This may just be a definition thing. I want to use “adversarial” to mean something more than “not maximally cooperative”. I’d describe a position that wants the other party to lose or fail as adversarial. Like, in a zero-sum game, the players are adversaries because one’s win is the other’s loss.
Ceasing to contribute to someone else’s project doesn’t mean you want them to lose, or benefit from their losing; it just means you don’t want to help them win quite as much as you did before.
And publicly objecting to someone’s behavior doesn’t mean you want them to lose; it just means you wish they would change their behavior.
That’s the sense in which I read “adversarial”. Under some different definition, like “not maximally cooperative” or “expressing disapproval”, sure, it could be “adversarial”.
Yeah, I’m not sure English has a word or even phrase which crisply points to expressing displeasure through the performative withdrawal of previous support (e.g. “performative” in the phrase I used is denotationally correct but has the wrong connotations). Perhaps “conspicuous withdrawal of patronage”? Doesn’t carry any misleading connotations but feels pretty clunky.
This may just be a definition thing. I want to use “adversarial” to mean something more than “not maximally cooperative”. I’d describe a position that wants the other party to lose or fail as adversarial. Like, in a zero-sum game, the players are adversaries because one’s win is the other’s loss.
Ceasing to contribute to someone else’s project doesn’t mean you want them to lose, or benefit from their losing; it just means you don’t want to help them win quite as much as you did before.
And publicly objecting to someone’s behavior doesn’t mean you want them to lose; it just means you wish they would change their behavior.
That’s the sense in which I read “adversarial”. Under some different definition, like “not maximally cooperative” or “expressing disapproval”, sure, it could be “adversarial”.
Yeah, I’m not sure English has a word or even phrase which crisply points to expressing displeasure through the performative withdrawal of previous support (e.g. “performative” in the phrase I used is denotationally correct but has the wrong connotations). Perhaps “conspicuous withdrawal of patronage”? Doesn’t carry any misleading connotations but feels pretty clunky.