of them, by pushing the right buttons to make the interaction productive. Yet a lot of these rhetorical moves will in fact be driven by your own hidden motivations, like your desire to avoid backing down, or your desire to punish the outgroup. So assuming good faith gives those motivations less cover.
Discussions are an iterated game, and it’s easy for one person to accidentally do something which is interpreted by the other as a sign of bad faith, which causes the second person to respond in kind, and so on. Assuming good faith is like adding (limited) amounts of forgiveness to this tit for tat interaction.
While everyone has hidden motives, it’s hard to know which hidden motives are at play in any given discussion. So when Zack says “This is difficult to pull off, which is why most people most of the time should stick to the object level”, this can be seen as another way of saying “actually, as a strong heuristic, assume good faith”.
Having said all this: some people should assume more good faith than they currently do; others less; and it’s hard to know where the line is.