6 ms·

Alas, claiming that your opponent discusses things in bad faith is often the simplest way to get the upper hand.

rtkwe 6y ago
It's easier to believe when from your understanding of the world the other side is blatantly lying and misrepresenting things. It forms a bit of a positive feedback loop where seeing bad intentions leads you to being less likely to give slack so you see more bad intentions. From the left looking rightward at Fox News and many local stations (increasingly owned by and forced to run identical scripts from Sinclair Broadcasting) [0] at the response and the response to the response to coronavirus for example it's hard to ascribe that to just a different interpretation of facts. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxtkvG1JnPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxtkvG1JnPk
- bobthechef 6y ago
  You do realize that the "other side" has the same EXACT perception of you, right? It would be nice if people were a bit more skeptical of their preferred news outlets and opinion makers. What I see instead is the continuing existence of the same bubble that led to the shock and surprise at Trump's election. An absolute refusal or inability to consider other views, an inability to interpret events in historical context and with a healthy dose of common sense.
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    No, of course, I never thought about the perception from the other side. Yes I know that, I believe the things I do though because I either think they're correct, they should be correct, or I hope they'll be right some day, I think I've considered and synthesized information from various sources not just one or a small few. I get that my whole world view is a conglomeration of what I was taught, when I grew up, what I've read etc. but if I didn't think I was at least partially right why would I believe it. It's not even strictly about the news itself, the underlying philosophy that tilts the news and policy choices seems like it's missing or ignoring a piece of reality. [0] The further from my view the more alien the terrain seems and the less any of the logic makes sense because the priors are so different. Why do we keep swinging back and forth on banking regulations (or business regulation in general) when fundamentally the incentives haven't changed? [0] Again I get that this is probably what a Conservative feels too but I don't know how to bridge the conceptual gap between the ideological poles here. I went into CS because I can reasonably understand what twiddling a given knob will do and I can control the scope of problems. I have no idea how to even start twiddling societal knobs.
    - nickff 6y ago
      Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" is a good start.
    - throwaways885 6y ago
      > I get that my whole world view is a conglomeration of what I was taught, when I grew up, what I've read etc. but if I didn't think I was at least partially right why would I believe it. Everyone believes this. It becomes dangerous when we start assuming these are the correct beliefs. > I don't know how to bridge the conceptual gap between the ideological poles here. Just talk to conservatives, in my experience they're willing to listen.
      - InitialLastName 6y ago
        Might I add that I've had and seen much more success talking to people outside of social media, where people of every political persuasion seem more concerned with performative outrage (makes sense, since that's what social media is designed to encourage).
        throwaways885 6y ago
        oh, for sure! Humans just aren't designed to communicate in a one-to-millions paradigm, and it shows strongly in the political divide we all face.
      - NortySpock 6y ago
        And finding common ground is still easy: "It's bad/unfortunate when police kill people", "It would be good if we could feed and clothe the homeless", "It would be good if more people had access to healthcare" are statements that most people will agree with. "What laws, mechanisms and tools do we use to achieve those goals?" and "How do we pay for it?" -- that's where you run into differing opinions.
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    Conservative perceptions of their opponents have very little basis in reality as most of what conservatives perceive regarding their opponents is projection intended to deflect from their own misbehavior. Conservative messaging is driven almost exclusively by fabricated outrage for which there is no non-conservative equivalent; non-conservative messaging is driven by outrage over actual conservative behavior. Non-conservative media spreads outrage at factual abuses of power by conservative elites (such as the dismantling democratic norms, or police brutality) while conservative media creates outrage by giving voice to fabricated controversies created over trivialities, such as over tan suits and arugula, or by amplifying non-genuine controversies manufactured by astroturf groups. There's no more of an equivalency between conservative and non-conservative media any more than there's an equivalency between actual public health experts and the kind of people who think injecting bleach cures COVID-19. There is such a thing as objective reality and the history of the past forty years of conservative politics is a history of conservatives abandoning objective reality in favor of delusions they find comforting.
