Trinities II

 

Three Is a Magic Number

Three is a magic number
Yes, it is, it's a magic number
Somewhere in that ancient mystic trinity
You get three as a magic number
The past and the present and the future
Faith and hope and charity
The heart and the brain and the body
Give you three as a magic number

Then why do Triumvirates not work very well?

And here I thought I was being really clever with my blog post, https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2022/09/triads.html  Turns out I was unconsciously ripping off School House Rock. (I would like to claim that I didn’t see that episode of School House Rock, but that isn’t very believable, is it?). But if three is a magic number, then why are triumvirates (three people) such an unstable way of political power sharing? Is mortality the reason?

A triumvirate would seem like the best mechanism for exercising political power. A majority of a triumvirate (2/3) is always also a supermajority and is almost the mean of a standard normal distribution plus one standard deviation (68%). But that assumes that one of the decisions is NOT to destroy the losing third party. In the event of destruction, the triumvirate becomes a two-person group and either of those parties has an incentive for destroying the other party. And the process of destroying the other parties is likely to be very messy for the entire society.

If every party in a triumvirate is immortal, can’t be destroyed, then it is stable. If the individuals can be destroyed, then the triumvirate becomes unstable, and quickly becomes a battle to become the one winning party.

So an amendment if you would, three is a magic number, if, and only if, all of those three are immortal and can’t be destroyed.