---
description: Some disagreements cannot be resolved with more evidence because they stem from genuine value differences or incommensurable goods and systems must map rather than eliminate them
type: claim
domain: ai-alignment
created: 2026-03-02
confidence: likely
source: "Arrow's impossibility theorem; value pluralism (Isaiah Berlin); LivingIP design principles"
---

# persistent irreducible disagreement

Not all disagreement is an information problem. Some disagreements persist because people genuinely weight values differently -- liberty against equality, individual against collective, present against future, growth against sustainability. These are not failures of reasoning or gaps in evidence. They are structural features of a world where multiple legitimate values cannot all be maximized simultaneously.

[[Universal alignment is mathematically impossible because Arrows impossibility theorem applies to aggregating diverse human preferences into a single coherent objective]]. Arrow proved this formally: no aggregation mechanism can satisfy all fairness criteria simultaneously when preferences genuinely diverge. The implication is not that we should give up on coordination, but that any system claiming to have resolved all disagreement has either suppressed minority positions or defined away the hard cases.

This matters for knowledge systems because the temptation is always to converge. Consensus feels like progress. But premature consensus on value-laden questions is more dangerous than sustained tension. A system that forces agreement on whether AI development should prioritize capability or safety, or whether economic growth or ecological preservation takes precedence, has not solved the problem -- it has hidden it. And hidden disagreements surface at the worst possible moments.

The correct response is to map the disagreement rather than eliminate it. Identify the common ground. Build steelman arguments for each position. Locate the precise crux -- is it empirical (resolvable with evidence) or evaluative (genuinely about different values)? Make the structure of the disagreement visible so that participants can engage with the strongest version of positions they oppose.

[[Pluralistic alignment must accommodate irreducibly diverse values simultaneously rather than converging on a single aligned state]] -- this is the same principle applied to AI systems. [[RLHF and DPO both fail at preference diversity because they assume a single reward function can capture context-dependent human values]] -- collapsing diverse preferences into a single function is the technical version of premature consensus.

[[Collective intelligence within a purpose-driven community faces a structural tension because shared worldview correlates errors while shared purpose enables coordination]]. Persistent irreducible disagreement is actually a safeguard here -- it prevents the correlated error problem by maintaining genuine diversity of perspective within a coordinated community. The independence-coherence tradeoff is managed not by eliminating disagreement but by channeling it productively.

---

Relevant Notes:
- [[universal alignment is mathematically impossible because Arrows impossibility theorem applies to aggregating diverse human preferences into a single coherent objective]] -- the formal proof that perfect consensus is impossible with diverse values
- [[pluralistic alignment must accommodate irreducibly diverse values simultaneously rather than converging on a single aligned state]] -- application to AI alignment: design for plurality not convergence
- [[RLHF and DPO both fail at preference diversity because they assume a single reward function can capture context-dependent human values]] -- technical failure of consensus-forcing in AI training
- [[collective intelligence within a purpose-driven community faces a structural tension because shared worldview correlates errors while shared purpose enables coordination]] -- the independence-coherence tradeoff that irreducible disagreement helps manage
- [[collective intelligence requires diversity as a structural precondition not a moral preference]] -- diversity of viewpoint is load-bearing, not decorative
- [[paradigm choice cannot be settled by logic and experiment alone because the standards of evaluation are themselves paradigm-dependent]] -- Kuhn's insight that some disagreements are framework-dependent, not evidence-dependent
- [[resistance to paradigm change is structurally productive because it ensures anomalies penetrate existing knowledge to the core before revolution occurs]] -- sustained disagreement as productive friction

Topics:
- [[AI alignment approaches]]
- [[coordination mechanisms]]
