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A comment on Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT. Parent comment

Re:Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT by hirundo on Monday September 19, 2022 @09:49AM (#32898256)
People think they can easily identify bad faith, since they hear arguments that sound incomprehensible and assume no one could hold them in good faith. It is common to believe that large swaths of the population carry their convictions in bad faith.

As a life long atheist I have suffered from this misconception. The idea of a god seems so absurd to me that I honestly don't understand how people can have faith in one. Never the less it is true, they do, and in good faith. I've had enough deep conversations with believers to establish that. And it's true no matter how many instances of their hypocrisy you collect.

The same is true of political opponents.

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Re:Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT by prottog on Monday September 19, 2022 @12:06PM (#32900192)
Exactly. One man's bad faith actor is another's torchbearer. I personally know some reasonable people who would call AOC a bad faith actor, and also some other reasonable people who would call Tom Cotton a bad faith actor; it's glib to say that they are easily identifiable and widely agreed upon as such.
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