Thread by @HumblyAlex

A Thread-
=Good Faith Communication Requires 3 Things:

1. Good faith requires fairly considering as many possible interpretations as possible before responding, giving the benefit of the doubt, and, if none or more than one interpretation makes sense, asking for clarification.

2. Good faith requires a willingness to be corrected and the forthcomingness to acknowledge when and where you were.

3. Good faith requires that you don't attempt to change a person's mind when you yourself aren't willing to let your mind be changed.

Tip: Not taking pride in how well you believe yourself to do #1 results in #2 being less painful.

However, you may have already had too much pride in your beliefs before said communication for #2 to ever be bearable... making good-faith communication impossible from the start.

I would argue that most people can't communicate in good faith regarding things they care about. It would put their comfortable sense of self and, in turn, their value at too much risk.

Perhaps all of our progress is attributed to the purely coincidental meetings of less biased minds w/ ideas that make enough sense to take pride in, dooming them to never give it up, & the distrust we don't recognize having in certain people that points us in the other direction.

I think we can do much better than this.
The only thing that gets in the way of our being dishonest with ourselves is others correcting us.
If we solve for willful ignorance, we solve for our very slow crawl of progress and all of the harm that goes unprevented as a result.

Willful ignorance is not the "human condition" we've made it out to be. It's surpassable, and moving beyond it is necessary to maximize human flourishment and our longevity as a species. #Longtermism #Psychology #Sociology