    - throwaways885 6y ago
      > There is such a thing as objective reality and the history of the past forty years of conservative politics is a history of conservatives abandoning objective reality in favor of delusions they find comforting. Again, "the other side" has the exact same concerns about your tribe.
      - bleepblorp 6y ago
        Again, just because conservatives (or anyone else) strongly believes something does not make it true. Take the conservative position on climate change, for instance, which over the past forty years has degenerated from 'there's not enough of a consensus to act' through 'it's happening but it's not human caused' to 'the science is a Chinese conspiracy theory to destroy America.' Also note the increasing fondness of senior Republican figures, from Trump downwards, for Q-anon and it's associated conspiracy theories. Notably, there's no Democratic Q-anon equivalent of any statute. Finally, while in office, Trump has told upwards of 20,000 lies regarding objective facts[0]. There's no equivalent lie count for Obama, Biden, or any other prominent non-conservative in very large part because they, unlike prominent conservatives, accept that objective reality exists and see their duty as finding a way to cope with it. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/13/president-trump-has-made-more-than-20000-false-or-misleading-claims/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/13/president...
  - wolfram74 6y ago
    I don't doubt conservatives feel like liberals believe in nothing but power, and I'm sure the left has a few marks against it on that count. But I'd appreciate a few examples of them behaving in such a manner as knowingly lying about how deadly a disease is and then having large crowded in door events shortly afterwards[0]. It's easy to manufacture a narative that has the left drinking the blood of babies, but how much support is there for some large scale malicious thing? https://www.npr.org/2020/09/09/911109247/trump-admitted-to-playing-down-the-coronaviruss-severity-per-new-book https://www.npr.org/2020/09/09/911109247/trump-admitted-to-p...
    - scottlocklin 6y ago
      >I'd appreciate a few examples of them behaving in such a manner as knowingly lying about how deadly a disease is and then having large crowded .... Lol are you shitting me? Didn't you notice the mobs of leftist chuckleheads, erm, I mean "anti-racism activists" burning the cities down over the last couple of months, complete with excuses for why it's not REALLY a covid transmission problem, and, like business owners have insurance so it's not REALLY destroying livelihoods and property; where Trump rallies or jaunts to the beach or going to the hairdresser or a sit-down restaurant totally are covid transmission death cesspits you evil racist bigots[0]. There are hundreds of articles, thousands of memes making fun of what is obviously a completely ridiculous pair of ideas to hold in one brain, but which left leaning people in America seem universally to self-seriously hold. The fact of the matter is, the right was more correct than the left when it comes to Covid; it's mostly a nothingburger unless you're over 70. Even the CDC says so at this point[1]. Of course, other than people like Ioannidis, they were correct via instinct rather than statistics. That's kind of the point of conservatism. It's a basket of prejudices with known survival advantage. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-evaluate-coronavirus-risks-from-black-lives-matter-protests/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-evaluate-c... [1]https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena... Death rates (mind you, among lardy diabetic americans): 0-19 years: 0.00003 20-49 years: 0.0002 50-69 years: 0.005 70+ years: 0.054
      - chownie 6y ago
watwut 6y ago
There is however such thing as bad faith. Yes, the claim that opponent argues in bad faith itself can be don in bad faith. But, when the discussion is actually in bad faith, you wont solve the issue by pretending to yourself that it was in good faith.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Discussing, especially online or in politics, is often not for convincing your conversation partner, but for convincing the silent readers. I feel like this objective is more easily reached if you always assume good faith arguments.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I agree with first part but not with second. If you recognize bad faith argument and treat it as such, you can show why it is bad faith. If you don't recognize it that way, you will argue circles or leave implied lies unaddressed.

