At some point you will have limited resources, and you will need to decide how much that preference for winning cleanly is worth. How much risk you’re willing to take of not winning at all, in exchange for whatever victory you might still get being a clean one.
For example, say there are two people you love dangling off a cliff. You could grab one of them and pull them to safety immediately, but in doing so there’s some chance you could destabilize the loose rocks and cause the other to fall to certain death.
The gloriously androgynous creature of pure information (henceforth GACoPI) that you wish you were cannot prioritize one love over the other in a timely fashion, and will simply babble ineffectual encouragement to both until professional rescuers arrive, during which time there is some chance that somebody’s arms will get tired or the cliff will shift due to other factors, killing them both. An ape’s understanding of factional politics, on the other hand, has no particular difficulty judging one potential ally or mate as more valuable, and then rigging up a quick coin-flip or something to save face.
The gloriously androgynous creature of pure information (henceforth GACoPI) that you wish you were cannot prioritize one love over the other in a timely fashion, and will simply babble ineffectual encouragement to both until professional rescuers arrive, during which time there is some chance that somebody’s arms will get tired or the cliff will shift due to other factors, killing them both.
The grandparent uses “winning cleanly” to mean winning without resorting to doublethink. To go from that to assuming that a GACoPI is unable to enact your proposed ape solution or come up with some other courses of action than standing around like an idiot smacks of StrawVulcanism (WARNING: TVTropes).
At some point you will have limited resources, and you will need to decide how much that preference for winning cleanly is worth. How much risk you’re willing to take of not winning at all, in exchange for whatever victory you might still get being a clean one.
For example, say there are two people you love dangling off a cliff. You could grab one of them and pull them to safety immediately, but in doing so there’s some chance you could destabilize the loose rocks and cause the other to fall to certain death.
The gloriously androgynous creature of pure information (henceforth GACoPI) that you wish you were cannot prioritize one love over the other in a timely fashion, and will simply babble ineffectual encouragement to both until professional rescuers arrive, during which time there is some chance that somebody’s arms will get tired or the cliff will shift due to other factors, killing them both. An ape’s understanding of factional politics, on the other hand, has no particular difficulty judging one potential ally or mate as more valuable, and then rigging up a quick coin-flip or something to save face.
The grandparent uses “winning cleanly” to mean winning without resorting to doublethink. To go from that to assuming that a GACoPI is unable to enact your proposed ape solution or come up with some other courses of action than standing around like an idiot smacks of Straw Vulcanism (WARNING: TVTropes).