life is a free trial.
@hubert @ben i think the way to think about it isn’t some threshold, but generosity. you have a candidate you prefer, others you really dislike, others you don’t dislike do much. you can, if you like, “bullet vote” — approve only of your most preferred candidate. if everyone does this the exercise degenerates to FTPT. but everyone doesn’t! 1/
@hubert @ben some of these “olive leaf” differences will be mere self-expression. if you would have voted strategically in FPTP for a major party candidate despite preferring a less likely contender, you get to express that. within the context of one election, it changes nothing, but it does change perceptions of who might be credible next time around. 4/
@hubert @ben and when next time comes, when there are in fact multiple credible candidates rather than the FPTP binary equilibrium, these olive leaves are crucial. the credible candidates who win the checkmark of democratic generosity from voters who might prefer someone else, but can live with them, become victors. 5/
@hyperplanes the best thing about the metaphor of a lost thing is that lost things can be found!
@tatere @ben with the caveat that they are basically an approval-voting advocacy shop, see electionscience.org, e.g. https://electionscience.org/commentary-analysis/fargos-second-approval-voting-election-runs-smoothly/
@ben we'll see! well-implemented RCV would be (somewhat) better than FTPT, at least. but the future contains a lot of moments, i'm hopeful we can do better.
@grantimatter @DetroitDan neither ashen nor little! ❤️
@ben I agree with all of that! It just always struck me as complication perfectly tractable to overcome.
As this story reminds us, in the context of heavily politicized, deeply imperfect electoral systems, it might be right that a lot of what should be perfectly tractable is not.
But my view is that even conceding clear definition of edge cases and perfect implementation, approval voting is better, because it privileges broad acceptability over anybody's favorite.
even when tallying is perfect, i think #ApprovalVoting is usually superior to #RankedChoice for single-winner elections.
but i usually think the critique that #rcv is "complicated to implement" is a bit of a strawman (although "complicated to understand" is an important critique).
sometimes, however, the strawman rises from the haystack.
via @ben
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Alameda-County-admits-tallying-error-in-17682520.php
"There are eerie parallels between the Chinese strategy for cross straights reunification in this era and America’s parallel bid to incorporate China into a Western led world order." ~Tanner Greer https://scholars-stage.org/we-can-only-kick-taiwan-down-the-road-so-far/
// I pray this can gets kicked into a future far enough that its contours today are entirely obsoleted. Greer seems to want a kind of clear decision his own analysis suggests we won't so deliberately make.
@stephenjudkins @crookedfootball Yeah. There's no getting around that we're in the slippery realm of saying stuff about when when stuff people say is constructive. We'll undoubtedly slip into whatever we critique!
@stephenjudkins @crookedfootball I guess, but I don't think @crookedfootball is in fact arguing against the sanctions regime, nor would I! We didn't broadly blame the "Iraqi people" in the 90s, but maintained a notoriously devastating sanctions regime. (In a bank shot, you might argue the 2nd Iraq War might have been avoided if we did demonize the Iraqi people, so that continuing less-harm sanctions would have remained internationally sustainable.) 1/
@stephenjudkins @crookedfootball Less speculatively, the useful relationship between not-demonizing and sanctions regimes is that burdens on the broad public are viewed as a cost. Beyond Russia, the recent trend is to target sanctions towards leadership (which, given the poor effectiveness of sanctions in general, seems to do about as much good with less "collateral damage"). 2/
@stephenjudkins @crookedfootball That's not the case with Russia, of course, where the goal is to degrade industrial capacity to fight and so sanctions are as broad and hermetic as possible. But as you say, it's easy to justify that on least-harm terms without resorting to any blame of the Russian public. It's a shame—really!—that blameless Russian workers lose their jobs at auto plants, but its a much lesser harm than enabling what Russia's doing in Ukraine or escalating to a greater war. /fin
@stephenjudkins @crookedfootball I guess I'd like more on what uses you think this kind of analysis has, given how obviously susceptible to misuse — blame that justifies misbehavior against a collective, motivated reasoning that renders constructive resolutions of conflict less rather than more likely. If the only use is as a counter to other stories you think are wrong, well, most stories are wrong, sure. The problem is you come to think something is right.
@stephenjudkins @crookedfootball The "people" who are so unshy seem a lot shyer about the role of imperialist traditions in the death and immiseration of millions of people by a "war on terrorism" (that implicates me quite directly, I actively supported it). US liberals' take on the complicit US South strikes me as an example of motivated, self-exonerating reasoning, especially in light of the experience of Black migrations north and west.
@stephenjudkins @crookedfootball I'd say that national norms and traditions are fairer to critique outside of the context of a bitter, criminal conflict likely to promote motivated reasoning. For all one might want to say about Russian chauvinism and imperialism—and yes, there is a vast trove!—how able are you to distinguish it from British or French antecedents, or US manifest destiny? What is more likely of the exercise, to inform or reinforce convenient views? 1/
@stephenjudkins @crookedfootball That said, I think it is perfectly fair and useful to point out the ways that *actual protagonists* of the war revert to ugly cultural antecedents. Putin openly invokes "great" conquerors of the past as points of comparison with his exercise. I think it far to tar *him* as elevating and succumbing to the worst parts of Russia's cultural legacy. But I don't think now is a time when we can make fair evaluations of "Russian culture". /fin
Deliberative democracy depends on speech being referential, ie the speaker's words are referents to objects and concepts that meaningfully exist beyond the speaker. The words represent the speaker's thoughts and interests with respect to those.
But in practice speech is often instrumental: Ppl decide what to say in order to get what they want, based on the social effect they believe it will have.
cf Matt Bruenig https://mattbruenig.com/2022/12/30/the-contradictions-of-deliberative-democracy/
Pitch-perfect by @crookedfootball on misguided accusations of "collective responsibility" of citizens of a criminal tyranny. There is no righteousness, only self-righteousness, in holding people to a standard that we citizens of relatively free democracies, who can do so without consequence, are often called to and rarely meet. https://crookedtimber.org/2022/12/30/on-the-alleged-responsibility-of-the-entire-russian-people-for-the-war-in-ukraine/
I can't wait to see what it says about January 3rd.
Calendar Notification: Jan 2 — Tomorrow: Day after New Year's Day
the people you hear it from are disproportionately likely to have an agenda. which doesn’t make it wrong. or right. you just have to take it into account.
if you act before midnight, your toots will be 100% matched and have twice the impact!
@allafarce Yours too! Let’s do lots of thinking together, you and me, in 2023!