BRYAN CAPLAN
May 7, 2013
Keynesian Bets: What's Out There
May 6, 2013
Keynesian Bets Bleg
May 6, 2013
The Pyramid of Macroeconomic Insight and Virtue
May 2, 2013
A Natalist Provision
May 1, 2013
I Was a Teenage Misanthrope
DAVID HENDERSON
May 5, 2013
John Thacker on Vaccinations and the Sequester
May 3, 2013
Chef Rudy's Virtues Project
May 2, 2013
My take on Reinhart and Rogoff
May 1, 2013
Medicare Kills a Program
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You forgot-
Self vs. Other
And then there's the meta-level..
Dichotomy vs. ???
On #3, how does he know that one side didn't "win?" What does it mean to win? Robin doesn't say.
The reason these (still) exist is because the imagined conflict works in the interests of one or more of the parties.
"How has this conflict lasted so long, without one side winning?"
Long lasting conflicts tend to have roughly equal arguments in their favor. Football fans have spent the last decade arguing over Peyton Manning v. Tom Brady because a good case can be made for both sides, using different kind of evidence. Human beings are attracted to arguments where there is no clear winner, while being quickly bored by arguments where there is.
Hegel argued for a thesis-antithesis-synthesis model of progress, where somebody finally figures out how to merge the best of both sides.
Paradoxical opposites are creative so long as they can continue to coexist. They are not to be overcome, but embraced. Beauty is the affirmation of paradoxical opposites.
I have a whole chapter on this in "Diaphysics."
Is a peaceful compromise always preferable to conflict? Here is Avishai Margalit describing what he calls "rotten compromises" in a lecture promoting his book titled "On compromise and rotten compromise":
"But is the Munich agreement a clear case of a rotten compromise? My answer in the book is that yes, the Munich agreement is a rotten compromise but not predominantly because of its content. If the content of the agreement isn't shamefully wrong, then what is? It cannot be the motive of the person signing the agreement that makes it rotten. There was nothing shameful in Chamberlain's yearning for peace as a motive for signing the agreement...The agreement cannot be rotten just because it was based on an error of political judgement. Putting Britain's trust in the hands of a serial betrayer, that is a political blunder, not a moral sin. So, what is rotten in the Munich pact? My answer: the one with whom it was signed, not what was signed, makes it rotten. A pact with Hitler was a pact with radical evil, evil meant to eradicate morality itself. Not recognizing Hitler's radical evil was a moral failure on top of being a bad political judgement."