Don’t think in terms of a single-round game, think in terms of a situation where you have to co-exist with the other party for a relatively long time and have some kind of a relationship with it.
The conclusions about a particular specific issue of today are not necessarily all that important compared to sharing a a general framework of approaches to things, a similar way of analyzing them...
As stated, this primarily matters for pundits. Notice that the methods of thinking that he’s talking about don’t reliably lead to the same conclusions; different values and different facts mean that two people who think very similarly (i.e. structure arguments in the same way) may end up with opposite policy preferences, able to look at each other and say “yes, I get what you think and why you think it, but I think the opposite.” And so a particular part of the blogosphere will discuss policies in one way, another part another way, it’ll be discussed a third way on television, and so on. But the battle lines will still be drawn in terms of conclusions, because policy conclusions are what actually get implemented, and it doesn’t seem sensible to describe the boundaries between the areas where policies are discussed as “battle lines,” when what they actually are is an absence of connections.
When dealing with someone who comes to different conclusions than I do, but whose way of thinking I understand well, it’s relatively easy for me to negotiate with them—I can predict what offers they’ll value, and roughly to what degree, and what aspects of their own negotiating position they’re likely to be OK with trading off.
Whereas negotiating with someone whose way of thinking I don’t understand is relatively hard, and I can expect a significant amount of effort to be expended overcoming the friction of the negotiation itself, and otherwise benefiting nobody.
Of course, I don’t have to negotiate with someone who agrees with me, so in the short term that’s an easy tradeoff in favor of agree-on-conclusions.
But if I’m choosing people I want to work with in the future, it’s worth asking how well agreeing on conclusions now predicts agreeing on conclusions in the future, vs. how well understanding each other now predicts understanding each other in the future. For my own part, I find mutual understanding tends to be more persistent.
That said, I’m not sure whether negotiation is more a part of what you’re calling “politics” here, or what you’re calling “punditry,” or neither, or perhaps both.
But negotiation is a huge part of what I consider politics, and not an especially significant part of what I consider punditry.
I continue to disagree. This matters a lot for people who are interested in maintaining the status quo and are very much against any drastic and revolutionary changes—which often enough come from a different way of thinking.
I also had in mind this bit of wisdom from Robin.
As stated, this primarily matters for pundits. Notice that the methods of thinking that he’s talking about don’t reliably lead to the same conclusions; different values and different facts mean that two people who think very similarly (i.e. structure arguments in the same way) may end up with opposite policy preferences, able to look at each other and say “yes, I get what you think and why you think it, but I think the opposite.” And so a particular part of the blogosphere will discuss policies in one way, another part another way, it’ll be discussed a third way on television, and so on. But the battle lines will still be drawn in terms of conclusions, because policy conclusions are what actually get implemented, and it doesn’t seem sensible to describe the boundaries between the areas where policies are discussed as “battle lines,” when what they actually are is an absence of connections.
When dealing with someone who comes to different conclusions than I do, but whose way of thinking I understand well, it’s relatively easy for me to negotiate with them—I can predict what offers they’ll value, and roughly to what degree, and what aspects of their own negotiating position they’re likely to be OK with trading off.
Whereas negotiating with someone whose way of thinking I don’t understand is relatively hard, and I can expect a significant amount of effort to be expended overcoming the friction of the negotiation itself, and otherwise benefiting nobody.
Of course, I don’t have to negotiate with someone who agrees with me, so in the short term that’s an easy tradeoff in favor of agree-on-conclusions.
But if I’m choosing people I want to work with in the future, it’s worth asking how well agreeing on conclusions now predicts agreeing on conclusions in the future, vs. how well understanding each other now predicts understanding each other in the future. For my own part, I find mutual understanding tends to be more persistent.
That said, I’m not sure whether negotiation is more a part of what you’re calling “politics” here, or what you’re calling “punditry,” or neither, or perhaps both.
But negotiation is a huge part of what I consider politics, and not an especially significant part of what I consider punditry.
I continue to disagree. This matters a lot for people who are interested in maintaining the status quo and are very much against any drastic and revolutionary changes—which often enough come from a different way of thinking.