The spell works by splitting what we care about (x+y) into two distinct terms, x and y, and then implicitly taking the minimum by focusing on whichever part is worst.
The spell needs an implicit 0 for both x and y to work. But is a very powerful spell for picking your preferred point on any tradeoff scale, and refusing anything but a Parito improvement. I suspect the use of this spell is one of the main reasons TARE DETRIMENS! is cast at all. In a world with just 1 scale, people will pick the best option, wherever the zero lies.
One place I have seen this spell attempted is in environmentalism. The 0 is chosen as the world in caveman days. X and Y are chosen as X=”the environment”, and Y=”human quality of life”. If this casting succeeds, any improvement in human quality of life can never justify the slightest environmental harm, and we should all go back to a Malthusian harmony with nature.
A skilled caster will split the axes further. Whichever axis things are getting worse along should be subdivided into as many pieces as possible. In the environmentalism example, X should be subdivided into “carbon dioxide + pollution + loss of biodiversity + rising sea levels + running out of natural resources + species going extinct” And then you have 1 axis on which things are improving, and 6 axis along which things are getting worse. The multiplicity of axes also helps to distract from any one of them. Running out of natural resources (like copper ore) is something that would effect human quality of life, not harm the environment, but it can still be pulled away out of Y and into its own axis to fight for team X. Now you have a whole army on the side of X all picking on a single Y, be sure to associate Y with the most negative concept you can find “private jets and technowhiz gagets you don’t really need” and victory is almost assured.
In the environmentalism example, X should be subdivided into “carbon dioxide + pollution + loss of biodiversity + rising sea levels + running out of natural resources + species going extinct” And then you have 1 axis on which things are improving, and 6 axis along which things are getting worse.
Single-issue environmentalists have a series of issues teed up. They’ve allowed climate change to be almost the monofocus in major media for a long time, because it really is the most pressing issue. Now that we’re starting to make obvious progress, with a recent news article noting that it’s becoming cheaper to build solar than to buy just the fuel for a natural gas station, it’s time to start teeing up the next issue. Insofar as we appear to be making real progress on climate change, expect to see other environmental problems come to the fore.
It’s not that these problems aren’t real. It’s that successful political activists are those who know how to think strategically about how to position their most important and tractable issue, and how to transition to new issues when the old ones get addressed.
Insofar as a political issue is progressively solved, expect to see some people who’d formerly focused on it drift away to other causes. Those who are left will be those who have the most singleminded focus on that specific issue. They will be smaller and have less ability to get things done, but if you ask them, they’ll always have the next disaster to work on—because to them, there is only one issue.
The benefit I think we can hope to get by consulting political activists is to find out the most pressing issue in the domain they care about. By talking to environmentalists, we can find out what the most pressing environmental issue is today (climate change). By talking to gender activists, we can find about about the most pressing gender issue (probably rape or trans rights). By talking to YIMBYs, we can find out about the most important urban planning issue (housing).
But we can’t find a nuanced discussion on how to prioritize between issues, or learn very much accurate information about the world, because both of these discussions will be subsumed within the political activists to the advancement of their agenda. This is normal and as long as we recognize it, we can still engage productively with even single-issue activists. There is probably a rich discussion to be had on how they prioritize their agenda.
A related spell is SCALO DISTINCTUS!
A spell that can turn this
Into
The spell works by splitting what we care about (x+y) into two distinct terms, x and y, and then implicitly taking the minimum by focusing on whichever part is worst.
The spell needs an implicit 0 for both x and y to work. But is a very powerful spell for picking your preferred point on any tradeoff scale, and refusing anything but a Parito improvement. I suspect the use of this spell is one of the main reasons TARE DETRIMENS! is cast at all. In a world with just 1 scale, people will pick the best option, wherever the zero lies.
One place I have seen this spell attempted is in environmentalism. The 0 is chosen as the world in caveman days. X and Y are chosen as X=”the environment”, and Y=”human quality of life”. If this casting succeeds, any improvement in human quality of life can never justify the slightest environmental harm, and we should all go back to a Malthusian harmony with nature.
A skilled caster will split the axes further. Whichever axis things are getting worse along should be subdivided into as many pieces as possible. In the environmentalism example, X should be subdivided into “carbon dioxide + pollution + loss of biodiversity + rising sea levels + running out of natural resources + species going extinct” And then you have 1 axis on which things are improving, and 6 axis along which things are getting worse. The multiplicity of axes also helps to distract from any one of them. Running out of natural resources (like copper ore) is something that would effect human quality of life, not harm the environment, but it can still be pulled away out of Y and into its own axis to fight for team X. Now you have a whole army on the side of X all picking on a single Y, be sure to associate Y with the most negative concept you can find “private jets and technowhiz gagets you don’t really need” and victory is almost assured.
Example from Bloomberg today:
We’re Succeeding on Climate. We’ll Fail on Biodiversity
Single-issue environmentalists have a series of issues teed up. They’ve allowed climate change to be almost the monofocus in major media for a long time, because it really is the most pressing issue. Now that we’re starting to make obvious progress, with a recent news article noting that it’s becoming cheaper to build solar than to buy just the fuel for a natural gas station, it’s time to start teeing up the next issue. Insofar as we appear to be making real progress on climate change, expect to see other environmental problems come to the fore.
It’s not that these problems aren’t real. It’s that successful political activists are those who know how to think strategically about how to position their most important and tractable issue, and how to transition to new issues when the old ones get addressed.
Insofar as a political issue is progressively solved, expect to see some people who’d formerly focused on it drift away to other causes. Those who are left will be those who have the most singleminded focus on that specific issue. They will be smaller and have less ability to get things done, but if you ask them, they’ll always have the next disaster to work on—because to them, there is only one issue.
The benefit I think we can hope to get by consulting political activists is to find out the most pressing issue in the domain they care about. By talking to environmentalists, we can find out what the most pressing environmental issue is today (climate change). By talking to gender activists, we can find about about the most pressing gender issue (probably rape or trans rights). By talking to YIMBYs, we can find out about the most important urban planning issue (housing).
But we can’t find a nuanced discussion on how to prioritize between issues, or learn very much accurate information about the world, because both of these discussions will be subsumed within the political activists to the advancement of their agenda. This is normal and as long as we recognize it, we can still engage productively with even single-issue activists. There is probably a rich discussion to be had on how they prioritize their agenda.