It's easier to believe when from your understanding of the world the other side is blatantly lying and misrepresenting things. It forms a bit of a positive feedback loop where seeing bad intentions leads you to being less likely to give slack so you see more bad intentions. From the left looking rightward at Fox News and many local stations (increasingly owned by and forced to run identical scripts from Sinclair Broadcasting) [0] at the response and the response to the response to coronavirus for example it's hard to ascribe that to just a different interpretation of facts. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxtkvG1JnPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxtkvG1JnPk

bobthechef 6y ago
You do realize that the "other side" has the same EXACT perception of you, right? It would be nice if people were a bit more skeptical of their preferred news outlets and opinion makers. What I see instead is the continuing existence of the same bubble that led to the shock and surprise at Trump's election. An absolute refusal or inability to consider other views, an inability to interpret events in historical context and with a healthy dose of common sense.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  No, of course, I never thought about the perception from the other side. Yes I know that, I believe the things I do though because I either think they're correct, they should be correct, or I hope they'll be right some day, I think I've considered and synthesized information from various sources not just one or a small few. I get that my whole world view is a conglomeration of what I was taught, when I grew up, what I've read etc. but if I didn't think I was at least partially right why would I believe it. It's not even strictly about the news itself, the underlying philosophy that tilts the news and policy choices seems like it's missing or ignoring a piece of reality. [0] The further from my view the more alien the terrain seems and the less any of the logic makes sense because the priors are so different. Why do we keep swinging back and forth on banking regulations (or business regulation in general) when fundamentally the incentives haven't changed? [0] Again I get that this is probably what a Conservative feels too but I don't know how to bridge the conceptual gap between the ideological poles here. I went into CS because I can reasonably understand what twiddling a given knob will do and I can control the scope of problems. I have no idea how to even start twiddling societal knobs.
  - nickff 6y ago
    Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" is a good start.
  - throwaways885 6y ago
    > I get that my whole world view is a conglomeration of what I was taught, when I grew up, what I've read etc. but if I didn't think I was at least partially right why would I believe it. Everyone believes this. It becomes dangerous when we start assuming these are the correct beliefs. > I don't know how to bridge the conceptual gap between the ideological poles here. Just talk to conservatives, in my experience they're willing to listen.
    - InitialLastName 6y ago
      Might I add that I've had and seen much more success talking to people outside of social media, where people of every political persuasion seem more concerned with performative outrage (makes sense, since that's what social media is designed to encourage).
      - throwaways885 6y ago
        oh, for sure! Humans just aren't designed to communicate in a one-to-millions paradigm, and it shows strongly in the political divide we all face.
    - NortySpock 6y ago
      And finding common ground is still easy: "It's bad/unfortunate when police kill people", "It would be good if we could feed and clothe the homeless", "It would be good if more people had access to healthcare" are statements that most people will agree with. "What laws, mechanisms and tools do we use to achieve those goals?" and "How do we pay for it?" -- that's where you run into differing opinions.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  Conservative perceptions of their opponents have very little basis in reality as most of what conservatives perceive regarding their opponents is projection intended to deflect from their own misbehavior. Conservative messaging is driven almost exclusively by fabricated outrage for which there is no non-conservative equivalent; non-conservative messaging is driven by outrage over actual conservative behavior. Non-conservative media spreads outrage at factual abuses of power by conservative elites (such as the dismantling democratic norms, or police brutality) while conservative media creates outrage by giving voice to fabricated controversies created over trivialities, such as over tan suits and arugula, or by amplifying non-genuine controversies manufactured by astroturf groups. There's no more of an equivalency between conservative and non-conservative media any more than there's an equivalency between actual public health experts and the kind of people who think injecting bleach cures COVID-19. There is such a thing as objective reality and the history of the past forty years of conservative politics is a history of conservatives abandoning objective reality in favor of delusions they find comforting.
  - throwaways885 6y ago
    > There is such a thing as objective reality and the history of the past forty years of conservative politics is a history of conservatives abandoning objective reality in favor of delusions they find comforting. Again, "the other side" has the exact same concerns about your tribe.
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
      Again, just because conservatives (or anyone else) strongly believes something does not make it true. Take the conservative position on climate change, for instance, which over the past forty years has degenerated from 'there's not enough of a consensus to act' through 'it's happening but it's not human caused' to 'the science is a Chinese conspiracy theory to destroy America.' Also note the increasing fondness of senior Republican figures, from Trump downwards, for Q-anon and it's associated conspiracy theories. Notably, there's no Democratic Q-anon equivalent of any statute. Finally, while in office, Trump has told upwards of 20,000 lies regarding objective facts[0]. There's no equivalent lie count for Obama, Biden, or any other prominent non-conservative in very large part because they, unlike prominent conservatives, accept that objective reality exists and see their duty as finding a way to cope with it. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/13/president-trump-has-made-more-than-20000-false-or-misleading-claims/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/13/president...
- wolfram74 6y ago
  I don't doubt conservatives feel like liberals believe in nothing but power, and I'm sure the left has a few marks against it on that count. But I'd appreciate a few examples of them behaving in such a manner as knowingly lying about how deadly a disease is and then having large crowded in door events shortly afterwards[0]. It's easy to manufacture a narative that has the left drinking the blood of babies, but how much support is there for some large scale malicious thing? https://www.npr.org/2020/09/09/911109247/trump-admitted-to-playing-down-the-coronaviruss-severity-per-new-book https://www.npr.org/2020/09/09/911109247/trump-admitted-to-p...
  - scottlocklin 6y ago
    >I'd appreciate a few examples of them behaving in such a manner as knowingly lying about how deadly a disease is and then having large crowded .... Lol are you shitting me? Didn't you notice the mobs of leftist chuckleheads, erm, I mean "anti-racism activists" burning the cities down over the last couple of months, complete with excuses for why it's not REALLY a covid transmission problem, and, like business owners have insurance so it's not REALLY destroying livelihoods and property; where Trump rallies or jaunts to the beach or going to the hairdresser or a sit-down restaurant totally are covid transmission death cesspits you evil racist bigots[0]. There are hundreds of articles, thousands of memes making fun of what is obviously a completely ridiculous pair of ideas to hold in one brain, but which left leaning people in America seem universally to self-seriously hold. The fact of the matter is, the right was more correct than the left when it comes to Covid; it's mostly a nothingburger unless you're over 70. Even the CDC says so at this point[1]. Of course, other than people like Ioannidis, they were correct via instinct rather than statistics. That's kind of the point of conservatism. It's a basket of prejudices with known survival advantage. [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-evaluate-coronavirus-risks-from-black-lives-matter-protests/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-evaluate-c... [1]https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena... Death rates (mind you, among lardy diabetic americans): 0-19 years: 0.00003 20-49 years: 0.0002 50-69 years: 0.005 70+ years: 0.054
    - chownie 6y ago

watwut 6y ago

There is however such thing as bad faith. Yes, the claim that opponent argues in bad faith itself can be don in bad faith. But, when the discussion is actually in bad faith, you wont solve the issue by pretending to yourself that it was in good faith.

adrianN 6y ago
Discussing, especially online or in politics, is often not for convincing your conversation partner, but for convincing the silent readers. I feel like this objective is more easily reached if you always assume good faith arguments.
- watwut 6y ago
  I agree with first part but not with second. If you recognize bad faith argument and treat it as such, you can show why it is bad faith. If you don't recognize it that way, you will argue circles or leave implied lies unaddressed.