Also, I doubt Torres is writing in bad faith exactly. “Bad faith” to me has connotations of ‘is saying stuff they know to be untrue’, when with Torres I’m sure he believes what he’s saying he’s just angry about it, and anger biases.
My model is, he has a number of frustrations with EA. That on its own isn’t a big deal. There are plenty of valid, invalid, and arguable gripes with various aspects of EA.
But he also has a major bucket error where the concept of “far-right” is applied to a much bigger Category of bad stuff. Since some aspects of EA & longtermism seem to be X to him, and X goes in the Category, and stuff in the Category is far-right, EA must have far-right aspects. To inform people of the problem, he writes articles claiming they’re far-right.
If EA’s say his claims are factually false, he thinks the respondents are fooling themselves. After all, they’re ignoring his wider point that EA has stuff from the Category, in favor of the nitpicky technicalities of his examples. He may even think they’re trying to motte & bailey people into thinking EA & longtermism can’t possibly have X. To me, it sounds like his narrative is now that he’s waging a PR battle against Bad Guys.
I’m not sure what the Category is, though.
At first I thought it was an entirely emotional thing- stuff that make him sufficiently angry, or a certain flavor of angry, or anything where he can’t verbalize why it makes him angry, are assumed to be far-right. But I don’t think that fits his actions. I don’t expect many people can decide “this makes me mad, so it’s full of white supremacy and other ills”, run a years-long vendetta on that basis, and still have a nuanced conversation about which parts aren’t bad.
Now I think X has a “shape”- with time & motivation, in a safe environment, Torres could give a consistent definition of what X is and isn’t. And with more of those, he could explain what it is & why he hates it without any references to far-right stuff. Maybe he could even do an ELI5 of why X goes in the same Category as far right stuff in the first place. But not much chance of this actually happening, since it requires him being vulnerable with a mistrusted representative of the Bad Guys.
Yes, i’m always unsure of what “bad faith” really means. I often see it cited as a main reason to engage or not engage with an argument. But I don’t know why it should matter to me what a writer or journalist intends deep down. I would hope that “good faith” doesn’t just mean aligned on overall goals already.
To be more specific, i keep seeing reference hidden context behind Phil Torres’s pieces. To someone who doesn’t have the time to read through many cryptic old threads, it just makes me skeptical that the bad faith criticism is useful in discounting or not discounting an argument.
Have you ever had conversations where someone has misrepresented everything you’ve said or where they kept implying that you were a bad person every time you disagreed with them?
Also, I doubt Torres is writing in bad faith exactly. “Bad faith” to me has connotations of ‘is saying stuff they know to be untrue’, when with Torres I’m sure he believes what he’s saying he’s just angry about it, and anger biases.
Agreed.
My model is, he has a number of frustrations with EA. That on its own isn’t a big deal. There are plenty of valid, invalid, and arguable gripes with various aspects of EA.
But he also has a major bucket error where the concept of “far-right” is applied to a much bigger Category of bad stuff. Since some aspects of EA & longtermism seem to be X to him, and X goes in the Category, and stuff in the Category is far-right, EA must have far-right aspects. To inform people of the problem, he writes articles claiming they’re far-right.
If EA’s say his claims are factually false, he thinks the respondents are fooling themselves. After all, they’re ignoring his wider point that EA has stuff from the Category, in favor of the nitpicky technicalities of his examples. He may even think they’re trying to motte & bailey people into thinking EA & longtermism can’t possibly have X. To me, it sounds like his narrative is now that he’s waging a PR battle against Bad Guys.
I’m not sure what the Category is, though.
At first I thought it was an entirely emotional thing- stuff that make him sufficiently angry, or a certain flavor of angry, or anything where he can’t verbalize why it makes him angry, are assumed to be far-right. But I don’t think that fits his actions. I don’t expect many people can decide “this makes me mad, so it’s full of white supremacy and other ills”, run a years-long vendetta on that basis, and still have a nuanced conversation about which parts aren’t bad.
Now I think X has a “shape”- with time & motivation, in a safe environment, Torres could give a consistent definition of what X is and isn’t. And with more of those, he could explain what it is & why he hates it without any references to far-right stuff. Maybe he could even do an ELI5 of why X goes in the same Category as far right stuff in the first place. But not much chance of this actually happening, since it requires him being vulnerable with a mistrusted representative of the Bad Guys.
Yes, i’m always unsure of what “bad faith” really means. I often see it cited as a main reason to engage or not engage with an argument. But I don’t know why it should matter to me what a writer or journalist intends deep down. I would hope that “good faith” doesn’t just mean aligned on overall goals already.
To be more specific, i keep seeing reference hidden context behind Phil Torres’s pieces. To someone who doesn’t have the time to read through many cryptic old threads, it just makes me skeptical that the bad faith criticism is useful in discounting or not discounting an argument.
Have you ever had conversations where someone has misrepresented everything you’ve said or where they kept implying that you were a bad person every time you disagreed with them?