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You're using "wrong" to refer to the fact that the color pie was developed arbitrarily, and so can't be descriptive of humanity or people. The other poster, an

You're using "wrong" to refer to the fact that the color pie was developed arbitrarily, and so can't be descriptive of humanity or people. The other poster, and the article, aren't claiming that the color pie was developed with humanity or culture as a basis. They don't think that people can be solely described by a color and a description thought up by Garfield as a background for a card game. They don't disagree with you. What they do think is: This is a useful lens to view people through. That's why the article refers to the techniques as an intuition pump - they allow you to use your intuition for a less complex space to solve more complex problems. I think I believe that this lens is a good one, but I'm not sure your comments engage with that angle at all. Flat Earth is a great lens situationally, btw. If it's 3km East to the shops, and 4km North to work, then I know that they're 5km apart. Maybe not exactly right, but right enough. Easier to do that math in my head in a flat scenario than to try use some GIS tool or an oblate spheroid model.

bena 6y ago
But it's not a useful lens. It's overly simplistic and holds no predictive power. It can only be applied in hindsight. Even as a narrative scaffold, it fails because it creates one-dimensional characters unless you're pulling from so many colors that you're not really using it anyway. And the metaphor isn't the point. So trying to defend the flat Earth model is missing the point of the metaphor entirely. It's an "ahksually" retort.
- chrisdirkis 6y ago
  That's more the meat and potatoes I was interested in reading, so I appreciate the response. I think there are probably better lenses that are equally simple (maybe Big 5/MBTI, though I know little about them), but the advantage of the colour pie is that MTG players already spend time engaging with it and have a broad understanding of the tropes/stereotypes/etc. There's an example of applying it in the article, but I'm guessing you think that that's an outlier situation, and that it wouldn't broadly be useful. I can respect that, and I'm not sure I disagree yet. Call me back in a year or two. Hadn't thought of using it as a narrative scaffold, and can definitely see why you wouldn't want it as your sole source for such. Having 5 possible character themes and 10-15 possible relationships does not an interesting story make. I thought that demonstrating the use of the flat Earth model as a lens would be interesting, so apologies if it came across as a retort.

bena 6y ago

But it's not a useful lens. It's overly simplistic and holds no predictive power. It can only be applied in hindsight. Even as a narrative scaffold, it fails because it creates one-dimensional characters unless you're pulling from so many colors that you're not really using it anyway. And the metaphor isn't the point. So trying to defend the flat Earth model is missing the point of the metaphor entirely. It's an "ahksually" retort.

chrisdirkis 6y ago
That's more the meat and potatoes I was interested in reading, so I appreciate the response. I think there are probably better lenses that are equally simple (maybe Big 5/MBTI, though I know little about them), but the advantage of the colour pie is that MTG players already spend time engaging with it and have a broad understanding of the tropes/stereotypes/etc. There's an example of applying it in the article, but I'm guessing you think that that's an outlier situation, and that it wouldn't broadly be useful. I can respect that, and I'm not sure I disagree yet. Call me back in a year or two. Hadn't thought of using it as a narrative scaffold, and can definitely see why you wouldn't want it as your sole source for such. Having 5 possible character themes and 10-15 possible relationships does not an interesting story make. I thought that demonstrating the use of the flat Earth model as a lens would be interesting, so apologies if it came across as a retort.