It’s a question of whether drawing a boundary on the “aligned vs. unaligned” continuum produces an empirically-valid category; and to this end, I think we need to restrict the scope to the issues actually being discussed by the parties, or else every case will land on the “unaligned” side. Here, both parties agree on where they stand vis-a-vis C and D, and so would be “Antagonistic” in any discussion of those options, but since nobody is proposing them, the conversation they actually have shouldn’t be characterized as such.
As I understood it, the whole point is that the buyer is proposing C as an alternative to A and B. Otherwise, there is no advantage to him downplaying how much he prefers A to B / pretending to prefer B to A.
It’s a question of whether drawing a boundary on the “aligned vs. unaligned” continuum produces an empirically-valid category; and to this end, I think we need to restrict the scope to the issues actually being discussed by the parties, or else every case will land on the “unaligned” side. Here, both parties agree on where they stand vis-a-vis C and D, and so would be “Antagonistic” in any discussion of those options, but since nobody is proposing them, the conversation they actually have shouldn’t be characterized as such.
As I understood it, the whole point is that the buyer is proposing C as an alternative to A and B. Otherwise, there is no advantage to him downplaying how much he prefers A to B / pretending to prefer B to A.