The “Taboo bad faith” title doesn’t fit this post. I had hoped from the opening section that it was going in that direction, but it did not.
Most obviously, the post kept relying heavily on the terms “bad faith” and “good faith” and that conceptual distinction, rather than tabooing them.
But also, it doesn’t do the core intellectual work of replacing a pointer with its substance. In the opening scenario where someone accuses their conversation partner of bad faith, conveying something along the lines of ‘I disapprove of how you’re approaching this conversation so I’m leaving’, tabooing “bad faith” would mean articulating what pattern of behavior (they thought that) they saw and why disapproval & departure is an appropriate response. Zack doesn’t try to do this, he just abandons this scenario to talk about other things involving his definition of “bad faith”. (And similarly with “assume good faith”.) I briefly hoped that the post would go in the “taboo your words” direction, describing what was happening in that sort of scenario with a clarity and precision that would make the label “bad faith” seem crude by comparison, but it did not.
This post also doesn’t manage to avoid the main pitfall that tabooing a word is meant to prevent, where people talk past each other because they’re using the same word with different definitions. Even though he says at the start of the post that other people are using the term “bad/good faith” wrong according his understanding of the term, when he talks about the advice “assume good faith” he just plugs in his definition of “good faith” (and “assume”) without noting that he’s making an interpretation of what other people mean when they use the phrase and that they might mean something else. And similarly in other places like “being touchy about bad faith accusations seems counterproductive” and “the belief that persistent good faith disagreements are common would seem to be in bad faith”. When someone says “you’re acting in bad faith” are they claiming that you’re showing the thing that Zack means by “bad faith”? Keeping that sort of thing straight is rationality 101 stuff that tabooing words helps with, and which this post repeatedly stumbles over.
I am sort of confused at what you got from this post. You say “But also, it doesn’t do the core intellectual work of replacing a pointer with its substance.”, but, I think he explicitly does that here?
What does “bad faith” mean, though? It doesn’t mean “with ill intent.” Following Wikipedia, bad faith is “a sustained form of deception which consists of entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings while acting as if influenced by another.” The great encyclopedia goes on to provide examples: the solider who waves a flag of surrender but then fires when the enemy comes out of their trenches, the attorney who prosecutes a case she knows to be false, the representative of a company facing a labor dispute who comes to the negotiating table with no intent of compromising.
That is, bad faith is when someone’s apparent reasons for doing something aren’t the same as the real reasons. This is distinct from malign intent. The uniformed solider who shoots you without pretending to surrender is acting in good faith, because what you see is what you get: the man whose clothes indicate that his job is to try to kill you is, in fact, trying to kill you.
It feels like you wanted some entirely different post, about how to navigate when someone accuses someone of bad faith, for a variety of possible definitions of bad faith? (As opposed to this post, which is mostly saying “Avoid accusing people of bad faith. Instead, do some kind of more specific and useful thing.” Which honestly seems like good advice to me even for most people who are using the phrase to mean something else. “I disapprove of what you’re doing here and am leaving now” seems totally fine)
I’ve been trying to avoid the terms “good faith” and “bad faith”. I’m suspicious that most people who have picked up the phrase “bad faith” from hearing it used, don’t actually know what it means—and maybe, that the thing it does mean doesn’t carve reality at the joints.
People get very touchy about bad faith accusations: they think that you should assume good faith, but that if you’ve determined someone is in bad faith, you shouldn’t even be talking to them, that you need to exile them.
The second paragraph uses the term “bad faith” or “good faith” three times. What substance is it pointing to?
AFAICT the post never fleshes this out. The ‘hidden motives’ definition that Zack gave fleshes out his understanding of the term, which is different from what these people mean.
Tabooing words, when different people are using the word differently, typically means giving substance to both meanings (e.g. “acoustic vibrations” and “auditory experiences” for sound).
If Zack wanted to set aside the question of what other people mean by “bad faith” and just think about some things using his understanding of the term, then he could’ve done that. (To me that seems less interesting than also engaging with what other people mean by the term, and it would’ve made it a bit strange to start the post this way, but it still seems like a fine direction to go.) That’s not what this post did, though. It keeps coming back to what other people think about bad faith, without tracking that there are different meanings.
Consider this from Zack: “The conviction that “bad faith” is unusual contributes to a warped view of the world”. This is more on the topic of what other people think about “bad faith”. Which meaning of “bad faith” is it using? If it means Zack’s ‘hidden motives’ definition then it’s unclear if people do have the conviction that that’s unusual, because when people use the words “bad faith” that’s not what they’re talking about. If it means whatever people do mean by the words “bad faith”, then we’re back to discussing some substance that hasn’t been fleshed out, and it’s unclear if their conviction that it’s rare contributes to a warped view of the world because it’s unclear what that conviction even is.
