How Rabbits Negotiate

One of the problems with rabbits negotiating is that they are made to give everything away to avoid conflict:

In Obamaland, words have no meaning. We know this. Illegal Immigrants aren’t here illegally, the Islamic State isn’t Islamic, and affordable healthcare isn’t affordable. Now we’re learning that deals aren’t really deals. Actual “deals” are two-sided affairs and, according to the National Review, the President’s horrible nuclear deal with Iran doesn’t really qualify.

That’s because Iranian leaders were never required to sign the “deal,” which is not legally binding in any way. According to the State Department, it’s simply a collection of “political promises.”

Obama gave away everything, got almost nothing, and even what little he got, he didn’t demand it be legally binding. It is almost beyond belief. There’s a good article on the whole thing at the link.

Basically these are hardwired deficiencies, related to the rabbits being adapted to a different environment, and not designed for a competitive world. The big problem is that in times of plenty, people lose the drive to fight, and allow them into power.

The solution is when the times of plenty come to an end.

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8 years ago

[…] By Anonymous Conservative […]

dc.sunsets
dc.sunsets
8 years ago

Hardly a surprise that, regardless of his level of intelligence, America’s first Affirmative Action president would be hardwired to take the path of least resistance.

everlastingphelps
everlastingphelps
8 years ago

I work in litigation as a consultant, and one of the societies I’m a member of is largely academics. I attended a workshop on settlement negotiations (from the viewpoint of the mediator), and part of the workshop was to form groups of 3 (two parties and a mediator) and work out a settlement of a mock case — in this case it was the heirs to the Wicked Witch suing Dorothy for killing the Witch.

I don’t consider myself much of a negotiator, but I’m not a babe in the woods. I have to remind myself that I’m accustomed to seeing Trump level negotiators working out multi-million dollar settlements in very high stakes litigation, not haggling over a car price.

I drew Dorothy’s side, and went in deciding that a walk-away was a win for me. After all, I just killed a women with my house and then stole her shoes while defaming her to the whole realm. Knowing something about negotiation (especially since we just had a lecture on it), I went on the offensive. The storm was force majeure, the witch had such a bad reputation that I was immediately attacked by the townsfolk, and in fact, my house is now wrecked, and it happened on your land, and you broke my foundation with your witch’s head.

I was astonished that the woman I was negotiating with rolled over. COMPLETELY. She gave me everything I was asking for. Because she was just giving away everything, the mediator had to step in to protect her. Since it was an exercise, I went along with the exercise and allowed her to negotiate a better deal (I think we ended up with I got to keep the ruby slippers which actually did belong to the witch.)

At the time, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Sure, you’re a bad negotiator — but you just got instructions on how to negotiate, you weren’t even working with real money, and you still weren’t able to hack it. At the time, I had to just chalk it up to, “she’s not very bright and is a terrible negotiator.” I still couldn’t convince myself it was rank stupidity, because she was a freaking PhD. Now, I have a framework that explains it all.

Because I came in on offense, I was the Conflict. I was the aggressor, and a particularly unreasonable and irrational one. (Your mother wrecked my house with her head! And my feet hurt because the shoes I stole from her don’t fit!) Her rabbit deficiencies were so hardwired that she wasn’t able to even consider holding me to any standard of civility.

The other thing I remember is the visceral feeling of “blood in the water.” When I realized what a pushover she was, it was a real, personal challenge to keep the point of the exercise in mind and not go for her proverbial throat. If it had been a real negotiation, she would probably still be making me payments over whatever the dispute was. And the freedom of being able to wild out, and make ridiculous statements and demands that were obviously false, and have her agree to them — that was delicious. I now understand why they love gaslighting us to much. When you have nothing but contempt for the target, it’s fun.

Dave
Dave
8 years ago

It’s a long struggle just to purge the Republican Party of rabbits. John Boehner, who held the power to shut Obama down merely by refusing to increase the debt limit, always gave in to Obama’s demands so quickly as to earn the nickname “Johnny Lawnchair, fastest fold on the Potomac”.

Nathan
Nathan
8 years ago

Sorry this is off topic, but I had to post this. The book discusses the role of the black death and K-selection during the renaissance. A Star Trek episode called “The Mark of Gideon” discusses a similar idea: A planet rich and prosperous is overpopulated and life is miserable, so they seek to voluntarily introduce a plague in order to continue their environment of r-selection. The story has so many more layers when viewed from the perspective of r/K:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark_of_Gideon

Elenor
Elenor
8 years ago

AC: “If the plague, in any way, favors accomplishment/wealth/IQ/disgust/forward-thinking/conscientiousness, then it will cull for K.”

Tee hee hee! Clearly not a Trekker/Trekkie, eh?

On that planet there really didn’t seem to be any “K”s — the rabbits doing this were doing it because there was no choice. It was all starve or *randomly* kill off a bunch. The “random” part seems as if it were purely “r” — it would kill whoever was eatin’ grass in the meadow on the day it arrived. (So, they were inviting in a new “predator” — but still assuming that, instead to them, it would kill …you know, ‘Sam with the weak immune system’ (to paraphrase Bill Whittle). They ‘only had to run fast enough to out-run their compatriots (com-non-patriots?), not the tiger of a disease! The well-fed and living-high politicians would be (as in the Black Plague) somewhat less likely to catch it — AND have better immune systems to survive it.

Now, maybe/probably the intent was to show the politician and his willing sacrifice of a daughter (except SHE was intended to live on to provide more infection for the populace) as kind and caring and trying to save all their people… But they were not even slightly interested in cutting down on PRODUCTION of more humans (well, con-species individuals), and were completely willing to let this predator-of-a-disease ride booted and armed through their entire species, no matter who it killed.

(Okay, yes, I’ve watched Star Trek since year one, and a gazillion repeats throughout the decades.)