I liked the length, readability, and importance; happy to spend my reading budget on this.
Here are some thoughts I had:
You said, “the belief that persistent good faith disagreements are common would seem to be in bad faith!” and this tripped my alarm for gratuitous meta-leveling. Is that point essential to your thesis? Unless I read too quickly, it seems like you gave a bunch of reasons why that belief is wrong, then pointed out that it would seem to be in bad faith, but then didn’t really flesh out what the agenda/angle was. Was that intentional? Am I just stumbling over a joke I don’t understand?
I would be interested to read a whole post about how full-contact psychoanalysis can go well or poorly. I’ve seen it go well, but usually in ways that are noticeably bounded, so I think I’ll challenge the word “full” here. You meant this as an idealization/limiting case, right?
I feel like there is an implicit call to action here, which may not be right for everyone. I anticipate early adopters of Assuming Bad Faith to pay noticeable extra costs, and possibly also late adopters. I don’t have anything in particular in mind, just Chesterton’s Fence and hidden order type heuristics, plus some experience seeing intentional norm-setting go awry.
I liked the length, readability, and importance; happy to spend my reading budget on this.
Here are some thoughts I had:
You said, “the belief that persistent good faith disagreements are common would seem to be in bad faith!” and this tripped my alarm for gratuitous meta-leveling. Is that point essential to your thesis? Unless I read too quickly, it seems like you gave a bunch of reasons why that belief is wrong, then pointed out that it would seem to be in bad faith, but then didn’t really flesh out what the agenda/angle was. Was that intentional? Am I just stumbling over a joke I don’t understand?
I would be interested to read a whole post about how full-contact psychoanalysis can go well or poorly. I’ve seen it go well, but usually in ways that are noticeably bounded, so I think I’ll challenge the word “full” here. You meant this as an idealization/limiting case, right?
I feel like there is an implicit call to action here, which may not be right for everyone. I anticipate early adopters of Assuming Bad Faith to pay noticeable extra costs, and possibly also late adopters. I don’t have anything in particular in mind, just Chesterton’s Fence and hidden order type heuristics, plus some experience seeing intentional norm-setting go awry.
Agreed. Much better than Zack’s two recent posts of >20k words. Though I would give extra points if the essay was divided into subheadings.