4 ms·

"The state we are in has a huge portion of people literally hating the guts of anyone who is in a different party from them" And how did this happen? With a v

"The state we are in has a huge portion of people literally hating the guts of anyone who is in a different party from them" And how did this happen? With a voting system that elects the first choice of the median voter, there wouldn't be two opposing parties. There would more likely be people who organize around specific candidates, or that support specific issues, but not an artificial "right vs left" or "republican vs democrate"or "conservative vs liberal". And there wouldn't be big surprises on election day. A good way to visualize it is a hypothetical situation where you are voting for a number. Say it is a big office, and everyone votes on the temperature to set the thermostat. You could imagine a bad voting system, where the cold natured people and the warm natured people start to cluster into groups for strategic purposes, and they end up hating each other. Or a good system where everyone just writes down their preferred temperature, and the median temperature is chosen. Never a surprise after a vote, no one is particularly disgruntled. The ones that are extremely cold natured might dress warmer, etc, but that makes sense, right? That's how it could be. The problem is we are so used to it the way it has been for a long time, it is hard to realize it mostly comes from the voting system. Obviously it would take a bit of time for the effects of partisanship to fade, but that's expected.

hirundo 7y ago
> Or a good system where everyone just writes down their preferred temperature, and the median temperature is chosen. Why wouldn't people game the system by entering temperatures as low or as high as allowed? If I want 68F but think the mean will be 72F, I can vote for 45F, or whatever the limit is. Likely this would spawn cool and warm "parties" that will campaign for others to do the same. You might find the votes bifurcating into the opposite extremes. If you put no limit on the temperatures the warmists would win, because the coolists have a hard limit of zero Kelvin. But if you actually follow the results of that election you may freeze or incinerate everyone. Isn't democracy great?
- kstenerud 7y ago
  Now you're attacking the analogy, which adds nothing useful to the conversation because the real thing doesn't work that way.
  - robbrown451 7y ago
    Actually he's just wrong about the analogy, since it is median, not average. You can't game median. That was the whole point of my analogy.
- robbrown451 7y ago
  "Why wouldn't people game the system by entering temperatures as low or as high as allowed?" Because it is median, not average. That does nothing. Demonstrated here: https://pianop.ly/voting/median.html https://pianop.ly/voting/median.html I think you are wrong about parties forming, there would be no benefit whatsoever. There is no reason anyone would have any incentive to do anything other than vote for their preferred value.
  - hirundo 7y ago
    > There is no reason anyone would have any incentive to do anything other than vote for their preferred value. I think people would quickly come to see voting for their preferred value as wasting their vote, as is often the case with presidential elections. Good point about median vs average, I missed that. But there would be benefit in converging the votes on popular numbers to make them the median. E.g. if I want 70 but think the contest will come down to 72 vs 76, it may make perfect sense to change my vote to 72.
    - robbrown451 7y ago
      It may make perfect sense psychologically to do that, but it accomplishes nothing for you. Some people may do things like this, but those things tend to cancel out. They aren't general tendencies, they are just individual quirks. Also, why would it come down to 72 or 76? It's not going to bounce around like that, it will converge on a center value. Regardless, it would make no sense for you to pick anything other than your preferred value. Any value you pick is going to move it the same amount (if it moves it at all). And if you pick 72 when you prefer 70, you are taking a risk of your moving the result in the opposite direction of where you want it to go (as would be the case if the median was around 71) "But there would be benefit in converging the votes on popular numbers to make them the median." "Popular numbers" don't matter with a numerical vote like this. We aren't voting for discrete "candidate values". Again, the best strategy is to vote for you preferred value, full stop. Trying to guess how others are voting would accomplish exactly nothing. It is very different from presidential votes where it may well be wasting your vote to vote for who you actually want. All of the things you say apply there. This is not that.
ClayShentrup 7y ago
Rob is generally correct about all this.

hirundo 7y ago

> Or a good system where everyone just writes down their preferred temperature, and the median temperature is chosen. Why wouldn't people game the system by entering temperatures as low or as high as allowed? If I want 68F but think the mean will be 72F, I can vote for 45F, or whatever the limit is. Likely this would spawn cool and warm "parties" that will campaign for others to do the same. You might find the votes bifurcating into the opposite extremes. If you put no limit on the temperatures the warmists would win, because the coolists have a hard limit of zero Kelvin. But if you actually follow the results of that election you may freeze or incinerate everyone. Isn't democracy great?

kstenerud 7y ago
Now you're attacking the analogy, which adds nothing useful to the conversation because the real thing doesn't work that way.
- robbrown451 7y ago
  Actually he's just wrong about the analogy, since it is median, not average. You can't game median. That was the whole point of my analogy.
robbrown451 7y ago
"Why wouldn't people game the system by entering temperatures as low or as high as allowed?" Because it is median, not average. That does nothing. Demonstrated here: https://pianop.ly/voting/median.html https://pianop.ly/voting/median.html I think you are wrong about parties forming, there would be no benefit whatsoever. There is no reason anyone would have any incentive to do anything other than vote for their preferred value.
- hirundo 7y ago
  > There is no reason anyone would have any incentive to do anything other than vote for their preferred value. I think people would quickly come to see voting for their preferred value as wasting their vote, as is often the case with presidential elections. Good point about median vs average, I missed that. But there would be benefit in converging the votes on popular numbers to make them the median. E.g. if I want 70 but think the contest will come down to 72 vs 76, it may make perfect sense to change my vote to 72.
  - robbrown451 7y ago
    It may make perfect sense psychologically to do that, but it accomplishes nothing for you. Some people may do things like this, but those things tend to cancel out. They aren't general tendencies, they are just individual quirks. Also, why would it come down to 72 or 76? It's not going to bounce around like that, it will converge on a center value. Regardless, it would make no sense for you to pick anything other than your preferred value. Any value you pick is going to move it the same amount (if it moves it at all). And if you pick 72 when you prefer 70, you are taking a risk of your moving the result in the opposite direction of where you want it to go (as would be the case if the median was around 71) "But there would be benefit in converging the votes on popular numbers to make them the median." "Popular numbers" don't matter with a numerical vote like this. We aren't voting for discrete "candidate values". Again, the best strategy is to vote for you preferred value, full stop. Trying to guess how others are voting would accomplish exactly nothing. It is very different from presidential votes where it may well be wasting your vote to vote for who you actually want. All of the things you say apply there. This is not that.

ClayShentrup 7y ago

Rob is generally correct about all this.