Benevolence and Malevolence, Conflict and Mistake

thinking about fighting

How does my theory about a benevolent vs. malevolent perspective relate to Scott Alexander’s idea of conflict vs. mistake theory?

Conflict and Mistake Defined

A “mistake theorist” thinks that the people who oppose his preferred policies are making a mistake.

A mistake theorist believes his opponents are well-meaning people who share his broad goals and values, but that they are mistaken as a matter of fact about which policies will achieve desirable objectives.

A “conflict theorist” thinks that the people who oppose his preferred policies are his enemies.

A conflict theorist thinks that his opponents don’t share his values, and won’t be persuaded to change their minds by new information. The conflict theorist thinks that political disputes are conflicts between inherently opposing values or interests.

This explains why mistake theorists place so much more value on things like intelligence, research, and open debate than conflict theorists do. If people disagree on policy because of confusion or ignorance, then thinking, learning, and discussion can help resolve disputes. If people disagree because they correctly believe their interests and values are inherently opposed, then more information wouldn’t change the basic adversarial structure of the dispute.

Mistake Theory Compared with Benevolence

A “mistake theorist” is a lot like someone coming from the “benevolent perspective” in my framework. The differences are subtle.

Mistake theory and the benevolent perspective both generally expect people to be “well-meaning”. In other words, they expect that other people’s motives are recognizably good, or at least relatable. They expect to be able to empathize with others. “If I knew anyone well enough,” say the mistake theorist and the benevolent person, “I’d be able to put myself in their shoes and feel their concerns/motives to be my own.”

Relatedly, mistake theory and the benevolent perspective both are motivated to resolve disputes. If we disagree, then we should try to figure out what’s going on, together, until we can agree. If we are taking incompatible courses of action that put us at odds, then we should try to look for mutually acceptable solutions that we can both admit are better than continued fighting.

The difference between mistake theory and benevolence comes up in how they deal with adversarial behavior.

Mistake theorists think conflict theorists are making a mistake — in particular, mistake theorists think conflict theorists are mistaken in believing that hostile motives are abundant.

This is, of course, rather paradoxical, as Scott himself admits.

There’s a meta-level problem in trying to understand the position “don’t try to understand other positions and engage with them on their own terms” and engage with it on its own terms. If you succeed, you’ve failed, and if you fail, you’ve succeeded.

If a mistake theorist (like Scott) notices that the world contains quite a few conflict theorists, and those conflict theorists are engaged in hostile and adversarial behavior, then…doesn’t that mean that the conflict theorists are right? The world is full of adversarial, hostile behavior — from conflict theorists!

Mistake theory, thus, tends to destroy itself with this internal paradox.

Here’s how it works.

A mistake theorist sees a conflict theorist shouting “Your side is EVIL!” and thinks “this person means well, but doesn’t understand that we’re not in fact evil. Perhaps I will try to explain politely.”

Of course, this doesn’t work. The conflict theorist doesn’t seem to be responding to any of the polite explanations. And, as time goes on, it’s becoming increasingly implausible that this is due to a misunderstanding or miscommunication. The conflict theorist is starting to seem stubborn. The mistake theorist suspects that the conflict theorist is not really listening, or not really truth-seeking, or otherwise not trying to resolve the conflict. The conflict theorist really seems to be trying to oppose or hurt the mistake theorist!

Once the mistake theorist notices that he has an adversary, he generally becomes a conflict theorist.

He may still call himself a mistake theorist who opposes the conflict theorists, but that’s itself an adversarial attitude. The (former) mistake theorist has opponents now.

As Oscar Wilde said, “ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.”

Once you start to realize that someone is persistently and intentionally behaving adversarially towards you, you no longer believe they are making a mistake. If you don’t know how to deal with someone who’s not acting in “good faith” without being taken advantage of, you typically switch to being adversarial right back at them; treating them as an evil enemy who must be fought.

Benevolence, by contrast, is the point of view that other people are relatable, not that all their suboptimal behavior is a result of mistaken beliefs.

Benevolence believes only that you could, probably, in the long run or with enough information or if you were stronger, empathize with any person or view yourself as on the “same side” as them.

In particular, there’s nothing inherently unrelatable about being bitter, mistrustful, stubborn, or hostile! Those are extremely common mental states for humans!

Mistake theory can’t interpret adversarial orientation as a mistaken belief, because it isn’t exactly a belief at all.

But benevolence can see adversarial orientation as a relatable situation to be in.

Mistake theory says “I can’t model you as a good-faith, well-meaning, sincere person with a worldview that happens to be different from mine! It really just seems like you’re being…bad on purpose! But that can’t be! What do?”

Conflict theory says “I see it now — you’re being adversarial on purpose! You can’t be trusted. You can’t be communicated with. You can’t be cooperated with — you’ll just exploit me!”

Malevolence now comes in and says “Yessss. He can’t be trusted. He can’t be communicated with honestly. He’s one of Them. Let’s fight him!”

