I fully agree with the initial premise that bias is common. I don’t see how this supports your conclusions; especially:
(1) You say that the difference between bias and deception is uninteresting, because the main case where you might care is that bias is more likely to fold against strong counter-argument. But isn’t this case exactly what people are using it for?
If I’m having a disagreement with you, and I think I could make a strong argument (at some cost in time/effort), then the question of whether you will fold to a strong argument seems like the central question in the decision to either make that argument or simply walk away.
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?
(2) In your final example (where I point out that you’ve contradicted yourself and you say “look, a distraction!”), I don’t see how either of your proposed responses would prevent you from continuing with “look, another distraction!”
You suggest we could stick to the object level and then the process emitting the outputs would be irrelevant. But whether we’re caught in an infinite loop seems pretty important to me, and that depends crucially on whether the distraction was strategic (in which case you’ll repeat it as often as you find it helpful) or inadvertent (in which case I can probably get you back on topic).
If you are committed to giving serious consideration to everything your interlocutor says, then a bad actor can tie you up indefinitely just by continuing to say new things. If you don’t want to be tied up indefinitely, your strategy needs to include someway of ending the conversation even when the other guy doesn’t cooperate.
(3) In your example of a pseudo-disagreement (about expanding a factory into wetlands), you say it’s inefficient that the conflict is disguised as a disagreement. But your example seems perfectly tailored to show that the participants should use that disguise anyway, because the parties aren’t engaged in a negotiation (where the goal is to reach a compromise) they are engaged in a contest before a judge (the regulatory commission) who has predetermined to decide the issue based on how it affects the avian life. If either side admits that the other side is correct about the question of fact then the judge will decide against them.
Complaining that this is inefficient seems a bit like complaining that it is inefficient for the destruction of factories to reduce a country’s capacity for war, and war would be more efficient if there were no incentives to destroy factories. The participants in a war cannot just decide that factories shouldn’t affect war capacity; that was decided by the laws of physics.
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.
If you don’t want to be tied up indefinitely, your strategy needs to include some way of ending the conversation even when the other guy doesn’t cooperate.
I agree and I think all these strategies have that:
Stick to the object level → “We are going in circles, goodbye”. This is “meta” in that it is a conversation about the conversation, but it matches Zach’s description of the strategy: it does not address the speaker’s angle in raising distractions, and sticks to the object level that the distractions have no merit as arguments.
Full-contact psychoanalysis → “I see that you don’t want to be pinned down, and probably resolving this contradiction today would be too damaging to your self image. I have now sufficiently demonstrated my intellectual dominance over you to those around us, and I am leaving to find a more emotionally fulfilling conversation with someone more conventionally attractive”. Maybe someone who thinks this is a good strategy can give better words here. But yes, you sure can exit conversations while speculating about the inner motivations of the person you are speaking too.
Assume good faith → “You seem very distractible today, let’s continue this tomorrow. Have a great evening!”. This isn’t much of a stretch. Sometimes people are tired, or stressed, or are running low on their stimulant of choice, and then they’re hard to keep focused on a topic, and it’s best to give up and try again later. Possibly opening with a different conversational strategy.
If I tell you that the local bar is giving out free beer tonight, because I just made that up, have I committed deliberate deception? I don’t know that that statement is false. I just have no knowledge at all about the state of the bar tonight, coupled with some priors which suggest that free beer is unlikely. But if by “deception” you mean “I know X is false and I said X anyway”, I haven’t tried to deceive you at all.
So it doesn’t make sense to limit the concept of bad faith to deliberate deception.
I would consider that deliberate deception, yes. I interpret “deception” to mean something like “actions that are expected or intended to make someone’s beliefs less accurate”.
You would be deceiving someone regarding the strength of your belief. You know your belief is far weaker than can be supported by your statement, and in our general understanding of language a simple statement like ‘X is happening tonight’ is interpreted as having a strong degree of belief.
If you actually truly disagree with that, then it wouldn’t be deception, it would be miscommunication, but then again I don’t think someone who has trouble assessing approximate Bayesian belief from simple statements would be able to function in society at all.
