Should one assume good faith absent evidence to the contrary?

This resource is a wikidebate, a collaborative effort to gather and organize all arguments on a given issue. It is a tool of argument analysis or pro-and-con analysis. This is not a place to defend your preferred points of view, but original arguments are allowed and welcome. See the Wikidebate guidelines for more.

One should assume good faith absent evidence to the contrary

Pro

• Argument for Assuming good faith bar conclusive evidence to the contrary can improve one's behavior; one can be less grumpy and less quickly jump to the conclusion of bad faith.
  • Objection As argument against said: without any context, without knowing that one is not in risk-averse context, assuming good faith can lead to very bad outcomes.
  • Objection One can be more nuanced as an alternative: e.g. do not jump to unwarranted conclusions of bad faith/malicious intent, even in the face of behavior that appears harmful.

Con

• Argument against Assuming something one does not know to be true is an epistemically invalid cognitive operation. An intellectually honest and circumspect person does not assume something given no evidence, but rather, initially takes an I-don't-know stance given the initial absence of evidence in any direction.
• Argument against Without context, the motion has to be rejected. Some contexts are very risk averse, and these require a more risk averse initial stance; other contexts are much less risk average, and there, erring on the side of assuming good faith is more tolerable/viable strategy.

Further reading

• Wikipedia: Wikipedia:Assume good faith -- "Assuming good faith (AGF) means assuming that people are not deliberately trying to hurt Wikipedia, even when their actions are harmful."
• Wikinews: Wikinews:Never assume -- "Don't assume things; be skeptical about everything. This applies to people, as well as news: don't "assume good faith", and don't assume bad faith. Also don't assume worse, or better, faith than the situation warrants."