Okay I think I have more of an idea where you’re coming from. (although I get some sense of something being at stake for you here that I still don’t understand).
I maybe want to clarify, when I suggested “taboo bad faith” as a title, I was imagining a pretty different purpose for the title (and I don’t super strongly defend that title as a good one here). I was looking for a succinct way of describing the suggestion “when you want to accuse someone of bad faith, you should probably say something more specific instead.” (i.e. “Taboo Bad Faith” is a recommendation for what to do in the wild, rather than “a thing the post itself was doing.”)
The “Taboo bad faith” title doesn’t fit this post. I had hoped from the opening section that it was going in that direction, but it did not.
Most obviously, the post kept relying heavily on the terms “bad faith” and “good faith” and that conceptual distinction, rather than tabooing them.
But also, it doesn’t do the core intellectual work of replacing a pointer with its substance. In the opening scenario where someone accuses their conversation partner of bad faith, conveying something along the lines of ‘I disapprove of how you’re approaching this conversation so I’m leaving’, tabooing “bad faith” would mean articulating what pattern of behavior (they thought that) they saw and why disapproval & departure is an appropriate response. Zack doesn’t try to do this, he just abandons this scenario to talk about other things involving his definition of “bad faith”. (And similarly with “assume good faith”.) I briefly hoped that the post would go in the “taboo your words” direction, describing what was happening in that sort of scenario with a clarity and precision that would make the label “bad faith” seem crude by comparison, but it did not.
This post also doesn’t manage to avoid the main pitfall that tabooing a word is meant to prevent, where people talk past each other because they’re using the same word with different definitions. Even though he says at the start of the post that other people are using the term “bad/good faith” wrong according his understanding of the term, when he talks about the advice “assume good faith” he just plugs in his definition of “good faith” (and “assume”) without noting that he’s making an interpretation of what other people mean when they use the phrase and that they might mean something else. And similarly in other places like “being touchy about bad faith accusations seems counterproductive” and “the belief that persistent good faith disagreements are common would seem to be in bad faith”. When someone says “you’re acting in bad faith” are they claiming that you’re showing the thing that Zack means by “bad faith”? Keeping that sort of thing straight is rationality 101 stuff that tabooing words helps with, and which this post repeatedly stumbles over.
I am sort of confused at what you got from this post. You say “But also, it doesn’t do the core intellectual work of replacing a pointer with its substance.”, but, I think he explicitly does that here?
It feels like you wanted some entirely different post, about how to navigate when someone accuses someone of bad faith, for a variety of possible definitions of bad faith? (As opposed to this post, which is mostly saying “Avoid accusing people of bad faith. Instead, do some kind of more specific and useful thing.” Which honestly seems like good advice to me even for most people who are using the phrase to mean something else. “I disapprove of what you’re doing here and am leaving now” seems totally fine)
This post begins:
The second paragraph uses the term “bad faith” or “good faith” three times. What substance is it pointing to?
AFAICT the post never fleshes this out. The ‘hidden motives’ definition that Zack gave fleshes out his understanding of the term, which is different from what these people mean.
Tabooing words, when different people are using the word differently, typically means giving substance to both meanings (e.g. “acoustic vibrations” and “auditory experiences” for sound).
If Zack wanted to set aside the question of what other people mean by “bad faith” and just think about some things using his understanding of the term, then he could’ve done that. (To me that seems less interesting than also engaging with what other people mean by the term, and it would’ve made it a bit strange to start the post this way, but it still seems like a fine direction to go.) That’s not what this post did, though. It keeps coming back to what other people think about bad faith, without tracking that there are different meanings.
Consider this from Zack: “The conviction that “bad faith” is unusual contributes to a warped view of the world”. This is more on the topic of what other people think about “bad faith”. Which meaning of “bad faith” is it using? If it means Zack’s ‘hidden motives’ definition then it’s unclear if people do have the conviction that that’s unusual, because when people use the words “bad faith” that’s not what they’re talking about. If it means whatever people do mean by the words “bad faith”, then we’re back to discussing some substance that hasn’t been fleshed out, and it’s unclear if their conviction that it’s rare contributes to a warped view of the world because it’s unclear what that conviction even is.
Okay I think I have more of an idea where you’re coming from. (although I get some sense of something being at stake for you here that I still don’t understand).
I maybe want to clarify, when I suggested “taboo bad faith” as a title, I was imagining a pretty different purpose for the title (and I don’t super strongly defend that title as a good one here). I was looking for a succinct way of describing the suggestion “when you want to accuse someone of bad faith, you should probably say something more specific instead.” (i.e. “Taboo Bad Faith” is a recommendation for what to do in the wild, rather than “a thing the post itself was doing.”)