I fully agree with the initial premise that bias is common. I don’t see how this supports your conclusions; especially:
(1) You say that the difference between bias and deception is uninteresting, because the main case where you might care is that bias is more likely to fold against strong counter-argument. But isn’t this case exactly what people are using it for?
If I’m having a disagreement with you, and I think I could make a strong argument (at some cost in time/effort), then the question of whether you will fold to a strong argument seems like the central question in the decision to either make that argument or simply walk away.
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?
(2) In your final example (where I point out that you’ve contradicted yourself and you say “look, a distraction!”), I don’t see how either of your proposed responses would prevent you from continuing with “look, another distraction!”
You suggest we could stick to the object level and then the process emitting the outputs would be irrelevant. But whether we’re caught in an infinite loop seems pretty important to me, and that depends crucially on whether the distraction was strategic (in which case you’ll repeat it as often as you find it helpful) or inadvertent (in which case I can probably get you back on topic).
If you are committed to giving serious consideration to everything your interlocutor says, then a bad actor can tie you up indefinitely just by continuing to say new things. If you don’t want to be tied up indefinitely, your strategy needs to include some way of ending the conversation even when the other guy doesn’t cooperate.
(3) In your example of a pseudo-disagreement (about expanding a factory into wetlands), you say it’s inefficient that the conflict is disguised as a disagreement. But your example seems perfectly tailored to show that the participants should use that disguise anyway, because the parties aren’t engaged in a negotiation (where the goal is to reach a compromise) they are engaged in a contest before a judge (the regulatory commission) who has predetermined to decide the issue based on how it affects the avian life. If either side admits that the other side is correct about the question of fact then the judge will decide against them.
Complaining that this is inefficient seems a bit like complaining that it is inefficient for the destruction of factories to reduce a country’s capacity for war, and war would be more efficient if there were no incentives to destroy factories. The participants in a war cannot just decide that factories shouldn’t affect war capacity; that was decided by the laws of physics.
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.
I agree and I think all these strategies have that:
Stick to the object level → “We are going in circles, goodbye”. This is “meta” in that it is a conversation about the conversation, but it matches Zach’s description of the strategy: it does not address the speaker’s angle in raising distractions, and sticks to the object level that the distractions have no merit as arguments.
Full-contact psychoanalysis → “I see that you don’t want to be pinned down, and probably resolving this contradiction today would be too damaging to your self image. I have now sufficiently demonstrated my intellectual dominance over you to those around us, and I am leaving to find a more emotionally fulfilling conversation with someone more conventionally attractive”. Maybe someone who thinks this is a good strategy can give better words here. But yes, you sure can exit conversations while speculating about the inner motivations of the person you are speaking too.
Assume good faith → “You seem very distractible today, let’s continue this tomorrow. Have a great evening!”. This isn’t much of a stretch. Sometimes people are tired, or stressed, or are running low on their stimulant of choice, and then they’re hard to keep focused on a topic, and it’s best to give up and try again later. Possibly opening with a different conversational strategy.
My concern isn’t “what words do you say when you leave”, it’s “how do you decide when to leave”.
If I tell you that the local bar is giving out free beer tonight, because I just made that up, have I committed deliberate deception? I don’t know that that statement is false. I just have no knowledge at all about the state of the bar tonight, coupled with some priors which suggest that free beer is unlikely. But if by “deception” you mean “I know X is false and I said X anyway”, I haven’t tried to deceive you at all.
So it doesn’t make sense to limit the concept of bad faith to deliberate deception.
I would consider that deliberate deception, yes. I interpret “deception” to mean something like “actions that are expected or intended to make someone’s beliefs less accurate”.
The technical name, for a statement made with no concern for its truth or falsehood, is bullshit.
You would be deceiving someone regarding the strength of your belief. You know your belief is far weaker than can be supported by your statement, and in our general understanding of language a simple statement like ‘X is happening tonight’ is interpreted as having a strong degree of belief.
If you actually truly disagree with that, then it wouldn’t be deception, it would be miscommunication, but then again I don’t think someone who has trouble assessing approximate Bayesian belief from simple statements would be able to function in society at all.