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Conflict tends toward dualism, and politics is inherently about conflict. The space of possible positions is indeed very wide and multidimensional, but the proc

Conflict tends toward dualism, and politics is inherently about conflict. The space of possible positions is indeed very wide and multidimensional, but the process of effective contention and coalition building drives everything into two sides. Actors who don't want to do this can avoid falling into that binary, but they're also then less engaging in politics than philosophy.

hinkley 4y ago
I was stuck in between 5 groups all arguing over a data interchange format. Several groups insisted that the system should categorically not be allowed to support some of the business cases of the people they either got information from or gave it to. I still don't understand how they thought having the whole project fail was going to get them whatever status they were looking for. I got real fond of saying, "compromise means everybody is equally unhappy with the solution" and giving them solutions that worked but often took each of them a couple extra lines of code. Helping them figure out what those lines were smoothed some feathers, but I don't think any of those people were comfortable unless at least a couple feathers were out of place. It's weird when people 10 years older than you are acting like babies. It's not like 'mature' is the first adjective people would use to describe me at that time. When you don't want to be the adult in the room, it's all the more annoying when you have to be.
thwayunion 4y ago
> the process of effective contention and coalition building drives everything into two sides. This doesn't seem right. First, there are a lot of political systems with more than one "side", and in which coalitions are at least somewhat fluid. This is even true in the United States; if you have ever served on a board that proposes a bond issue or tax increase, you know that that coalitions are quite local and easy to fragment (need to build a new school on the south side, but the north side has lots of tax hawks? Include a new football stadium on the north side as part of the issue). Second, think about conflict outside of politics. There is a lot of conflict in markets, for example, but most markets do not tend toward duopoly.
clairity 4y ago
no, that's post hoc rationalization. the world is more complex than 2 points on a line, always. sure, our brains like 2-dimensions the best, because they're easier to reason about, but there's no law that says that that simple reasoning translates into either an accurate read of a given situation, or an accurate prediction about the future (which is what we want models to do). that's why starting with the "political spectrum" is bound to give you false information. it compresses too much of the complexity down into a simple model that doesn't predict the world in any meaningful way. it may aid conflict, but that's exactly the trouble: couching sociopolitical challenges purely in terms of conflict itself perpetuates, rather than helps to solve, problems. and as others have noted, you can just as easily have multiple political coalitions coming together to solve problems without devolving into dualism. humans prefer but don't require binary political stances as you're asserting. moreover, even binary issues won't all fall neatly into a single left-right spectrum without active coercion (which is most of what we see in mediopolitical theater).
groby_b 4y ago
"drives everything into two sides." Mostly true for political systems that are set up as dual parties. Turns out if you have a system that encourages a more open political ecosystem, there are more "sides" that people can end up on.

hinkley 4y ago

I was stuck in between 5 groups all arguing over a data interchange format. Several groups insisted that the system should categorically not be allowed to support some of the business cases of the people they either got information from or gave it to. I still don't understand how they thought having the whole project fail was going to get them whatever status they were looking for. I got real fond of saying, "compromise means everybody is equally unhappy with the solution" and giving them solutions that worked but often took each of them a couple extra lines of code. Helping them figure out what those lines were smoothed some feathers, but I don't think any of those people were comfortable unless at least a couple feathers were out of place. It's weird when people 10 years older than you are acting like babies. It's not like 'mature' is the first adjective people would use to describe me at that time. When you don't want to be the adult in the room, it's all the more annoying when you have to be.

thwayunion 4y ago

> the process of effective contention and coalition building drives everything into two sides. This doesn't seem right. First, there are a lot of political systems with more than one "side", and in which coalitions are at least somewhat fluid. This is even true in the United States; if you have ever served on a board that proposes a bond issue or tax increase, you know that that coalitions are quite local and easy to fragment (need to build a new school on the south side, but the north side has lots of tax hawks? Include a new football stadium on the north side as part of the issue). Second, think about conflict outside of politics. There is a lot of conflict in markets, for example, but most markets do not tend toward duopoly.

clairity 4y ago

no, that's post hoc rationalization. the world is more complex than 2 points on a line, always. sure, our brains like 2-dimensions the best, because they're easier to reason about, but there's no law that says that that simple reasoning translates into either an accurate read of a given situation, or an accurate prediction about the future (which is what we want models to do). that's why starting with the "political spectrum" is bound to give you false information. it compresses too much of the complexity down into a simple model that doesn't predict the world in any meaningful way. it may aid conflict, but that's exactly the trouble: couching sociopolitical challenges purely in terms of conflict itself perpetuates, rather than helps to solve, problems. and as others have noted, you can just as easily have multiple political coalitions coming together to solve problems without devolving into dualism. humans prefer but don't require binary political stances as you're asserting. moreover, even binary issues won't all fall neatly into a single left-right spectrum without active coercion (which is most of what we see in mediopolitical theater).

groby_b 4y ago

"drives everything into two sides." Mostly true for political systems that are set up as dual parties. Turns out if you have a system that encourages a more open political ecosystem, there are more "sides" that people can end up on.