Seeking to understand others and communicate honestly is an essential democratic virtue. Can it be maintained in the digital age?…
Powerful disincentives and barriers to making this choice have been put in place during many decades of escalating cultural conflict. Understanding why it has become so hard to engage in good faith communication is the first step towards shifting the cultural balance back in its favor…
The article includes “Some signs of good faith communication” (noting that any of these can be faked), plus “Some signs of bad faith communication” (and noting that these can be disguised and denied).
In some political discussions today, it is common to hear that “you can’t engage in good faith with Nazis!” A generous interpretation of this statement is that there are truly unreasonable people who must not be trusted because they have proven themselves to be dangerous and unethical. But this is not an argument against good faith communication in general. It’s an argument against engaging in naive forms of good faith communication, which would play into the hands of those actively seeking to cause harm to others. Likewise, for those who have been lied to historically and treated with disrespect by specific groups, naively engaging with those same groups again in good faith would be foolish.
2,100 words: https://consilienceproject.org/endgames-of-bad-communication/.
And here is someone who is working on good-faith communication:
Sharon McMahon, the 45-year-old Instagram star in question, regularly performs what amounts to a magic trick. Hearing information that challenges our beliefs does not usually feel good. Yet participants in McMahon’s abortion workshop did not seem to want the lesson to end…
3,100 words: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/sharon-says-so-podcast-mcmahon/661150/
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