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A Fable of Science and Politics — LessWrong

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In the time of the Roman Empire, civic life was divided between the Blue and Green factions. The Blues and the Greens murdered each other in single combats, in ambushes, in group battles, in riots. Procopius said of the warring factions: “So there grows up in them against their fellow men a hostility which has no cause, and at no time does it cease or disappear, for it gives place neither to the ties of marriage nor of relationship nor of friendship, and the case is the same even though those who differ with respect to these colors be brothers or any other kin.”1 Edward Gibbon wrote: “The support of a faction became necessary to every candidate for civil or ecclesiastical honors.”2 Who were the Blues and the Greens? They were sports fans—the partisans of the blue and green chariot-racing teams. Imagine a future society that flees into a vast underground network of caverns and seals the entrances. We shall not specify whether they flee disease, war, or radiation; we shall suppose the fi

x Rationality: A-Z — LessWrong Fake Beliefs Politics Blues & Greens (metaphor) Fiction Parables & Fables Tribalism Litany of Tarski Rationality Frontpage 395 A Fable of Science and Politics by Eliezer Yudkowsky 23rd Dec 2006 6 min read 102 395 In the time of the Roman Empire, civic life was divided between the Blue and Green factions. The Blues and the Greens murdered each other in single combats, in ambushes, in group battles, in riots. Procopius said of the warring factions: “So there grows up in them against their fellow men a hostility which has no cause, and at no time does it cease or di

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