Great post. Something that’s worth noting is that this is true *even if reality is not 1:1:1.*
Let’s say the joke “reality has a well known Green bias” is actually true, and add an extra Green side to that impossible die and make it a true four sided pyramid, easy to picture and shake in your hands. It’s now 2:1:1 Green:Blue:Grey
Reality says “Roll 10d4,” and you let all the little pointy shapes in your palms spill out to reveal… *rolls actual dice* ~4 Green, ~4 Grey, and ~2 Blue.
“Oh snap,” you, a Green, might say. “Evidence that my philosophy/political views are correct!… Er, I mean, more correct than the local alternative competing one! And really, that’s what matters, isn’t it? No one’s PERFECT, but at least we can feel justified in fighting the good fight!”
You still have two glaring problems.
1) You’re still, in the majority of cases, wrong, on this particular subject/roll. This is an unpopular thing to say among Greens. “We’re actually wrong on most things, but we’re more right than the opposition!” is only ever going to be a rallying cry for those who intrinsically dislike tribalism and grok lesser-of-two-evils and advocate for slow and steady progress, not those trying to Win The Battle for the Soul/Future/Rights of the Whatever.
2) Your opponents are actually still right on half the things they’re fighting for compared to the things you’re right about. Even hinting at this will make you EVEN MORE UNPOPULAR among your fellow Greens. Especially if any of the things they’re right about are particularly hot-button issues at the point in spacetime that you find yourself in.
So, being a Green (or a Grey who knows that Greys have no chance and so hesitantly puts on a Green uniform) who now wants to actually go into politics and push for positive change, you will by necessity feel a lot more inclined to focus on those 4 things that you have strong evidence your side is right about, ignore those 2 things that your opponent is right about (unless you’re behind closed doors with similarly reasonable Greens, Blues, or Greys), and maybe once in awhile try to push at a couple of the 4 things that both sides are wrong about, assuming you have any political capital to spare (you probably don’t, hell you probably don’t even have enough to focus on all of the 4 dice-backed Green topics).
Well guess what: now to an “objective observer,” you, an intelligent and competent politician, look like a biased ideologue who’s blinded by his partisanship and just appealing to his rank-and-file.
Change this from 10 separate issues to 10 pieces of evidence that make up the nuance of a single issue, and a similar thing happens as nuance gets left at the wayside. Now imagine that not everyone is actually researching all those dice rolls and instead just randomly looking at the subsection of them that happen across their newsfeed, or which appeal to their particular interests, or are the least complicated to take in.
It’s disheartening, but it can help to note that those who are trying to actually make changes in any social sphere are not working under the same rules/toward the same goals as those trying to just seek truth. This is not a defense of lying, by omission or otherwise, but it is a defense of people who have good reasons to do or say things that we, observing them from the outside, may think are evidence of them being mindkilled.
It’s worth pointing out that grey in the post refers to
a fact that not even the worst ideologues know how to spin as “supporting” their side”.
I’m not sure what good grey rolls do in the context of this post (especially given the proviso that “there is a ‘Blue’ and a ‘Green’ position on almost every contemporary issue of political or cultural importance”).
But grey rolls are, of course, important: Grey facts and grey issues are uncorrupted by the Great War, and hence are that much more accessible/tractable. The more grey facts there are, the better rationalists we can be.
With respect to your comment, the presence of Grey, Yellow, Orange and Purple Teams would actually help things substantially—if I report facts from the six teams equally, it’s harder to label me as a partisan. (And it’s harder for any team to enforce partisanship.) Even if Blue-supporting facts truly are taboo (Green is unlikely to have more than one archnemesis), that’s much less limiting when only a sixth of facts are Blue. It’s a nice advantage of multipolar politics.
What seems to happen in practice is that everything non-Green gets lumped together as Blue. Even if the other people do not see themselves as being on one faction.
And then you have the additional complications of out-group vs far-group.
Great post. Something that’s worth noting is that this is true *even if reality is not 1:1:1.*
Let’s say the joke “reality has a well known Green bias” is actually true, and add an extra Green side to that impossible die and make it a true four sided pyramid, easy to picture and shake in your hands. It’s now 2:1:1 Green:Blue:Grey
Reality says “Roll 10d4,” and you let all the little pointy shapes in your palms spill out to reveal… *rolls actual dice* ~4 Green, ~4 Grey, and ~2 Blue.
“Oh snap,” you, a Green, might say. “Evidence that my philosophy/political views are correct!… Er, I mean, more correct than the local alternative competing one! And really, that’s what matters, isn’t it? No one’s PERFECT, but at least we can feel justified in fighting the good fight!”
You still have two glaring problems.
1) You’re still, in the majority of cases, wrong, on this particular subject/roll. This is an unpopular thing to say among Greens. “We’re actually wrong on most things, but we’re more right than the opposition!” is only ever going to be a rallying cry for those who intrinsically dislike tribalism and grok lesser-of-two-evils and advocate for slow and steady progress, not those trying to Win The Battle for the Soul/Future/Rights of the Whatever.
2) Your opponents are actually still right on half the things they’re fighting for compared to the things you’re right about. Even hinting at this will make you EVEN MORE UNPOPULAR among your fellow Greens. Especially if any of the things they’re right about are particularly hot-button issues at the point in spacetime that you find yourself in.
So, being a Green (or a Grey who knows that Greys have no chance and so hesitantly puts on a Green uniform) who now wants to actually go into politics and push for positive change, you will by necessity feel a lot more inclined to focus on those 4 things that you have strong evidence your side is right about, ignore those 2 things that your opponent is right about (unless you’re behind closed doors with similarly reasonable Greens, Blues, or Greys), and maybe once in awhile try to push at a couple of the 4 things that both sides are wrong about, assuming you have any political capital to spare (you probably don’t, hell you probably don’t even have enough to focus on all of the 4 dice-backed Green topics).
Well guess what: now to an “objective observer,” you, an intelligent and competent politician, look like a biased ideologue who’s blinded by his partisanship and just appealing to his rank-and-file.
Change this from 10 separate issues to 10 pieces of evidence that make up the nuance of a single issue, and a similar thing happens as nuance gets left at the wayside. Now imagine that not everyone is actually researching all those dice rolls and instead just randomly looking at the subsection of them that happen across their newsfeed, or which appeal to their particular interests, or are the least complicated to take in.
It’s disheartening, but it can help to note that those who are trying to actually make changes in any social sphere are not working under the same rules/toward the same goals as those trying to just seek truth. This is not a defense of lying, by omission or otherwise, but it is a defense of people who have good reasons to do or say things that we, observing them from the outside, may think are evidence of them being mindkilled.
It’s worth pointing out that grey in the post refers to
I’m not sure what good grey rolls do in the context of this post (especially given the proviso that “there is a ‘Blue’ and a ‘Green’ position on almost every contemporary issue of political or cultural importance”).
But grey rolls are, of course, important: Grey facts and grey issues are uncorrupted by the Great War, and hence are that much more accessible/tractable. The more grey facts there are, the better rationalists we can be.
With respect to your comment, the presence of Grey, Yellow, Orange and Purple Teams would actually help things substantially—if I report facts from the six teams equally, it’s harder to label me as a partisan. (And it’s harder for any team to enforce partisanship.) Even if Blue-supporting facts truly are taboo (Green is unlikely to have more than one archnemesis), that’s much less limiting when only a sixth of facts are Blue. It’s a nice advantage of multipolar politics.
What seems to happen in practice is that everything non-Green gets lumped together as Blue. Even if the other people do not see themselves as being on one faction.
And then you have the additional complications of out-group vs far-group.