Blog: August 2007

I wish I'd taken this picture. I especially love the person taking the same picture with their cameraphone at the bottom of the frame.

This is just like a classic game theory example (PDF, scroll to bottom of page 58): two vendors are selling ice cream on a long beach, and can choose where to place their carts. Everyone will go to the closest vendor, so the two vendors have an incentive to move closer and closer to each other (to capture more of the beachgoers in between) until they end up right next to each other in the center of the beach - giving each half the beach, but forcing customers to walk much farther than if they simply located themselves farther apart.

Game theory leads to some poor outcomes for beach vendors, but even worse for politicians, because the whole metaphor of a political spectrum is a false one, as George Lakoff argues in a recent article. Instead, he describes two "systems of values and modes of thought," the progressive and conservative worldviews. Many people mix and match viewpoints between the two, but that doesn't mean they are in the "center" - a person who is liberal on social issues and conservative on trade would be just as far away from a social authoritarian and economic populist as a pure progressive is from a pure conservative. And the universe of positions isn't limited to just two issues.

Lakoff describes the people who split their positions as "biconceptuals," and the way for a Democrat to appeal to a biconceptual isn't to "move right" or adopt conservative values, but rather to speak about the class of issues where the biconceptual is in agreement with the progressive viewpoint, which most voters hold on the majority of issues. The DLC, which has made a habit of attacking other Democrats as extremist and sparked a lively debate recently through an op-ed which generated rebuttal op-eds, eloquent responses online, and a debate on Meet the Press, recommends precisely the wrong approach, accepting more conservative policies on more issues, mostly issues where the American people in fact largely agree with the progressive viewpoints. When viewed through the lens of biconceptuals, this strategy makes no sense. It only seems logical in the false metaphor of a single political spectrum.