senguidev
Because funnily enough, the comment itself is kind of malicious compliance.
It has the form of polite debate, but it also feigns to not understand the parent (bad faith is a pretty simple/obvious concept and I'm sure the author gets it), which ruins the discussion. So yes, it appears reasonable that it is flagged.
However, there were no such "kind" environments a few centuries ago. Yet they managed to be bootstraped against their surroundings. So maybe there is clues that we underestimate the strength of "high-skilled good faith" strategies in adversarial situations? But again, I can't really imagine what it's like to live in authoritarian states so my thoughts must not be very relevant here.
I've seen Rules for rulers previously and remember it pretty well as it was quite instructive. It didn't provide enough guiding answers for me to the question "And so, knowing that, how should I behave to live my best possible life ??"
I've felt that not focusing on the fact that people may have bad faith and we need tactics etc freed a lot of time and energy to invest somewhere more useful
The good thing is: the strategy for personal success seems to be aligned with the strategy for a global good faith. So I can live with doubts: maybe it scales, maybe it doesn't. That doesn't change my daily behaviour, I'm maximizing for myself. This is not a prisoner dilemna where I lose if I cooperate.
I would even argue that if it wasn't aligned, this would certainly be doomed.
The books "Reinventing Organizations" (Frédéric Laloux) and "The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education" (Edward Deming) (intro: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20161226) gave me good intuitions that this can work at least at a corporate level.
Clues:
- at a personal level: have you ever tried to put in practice "highly skilled, non-naive good faith communication" ? If you did, you've probably noted that more often than not, it doesn't make you weaker. It increases your value, your status, even your financial success. So maybe this could also be a contagious/unstoppable strategy simply because it has an edge for personal success ?
- as an organization: good faith leadership, good faith communication... seem to overall be a competitive advantage because it goes hand-in-hand with happy & productive people
- as a society: democracy emerged despite a world of tyrants to take over most a the world. Why ? Maybe because it was stronger in a systemic way ? It unlocks collaboration, decentralization, resilience... Moreover, it doesn't sound unreasonable that democracy would be fittest as poverty diminishes. So maybe authoritarianism, not democracy, is in danger of extinction in the end ?
Result: instead of spiraling bad faith, maybe we will have (though slower) spiraling good faith ? Maybe "good faith" will win simply because it's stronger, in a kind of evolutionary sense.
This has implications in everyday life : practicing "highly skilled, non-naive good faith communication" may be the best way to personal success. And this may also be the best way to incidentally induce a "good faith" society
Fortunately it lead to a « good enough » understanding and mitigation state in my case. Quite similar to yours it seems!
Then lots of reading and experimenting. Related thread (and great article from a fellow perfectionist) « Unlearning Perfectionism » https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30223559