But I thought the central point of this post was to argue that we should stop using “bad faith” as a reason for walking away?
My sense was Zack mostly wasn’t talking about walking away, but instead talking about how people should relate to conversational moves when trying to form beliefs.
I do think “when to walk away” is a pretty important question not addressed here.
I think maybe… “this seems like bad faith” might be too specific of a reason? If you can’t list a more specific reason, like “you seem biased in way-X which is causing problem-Z”, then I think it might be worse to latch onto “bad faith” as the problem rather than “idk, this just feels off/wrong to me but I can’t explain why exactly.”
A related issue not addressed here is “What to do when someone is persistently generating ‘distractions’ that many people feel initially persuaded by, and which take time to unravel?”. Alice says [distracting thing], Bob says “that doesn’t seem relevant / I think you’re trying to distract us because X”, and then Charlie says “well, I dunno I think distracting thing is relevant”, and Bob patiently explains “but it’s not actually relevant because Y”, and Charlie says “oh, yeah I guess” and then Alice says [another distracting thing], and Charlie (or Dave) says “yeah that does seem relevant too” and Bob says “aaaaugh do you guys not see the pattern of Alice saying subtly wrong things that seem persistently avoiding the issue?”
Zack says in his intro that “[people think] that if you’ve determined someone is in bad faith, you shouldn’t even be talking to them, that you need to exile them” and then makes the counter-claim that “being touchy about bad faith accusations seems counterproductive...it shouldn’t be beyond the pale to think that of some particular person, nor should it necessarily entail cutting the ‘bad faith actor’ out of public life.”
That sounds to me like a claim that you shouldn’t use bad faith as a reason to disengage. Admittedly terms like “exile” have implications of punishment, while “walk away” has implications of cutting your losses, but in both cases the actual action being taken is “stop talking to them”, right?
Also note that Zack starts with the premise that “bad faith” refers to both deception and bias, and then addresses a “deception only” interpretation later on as a possible counter-claim. I normally use “bad faith” to mean deception (not mere bias), my impression is that’s how most people use it most of the time, and that’s the version I’m defending.
(Though strong bias might also be a reason to walk away in some cases. I am not claiming that deception is the only reason to ever walk away.)
I’ll grant that “just walk away from deceivers” is a bit simplistic. I think a full treatment of this issue would need to consider several different goals you might have in the conversation (e.g. convincing the other side, convincing an audience, gathering evidence for yourself) and how the deception would interact with each of them, which seems like it would require a post-length analysis. But I don’t think “treat it the same as bias” is strategically correct in most cases.
My sense was Zack mostly wasn’t talking about walking away, but instead talking about how people should relate to conversational moves when trying to form beliefs.
I do think “when to walk away” is a pretty important question not addressed here.
I think maybe… “this seems like bad faith” might be too specific of a reason? If you can’t list a more specific reason, like “you seem biased in way-X which is causing problem-Z”, then I think it might be worse to latch onto “bad faith” as the problem rather than “idk, this just feels off/wrong to me but I can’t explain why exactly.”
A related issue not addressed here is “What to do when someone is persistently generating ‘distractions’ that many people feel initially persuaded by, and which take time to unravel?”. Alice says [distracting thing], Bob says “that doesn’t seem relevant / I think you’re trying to distract us because X”, and then Charlie says “well, I dunno I think distracting thing is relevant”, and Bob patiently explains “but it’s not actually relevant because Y”, and Charlie says “oh, yeah I guess” and then Alice says [another distracting thing], and Charlie (or Dave) says “yeah that does seem relevant too” and Bob says “aaaaugh do you guys not see the pattern of Alice saying subtly wrong things that seem persistently avoiding the issue?”
Zack says in his intro that “[people think] that if you’ve determined someone is in bad faith, you shouldn’t even be talking to them, that you need to exile them” and then makes the counter-claim that “being touchy about bad faith accusations seems counterproductive...it shouldn’t be beyond the pale to think that of some particular person, nor should it necessarily entail cutting the ‘bad faith actor’ out of public life.”
That sounds to me like a claim that you shouldn’t use bad faith as a reason to disengage. Admittedly terms like “exile” have implications of punishment, while “walk away” has implications of cutting your losses, but in both cases the actual action being taken is “stop talking to them”, right?
Also note that Zack starts with the premise that “bad faith” refers to both deception and bias, and then addresses a “deception only” interpretation later on as a possible counter-claim. I normally use “bad faith” to mean deception (not mere bias), my impression is that’s how most people use it most of the time, and that’s the version I’m defending.
(Though strong bias might also be a reason to walk away in some cases. I am not claiming that deception is the only reason to ever walk away.)
I’ll grant that “just walk away from deceivers” is a bit simplistic. I think a full treatment of this issue would need to consider several different goals you might have in the conversation (e.g. convincing the other side, convincing an audience, gathering evidence for yourself) and how the deception would interact with each of them, which seems like it would require a post-length analysis. But I don’t think “treat it the same as bias” is strategically correct in most cases.