| I like that terminology. I'll explain, though, because I know the idea that we're all gonna kill each other is currently outside of the Overton Window. There's a fairly well-known (within the field) concept in history & international relations that wars start when the balance of power is ambiguous. Each side thinks that their in-group is more numerous, more powerful, and more righteous than the other. When groups have an accurate self-assessment of their relative power, the more powerful one gets its way and the less powerful one swallows its pride and does what it's told. But when both groups believe they are the more powerful one, they press their advantage and come into conflict. Rather than backing down, they keep pushing for concessions and escalating, believing that if it comes to a fight, they'll win. Since both groups have the misapprehension that they will be the winner, it actually does come to a fight, even though fighting is not strictly rational for either one. It gets even more ambiguous when the conflict is multi-sided, since the uncertainty in power relations is greater relative to their actual power, and the groups often don't know which way potential allies will break or to what extent an adversary's attention will be taken up by others. History is full of examples where the news articles were crowing that war was impossible right up until it broke out, usually because it would be irrational. People are not always rational, particularly when they have a false perception of the world. |
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| ▲ | watwut 39 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I think this is overly simplified. The other reason people fight is that they feel they have no chance otherwise or they feel like their values are attacked. Small group that fight dont think they are stronger, they think they are right and willing to sacrifice (or feel like they have nothing to loose, or just feel hate so much). Also, more confident about own power go to war because they want to. See WWII - it does not matter how many concessions would be done to nazi, the ideology itself demanded the war. That is why it happened. Or look at Iran war. Iran was making concessions, USA attacked anyway because it wanted to. American leadership valued war and lethality and wanted to demonstrate it. Irans strategic appeasement was seen as sign of weakness. Or look at Canada trade war. Canada does not think it is stronger, it thinks concessions will lead to further bullying from stronger neighborhood. | |
| ▲ | ai_critic 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The current success of red team and Trump in the US is an excellent example of this from the last decade--one can make the argument that blue team failed to recognize the actual pecking order, and pushed too far and too hard, and now have gotten their teeth kicked in as a result. (Which is bad, because red team under Trump has no actual talent for boring, effective governance at a time when it is sorely needed. Near inarguably, they're actively bad at it.) | | |
| ▲ | nostrademons 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I was certainly think of U.S. red vs. blue politics. I think it's bidirectional though: blue team doesn't realize how unpopular some of their key policy agendas are with red-team America, which is why they keep getting their teeth kicked in during elections. But red team doesn't realize the extent to which urban America has moved on from the cultural values of the 1980s, and both how numerous and how devoted their opposition is to their ideals. In reality, the teams are fairly evenly matched in both numbers and strength of conviction. But neither team will admit that, thinking that it's just a few errant radicals that are being manipulated by shadowy forces (Bill Gates, George Soros, and the NYTimes are the bogeyman for the reds; Trump, Miller, Bannon, and Fox News are the bogeyman for the blues). It seems inconceivable to each side that tens of millions of Americans might have sincere beliefs that differ from their own. The mismatch between perception and reality makes me quite worried for the future of the country. There are plenty of global examples as well, eg. everybody thought Russia would absolutely steamroll Ukraine and that hasn't happened, both Iran and the US think they have the upper hand and just need to mop up in the Persian Gulf. That's why those conflicts are still going on. | | |
| ▲ | SamInTheShell an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | You can probably div up some factions just based off voting data. Red team made it in with just about 1/3rd of the voting population. About 1/3rd of the voting population didn't vote. Just if we're trying to put some numbers to something, those should be verifiable at least. Doesn't say why 1/3rd didn't vote, so it's just 1/3rd unknown faction. | |
| ▲ | tosapple 37 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | here's a bogeyman for you, accepting money in a representative democracy for political action is maybe mere nanometers from the definition of bribery. | |
| ▲ | ai_critic 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Perhaps a bit ahistorical, but I'm put in mind of the quote "Not even Masada began as a suicide attempt." Interesting times indeed. |
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| ▲ | mitxela an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not really... the blue team pushed hardly anything at all, and people got tired of things gradually getting worse while the government did nothing, so they voted for the other guys (who made things worse more quickly). Same story as the AfD. Seems like the only guys in politics who have remembered the government is supposed to help people are the bad guys (who also don't help people, but realise they have to look like they will) | |
| ▲ | watwut 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Blue team played appeasing centrists, tepidly allowing to move the politics to the right. Forever suppressing less centrist parts. That is why they lost. They acted like being lower at the pecking order and lost. Also, electorally the difference was small. The real big problem was the "they go low we go high" ideology, in allowing supreme court be biased so much to the right, reacting too late to gerrymandering, forever trying to be accommodating to republicans. |
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