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Comment by Brendinooo

12 hours ago

I dunno. My understanding of coalition building is "we disagree about a bunch of stuff, but we agree on this one thing, so let's work together on it". You seem to be saying: "if you disagree with me on the other stuff, your agreement on this thing is rooted in a contradictory value system you haven't fully examined".

Is that correct?

Not exactly.

Values have a hierarchy. You can't (effectively) agree to painting everything the color blue, if you can't agree what the color blue is.

And you will run into a very similar issue when everyone starts objecting to the pink you have spread everywhere, despite supposedly agreeing to the color scheme.

  • > Not exactly.

    But then you go on to describe exactly what @Brendinooo described, just under the guise of your system of "value hierarchy." The problem is that you can always default to "our values are hierarchically misaligned" and then never have to do any coalition building ever.

    So how do you solve that? Because it seems that you can't.

    • > if you disagree with me on the other stuff

      This part is too broad.

      Hierarchical values are just that. Not wholesale. We call that nonsense, e.g. I believe pigs can fly, therefore the sky is red. They are making an ontological error.

      1 reply →

    • > So how do you solve that? Because it seems that you can't.

      By design. Activists and left-wingers in general enjoy losing and being underdogs and infighting constantly

      2 replies →

  • I guess, to use the terms of your analogy, I don't think people disagree on what blue is. "Don't add backdoors to e2e encryption" is blue; and plenty of people who are coded all over the political/ideological spectrum recognize it as blue and want the wall to be blue.

    You seem to be saying that people can't paint together unless everyone agrees on who holds the brush, what brand of brush is used, and what everyone's broader philosophy of painting is.