None of this is a silver bullet fix for the overall problem threatening society, but I doubt there is one, the only solution is for enough people to figure this out and start insisting on a better form of discourse in their own sphere of influence.

The pollution of the public square in recent years has prompted me to put more energy into actively managing my personal network, where I can maintain standards. Participating in social media is like fishing in a polluted river. You might find a good fish, reel them in, and transfer them to your pond. But usually you won't, and overall the ROI of this stuff is pretty low. (In places where it has declined the most, like Facebook, the platform's user engagement is declining too.)

I think that's because, at the level of society at large, nobody knows how to do that. That's the unsolved problem the article is describing.

At an individual level, you protect yourself from bad faith actors by refusing to interact with them once you become convinced that they're bad faith actors. But at the level of society, many of the bad faith actors are in positions where their actions have large scale consequences that will affect you whether you like it or not. So the individual solution doesn't work for that case.

Yet there’s a good chunk of people posting incompatible realities, do you ever think that maybe it’s not them living in a mistaken reality but yours that are wrong. How does one test ones own views to be certain?

Do they ever wonder the same thing? If they aren’t posting in bad faith then surely they must wonder the same about you or I. How does one verify and test ones reality.

( you, I and they are all used in the general sense)

I assume that it's the same for "the other side".

There are others who are truly at odds with reality (in fact that's more common), but they don't have the same vibe.

The short answer is, you can't. At least not about anything that you can't test for yourself by personal experience.

The longer answer is to ask why you care about whatever particular aspect of "reality" you are thinking about testing. What difference would it make to what you choose to do, if reality were one way rather than another? If the answer is that it would make no difference, then the correct thing to do is to not care how reality is in that respect. Have no opinion at all. (There's an old engineer's joke about running tests. Before you run a test, ask yourself two questions: What will I do if the test passes? What will I do if the test fails? If both answers are the same, don't bother doing the test.)

The problem is that our minds did not evolve to be comfortable with having no opinion about something. Our minds evolved to seek answers, not to leave questions hanging. That probably made sense in the hunter-gatherer environment in which we originally evolved, but it doesn't make sense in our world now. There are simply too many questions, too much information, and too little time for anyone to check it all, and there are no "trusted" sources of information we can turn to to just tell us the answers. But it's very difficult to accept having unanswered questions; our minds keep sending us alarm signals even though we might have convinced ourselves intellectually that we should leave those questions unanswered. So many people end up accepting some answer even if it's wrong, and even if the answer makes no difference to anything they actually do.

For about two weeks I was convinced my new roommate was a hallucination and I'd finally snapped. There were a number of uncanny cases where he knew the same incredibly obscure trivia and references that I knew. Things like "trap remixes of musicians that sold their soul". That's too specific to write off as just similar interests by men in a similar demographic. There were also a number of uncanny instances of not knowing the same exact things I didn't know. I had never seen him outside of the apartment. We had no mutual friends. We were both in the same unusual living arrangement, permanent temporaries at an Airbnb partially bartering code / home automation work as barter for rent. At some point the topic of eye color came up, and someone pointed out how all of us in the room have green eyes, and how that is the least common eye color and 3 of us is very statistically unlikely. Eventually I had to ask myself which is more probable, there really are two people with all these characteristics in common that ended up at the same place by coincidence, or I'm having a schizophrenic break and this is my delusion? My possibly imaginary friend had mentioned that he lived in Russia through the first grade and speaks Russian at a first grade level. I do not speak Russian. So I ask him to teach me some Russian grammar. He agrees but then changes the topic. I ask him to teach me some Russian. He says sure but avoids the question again. I ask him to teach me a bit of Russian. He agrees and evades again. At this point I am having some very serious doubts about my grip on reality.

Eventually we do meet other people from each other's circles. After a while there's been enough mutual third parties acknowledging both of us, that either a very large cast of characters are my delusion or this man is real. I can never actually prove one way or the other, but the scales are now tipped towards real by all the people standing on them.

And so we get to the answer to your question. "Reality is shared consensus." There's a shared consensus that my roommate was real, and that consensus may as well be reality because I can't distinguish it from the case where everyone has the same delusion.

Of course reality isn't the shared consensus per se. Reality is not subject to a referendum. However, shared consensus is the multimeter we use to read reality. Where is the difference between a 9 volt battery and "if I touch the proved to the terminal it reads 9 volts"? There isn't one.

In your example, my definition of "reality is shared consensus" becomes a big problem. If there are two groups with their own consensus then those are two realities. You are free to believe anything and everything is true right up to the point of fatally erroneous belief. For things where the consequences of being wrong are not so sure, there is nothing forcing a consensus around "objective reality".

Niels Bohr allegedly had a horse shoe in his office. When asked he said it was for good luck. One audacious visitor asked "do you really believe that?" He replies "no, but they say it works even if you don't believe in it." This was cheeky of Bohr. Plenty of people don't believe in quantum mechanics, but they say it works anyway. If someone truly insists on believing magic horse shoe theory and rejecting quantum mechanics, there is nothing that will force them to acquiesce to our objectively correct answer.

I believe strongly in these good faith tactics, and I use them to engage with people I vehemently disagree with. Because of this I have a deeper understanding of them than many of my peers on the other side. But understanding doesn’t help the situation. The overall conversation continues to deteriorate year after year.

I think this page is a great definition of what is happening, but a poor prescription of what to do about it.

> I think this page is a great definition of what is happening, but a poor prescription of what to do about it.

I strongly strongly agree. Notice how even in this, I'm not saying "you are 100% right", I'm still open to changing my perspective, and yes maybe partially it's because I find that even comments like this land better with the recipient when I express my perspective rather than assert a global truth, but mostly I feel much better saying it this way.

Anyway, I could talk about this stuff for days, it's what I do for work, teaching myself and others how to communicate to better resolve such conflict. Doesn't meant I'm "right" just means I spend a lotttt of time thinking about this stuff.

How do you approach conflict resulting from bad faith interaction? How do you deescalate such conflict?

I practice three main steps: 1) tell the truth about how I'm actually feeling 2) tell them how I imagine they might be feeling, and 3) say one thing to connect with love. If I do the first two steps well, then the third comes more easily.

There are other tactics, such as separating behavior from person: "I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at what you said, and I'm telling you because I care about you." Or really expressing uncertainty: "I don't know what to do anymore" (as long as I genuinely don't know what to do)

I'd say overall the goal is for me to feel closer to them, for me to resolve my conflict with them, and then maybe they'll resolve their side as well, but not required.

Does that make sense?

In looking more at the definition, I don't even know if it makes sense in that sentence even if I did spell it right lol.

The assumption that trolls are only motivated by a desire for attention and that, if ignored, they will simply go away like frustrated children in massively naive. Trolls are networked and sponsored by states now. They're weaponized. They'll find your address and harass your family. They'll complain about you to your employer. They'll send SWAT teams to your door. And they know that the internet is designed in such a way that as long as they keep spreading their nonsense they'll win by default. A lie can travel around the world twice before the truth laces up its boots, as whomever said.

That rule was fine when the internet was nothing but nerds LARPing on USENET and there were no stakes to anything but personal ego, but it isn't enough anymore. The internet is real life now.

Another important thing: you may identify 98% of bad faith actors correctly, but that’s still 2% of people acting in good faith that you’ll polarize against your cause.