Purple/Green Debate

• Sometimes, I'm just never going to agree with you. And you're just never going to agree with me. So, we should either just let the issue drop or get down to it with clubs, lasers, mass media advertising, whatever is most appropriate for the setting.

Frequently used terminology on the sfconsim list. Some explanations:

from	Michael Llaneza <maserati@speakeasy.net>
date	Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 12:50 PM

Psiweapon wrote:
> I just want to know what the hell is this purple-green babbling I keep
> hearing in every message ô_ô

It's a Babylon 5 reference. Every few years they arbitrarily divide into
Green and Purple factions and then fight it out (usually non-lethal
muggings and riots) to see which faction is in charge for the next
period. This is also, sort of, a reference tot he color factions in
Byzantium and Renaissance Italy.

Any debate which can't be resolved without building the hardware and
trying it is termed a Green-Purple issue and there's a general truce on
the topic. So no flamewars about space battleships vs fighters or
"missiles never hit because laser point defense will stop them all". It
saves a LOT of needless arguments.

From Atomic Rockets:

The term "Purple/Green" comes from an episode of Babylon-5 called "The
Geometry of Shadows". The episode involving the ritual Drazi civil war,
where the sides are chosen by randomly choosing colored sashes from a
barrel. It is a science-fictional version of Miller Lite partisans
shouting "Tastes Great!" and "Less Filling!".

More specifcally, as Christopher Weuve explains: "It's the SFConsim-L
brevity phrase meaning 'an argument in which no actual agreement can be
reached, usually(but not always) because it is dependent on going-in
assumptions.'".

from	Winchell Chung <nyrath@projectrho.com>
date	Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 4:55 PM

The "purple-green" label is a reference to an episode of Babylon-5.
What it signifies, as Christopher Weuve explains: "It's the SFConsim-L
brevity phrase meaning 'an argument in which no actual agreement can
be reached, usually (but not always) because it is dependent on
going-in assumptions.'").

from	Ken Burnside <design@adastragames.com>
date	Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 1:04 PM

The other way of defining a Green/Purple debate is one that can't be
resolved because the two sides arguing have such fundamentally
different baseline assumptions that the two sides are talking past
each other.

When someone says "This may turn into a Green/Purple" debate, they're
saying it's something that might still be fun to talk about, but to
please check the assumptions at the door and keep your mind
particularly open.