But benevolence might start out with the frame “Yep, it looks like you’re really ticked off and aggressive. Understandable tbh. I’ve been there too.”

Benevolent Responses to Adversarial Behavior

Little kids get locked into a “fighty” conflict mode pretty easily when life gets frustrating, and they’re also not very scary, so it’s easier to see what benevolence looks like in the context of asking “what’s good parenting towards a little kid who’s super angry at you?”

You don’t want to “retaliate” against the kid, obviously; you also don’t want to keep trying to reason with the kid as though you haven’t noticed he’s gone into the Tantrum Zone. The skillful tactics (which I admit I’m not very good at) involve some kind of creative or surprising break in the rhythm of conflict, which guides or prompts the kid to exit Fight Mode.

Benevolence can recognize when someone is being stubbornly hostile and won’t listen to reason, and still try to reconcile with that person to the extent it’s possible — which may look different than the way it would try to reconcile with someone friendly and reasonable.

Benevolent responses to adversarial behavior might not operate at the intellectual level of “good faith” discussion.

There are helpful things that you can do for someone without taking their narrative at face value — things like taking a cool-off period if tempers are running high, making sure they’ve gotten enough food, water, and sleep, etc.

These are somewhat “paternalistic” tactics — they imply that you don’t fully trust or respect the other person. But that’s okay. Sometimes you shouldn’t take someone’s words at face value; sometimes they are just cranky and need a nap, or lonely and need a hug, or something.

Not taking someone’s words seriously is “disrespectful” but it’s not inherently hostile — you can still be warmly/kindly disposed towards them, try to make their lives better, and even leave the door open to the potential that they will be worth taking more seriously in future.

And, really, mistake theory can be “disrespectful” too — is the assumption “this person is under stress and acting out” any more of an insult than the assumption “this person is incredibly ignorant or stupid”?

If you acknowledge that “people get into Moods and act irrationally” is a thing, and probably a thing that happens to you too (at some point in your life), you will be both more effective and kinder.

Isn’t This Still Mistake Theory?

Isn’t it still a “mistake” to become stubbornly hostile and ignore the potential for cooperative solutions?

Sure, I guess.

It’s a “mistake” in the sense that people fall into it without seriously thinking about it, and it makes them worse off overall in most environments. You could call it an unhealthy behavior, a psychological pitfall, a trauma response, a weakness, a vice, a subconscious strategy.

But it’s definitely not the kind of “mistake” Scott is talking about in his post, like different opinions on whether raising the minimum wage increases unemployment.

The original post claims that a mistake theorist does view everyone as operating in “good faith”. That they are being both honest and sincere; the thing they are saying they care about is the real motive that drives them; the thing they are arguing about is their true objection. And so, discussion at the object level will be fruitful in resolving the real dispute.

A more psychologically sophisticated view is that of course this is nowhere near universally true. People often talk about one thing when what they really care about is something else. People often throw arguments at their “adversaries” because of an underlying unexpressed motive, such that refuting the argument wouldn’t change the person’s mind. The “real issue” is often unspoken.

If you don’t take someone’s words at face value, if you assume that there’s a good chance that they’re “just saying it” as a way of doing something else (to be polite, to win the conflict, to get you to leave them alone, to get you to pay attention to them), and you pay more attention to the unspoken motives than the spoken words, are you still a “mistake theorist”? Maybe, but definitely an “upgraded” one.

Isn’t This Still Conflict Theory?

Conflict theory claims that disputes are inherently irreconcilable because the parties want to keep fighting.

I think the correct view is that the “inherently irreconcilable” part is wrong but the “want to keep fighting” part is right.

Some mental states are adversarial and hostile. Some mental states do involve a desire to keep fighting. Sometimes those mental states want to preserve themselves — people get scared that they’ll “forget” to hate the enemy.

But people “forget” to hate the enemy all the time; they get nerdsniped by something interesting, or they get attracted by material prosperity or convenience or fun. Their anger “cools off.”

Incentives to cooperate are all around us. Remember that the post-Civil War American South needed Jim Crow laws to enforce segregation — however prevalent racism may have been, white people must have been “tempted” to work with and socialize with black people.

Conflict theory is right that adversarial behavior is real, non-accidental, and tries to preserve itself; conflict theory is wrong that adversarial behavior will always succeed in preserving itself.

“They’re doing this awful thing on purpose” is frequently sort-of true.

“They’re doing this awful thing because that is their true and only goal and nothing could ever get them to stop short of total annihilation” is almost always false.

Changing contexts, environments, ambient frames, and marginal incentives, can dramatically change people, what they care about, and what they do.

In my experience, people are sometimes hostile to me or my goals in a particular situation, but when the situation changes, their hostility is surprisingly quick to dissolve. Permanent enemies are, I think, much rarer than hostile situations.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that it’s always possible to change the relevant situation that’s creating the hostile dynamic. But it’s important to keep in mind that opposition is usually local, provisional, and situational, rather than some kind of lifelong sworn enmity.