Sayre’s law of low-stakes arguments and its relation to anarchy

[Kody Palmer]

Have you ever noticed that the lower the stakes of an argument, the more vociferous the fighting becomes? Academic Charles Philip Issawi explains it thusly: “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.” The law is named after Colombia University political scientist  Wallace Stanley Sayre  who noted that political debate in the academic world is so vicious and cruel because none of it actually matters all that much.

 

This law is related to another political science adage, Parkinson’s law of triviality, which argues that organizations spend most of their time arguing about insignificant details, giving short shrift to more pertinent issues. Named after humorist C. Northcote Parkinson, the law is also called the “color of the bike shed” effect; this stems from an example he gave of a committee meeting spending little time on the issue of an atomic reactor, and a huge amount of time on the color of a bike shed. As Parkinson stated, “The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.”

 

To me this  makes perfect sense. Any Thoughts?

 

[Guest darkskyabove]

This describes most all blogs, forum entries (including my own), and "man on the street" interviews.

[NotDarkYet]

Some thoughts:

1) Aesthetics invites endless debate because there is no objective standard to prove any point.

2) Important things are scary to debate because they implies moral blame.  Easier to stick with sports/music/film/actors etc.

 

[Brandon Buck _BB_]

So in other words, the reason there are so few heated debates and outright flame fests on this forum isn't that the people here are kind, empathic and curious. It's because all we talk about here is really heavy shit...

[Guest spam dumpster]

It certainly explains a lot of my experiences.

[MarkIX]

If I remember the example correctly only one person on the committee had any idea of the type and requirements of the nuclear reactor in question, so anyone else commenting would have been doing so from a position of ignorance. Whereas everybody knew about the bicycle shed. The risk of being ridiculed is very much reduced when you have at least some expertise moreso in areas of opinion, where everybody is an expert.