Keynesian Beauty Contests, Schelling Points, and the Omnicause
Let’s get some quick definitions out of the way. (If you’re already familiar with these terms, I apologize.)
According to Wikipedia, a Keynesian Beauty Contest is: “a beauty contest where judges are rewarded for selecting the most popular faces among all contestants, rather than those they may personally find the most attractive.”
It’s a good analogy for, among other things, the stock market. Vote for who you think will be the prettiest contestant tomorrow by buying the stock today and, tomorrow, if you’re right, you can sell it for a nifty profit.
A Schelling Point (a.k.a. “focal point“) is: “a solution that people tend to choose by default in the absence of communication in order to avoid coordination failure”.
Wikipedia explains:
The existence of the focal point is first demonstrated by Schelling with a series of questions. Here is one example: to determine the time and place to meet a stranger in New York City, but without being able to communicate in person beforehand. In this coordination game, any place and time in the city could be an equilibrium solution. Schelling asked a group of students this question, and found the most common answer was “noon at (the information booth at) Grand Central Terminal”.
As an idle test of this, I asked a couple of friends/acquaintances about where they’d meet a stranger in NYC and got the answers “Radio City Music Hall” and “The Central Park Zoo” so, yeah, it doesn’t always work (or maybe it just doesn’t work anymore) but that’s what a Schelling Point is.
The “Omnicause” is a neologism from our very own Alysia Ames:
It seems like where "intersectionality" went wrong was assuming that anyone with any claim to oppression must be part of one omnicause + global warming for some reason. https://t.co/ASov21Kco8
— Mom for Gliberty 🗳️ (@fakegreekgrill) October 24, 2023
The definition according to Know Your Meme is:
Omnicause is a slang term used to describe the convergence of several causes into one, and has been used in both positive and negative contexts, particularly when simultaneous fight for multiple misaligned causes hinders achieving progress in any of them. Spawned in October 2023 and related to the concept of intersectionality, the term has saw gradual spread on social media through 2024.
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Okay, that’s out of the way.
Trump found the major weakness of the Omnicause. Do a million things and cause a million responses and people will not naturally coordinate. Some will go to Grand Central Station, some will go to the Central Park Zoo, some will go to Radio Center Music Hall.
Since there is no real consensus on which is the most important cause within the omnicause, there is no Schelling Point.
And how can you guess what will be the most important Schelling Point tomorrow? Or next week?
Three weeks ago, we were aghast at how Trump was blaming California Leadership for the fires instead of Climate Change. Two weeks ago we were talking about the military planes full of Colombian refugees. Last week we were aghast at the blame of DEI for the state of Flight Controllers. Two days ago, we were bemoaning the Tariffs against Canada and Mexico.
And today, apparently, we’re going to be involved in the creation of American Gaza?
I’m trying to imagine who will be the winner of the beauty contest next week and I can’t even imagine. Any suggestion I make can, with only minor tweaking, sound like a punchline. Here, watch:
“Guys, I think we need to center around the 28th Amendment.”
“Guys, I think we need to center around protecting trans youth in high school sports.”
“Guys, I think we need to center around abolishing ICE.”
And with each one of those, it’s simple to imagine the (whatever) community standing up and saying “WHAT THE HELL? HOW DARE YOU?!?” because we’re picking one cause out of the omnicause and trying to make it the Schelling Point when the point of the Omnicause is to tell *ALL* of the contestants that they’re beautiful.
Which means that we can’t say whether one is more beautiful than another and that is an important pre-req to being able to guess who will be most attractive next week.
And it’s *REALLY* important to pick a Schelling Point… because if you don’t, someone else will except it won’t be the activists, the organizers, or the people who think they’re running the show: It’ll be whoever is best at navigating this new political reality and that doesn’t seem to be anybody involved in the opposition at this point in time.
Wanna keep your status as a judge? You’d best pick a winner because, if you don’t, your value as a judge will have been demonstrated to be pretty dang low. If you’re a crappy judge, the cause won’t require you to do much more than just show up and applaud a winner that you might not even recognize. (Hey, do you think the contestant will look good in a keffiyeh?)
(Featured image is “Day 49: 9 dominoes“, Photo taken by jacqui.brown33.)
