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Topic: Brexit (Read 1944 times) |
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gitanas
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So referendum starts today. What do you think Britain will vote for and what results will we have?
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towr
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #1 on: Jun 23rd, 2016, 11:24am » |
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To quote/paraphrase Margaret Thatcher: "referendums are a splendid weapon for demagogues and dictators". Not that I'm a Thatcher fan, but she wasn't wrong all the time.
You only need to look at the "arguments" (and I use the term lightly) on both sides of the debate. The truth is nowhere to be found.
I suppose the one saving grace is that people have at least a vague idea about what they're actually voting on, as opposed to the ridiculous referendum we (NL) had about the trade-agreement with Ukraine.
Maybe for such decisions, people should have to write down or tick boxes for all the reasons why they decide one way or another, and if those reasons are factually incorrect, then the vote is deemed invalid.
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rmsgrey
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #2 on: Jun 24th, 2016, 6:45am » |
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~52% exit. On the bright side, 48% of us get to spend the next decade or so saying "we told you so"...
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Grimbal
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #3 on: Jun 28th, 2016, 8:24am » |
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In democracy you can hear "mock".
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rmsgrey
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #4 on: Oct 7th, 2016, 4:30pm » |
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Recent article in the Guardian points out that both Leave and Remain campaigns combined had their entire budgets covered by about 20 donors total, including a suspiciously new UK-based corporation that may or may not have been a legitimate funding source...
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rloginunix
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #5 on: Oct 8th, 2016, 8:27am » |
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Pattern recognition. Is what we do.
UK is not the only country whose political landscape the man, having about two billion of US dollars worth sprinkled across offshore banks, is trying to alter to his perceived advantage - in US he is revealing the names, personal emails and personal cell phone numbers of the members of the National Democratic Convention just in time for the upcoming November elections. How convenient and what a coincidence (full Journal article).
(not to mention the gruesome fact that while his daughter lives in towr's country, he kills 193 of its citizens by shooting down an innocent passenger jet out of the sky)
I think that the biggest defence weapon in an arsenal of a democratic country is exactly the concept that his own country never had in the past, does not now and never will in the future - freedom of speech and freedom of thought:
- investigate
- analyze
- publish
- publish
- publish
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
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towr
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #6 on: Oct 9th, 2016, 2:45am » |
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on Oct 8th, 2016, 8:27am, rloginunix wrote:I think that the biggest defence weapon in an arsenal of a democratic country is [...] freedom of speech and freedom of thought:
[...]
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. |
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Looking at the political landscape, I can't help but comment that it's a terrible shame that most people seem to take it only as a freedom to bullsh*t. Brexit: bullsh*t, bullsh*t, bullsh*t; US election: bullsh*t, bullsh*t, bullsh*t.
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JiNbOtAk
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #7 on: Nov 9th, 2016, 11:32pm » |
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on Oct 9th, 2016, 2:45am, towr wrote:| ... US election: bullsh*t, bullsh*t, bullsh*t. |
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I thought the consensus was it's the opinion polls that's bullsh*t.
On that note, what do you guys think about those who protest against Trump being elected president ?
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towr
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #8 on: Nov 10th, 2016, 9:38am » |
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Well, 60M out of 300M Americans voted for Trump. And of those 60M many didn't vote Trump because they wanted him as a president, but because they hated the alternative more.
So, yeah. As far as democracy goes it's ridiculous.
The whole process is ridiculous. For example if you look at the popular vote, Hillary would have won (barely). And then you've got gerrymandering, where the sitting politician redraw the maps of the district so they'll get reelected. They make it more difficult to vote for people that would vote for the opposite party. And they create laws targeted at locking up, and taking away the voting right, of whole groups of people.
So yeah, f*cked up.
It's probably pointless to protest Trump's presidency, but I find it entirely understandable.
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rloginunix
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #9 on: Nov 11th, 2016, 7:18am » |
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Disclosure: though I could, I did not vote; not dabbling in politix in any way, shape or form whatsoever; strictly neutral side observer.
Opinion: mathematically speaking, the receiving end of the attention should be directed not at the individual, whose personal traits and character in the big scope and long run are of no consequence, but rather at the rules of the game by which that individual (and others before him have) played.
Fact: only two states in the union, Nebraska and Main, have addressed the above issue.
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towr
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #10 on: Nov 11th, 2016, 7:57am » |
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The winner takes all at state-level issue?
It's only one of the bad rules of the game, though.
Heck, the whole interpretation of democracy as dictatorship by the "majority"* is sick.
* even if it were.
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rloginunix
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #11 on: Nov 11th, 2016, 8:14am » |
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on Nov 11th, 2016, 7:57am, towr wrote:| The winner takes all at state-level issue? |
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Yep. By losing even by one physical/personal/popular vote, you lose the entire block or chunk of allotted to that state Electoral Votes.
Imagine playing a game of soccer (football). Personally, you are an excellent player. You played a good game. You fought a good fight. You scored two goals. Your opponent scored tree. Then, by the time the final whistle blows, the "2:3" score becomes "0:5", they win.
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Grimbal
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #13 on: Nov 21st, 2016, 2:11pm » |
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Maybe it is a paradox, but it seems to me that the rule that the majority of one state wins all votes of the state gives more power to the individual votes in that state.
If all states shared votes on both sides, proportionally to how electors voted, and one large state applied the winner-takes-all rule, then that state would almost certainly decide the end result. If it doesn't their opinion didn't matter anyway. So that state's elector's votes have more value.
It is therefore in each state's interest to use that winner-takes-all rule.
The paradox is that this is valid for each state. So everybody's vote should have more value.
Actually it works like the prisoner's dilemma.
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| « Last Edit: Nov 21st, 2016, 2:14pm by Grimbal » |
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towr
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #14 on: Nov 22nd, 2016, 10:21am » |
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on Nov 21st, 2016, 2:11pm, Grimbal wrote:| Maybe it is a paradox, but it seems to me that the rule that the majority of one state wins all votes of the state gives more power to the individual votes in that state. |
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It only gives more power to the winning votes in that state, it takes all power away from the losing votes.
It also means you can win with just ~25% of the votes (you only need to win just over half the electoral votes, by winning the states by just over half). Actually, I don't think electoral votes are distributed quite proportional to state population size, so you can probably win by less.
All of which is great news for a soon-to-be minority that wants to stay in power.
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dudiobugtron
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #15 on: Nov 22nd, 2016, 1:51pm » |
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on Nov 22nd, 2016, 10:21am, towr wrote:| It only gives more power to the winning votes in that state, it takes all power away from the losing votes. |
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I think the only 'power' that votes have is to help determine the outcome. Once the outcome is determined, they have no further power. The votes have the same amount of 'power' regardless of whether the option they voted for won or lost.
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rloginunix
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #16 on: Nov 22nd, 2016, 6:03pm » |
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I would observe that the fact that a candidate can win the Electoral and lose the Popular Votes tells us that there must be a skew factor or some sort of (unbalanced) differential in the way EVs are distributed. In a perfectly balanced system if a candidate is the first one to race to, say, 270 EVs - no matter the path through the "state-EVs graph" - then the arithmetic sum total of all his/her PVs better be greater than the remaining PVs and conversely. I am too lazy to dig through the details to find where the screw is though.
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towr
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #17 on: Nov 22nd, 2016, 11:25pm » |
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on Nov 22nd, 2016, 1:51pm, dudiobugtron wrote:
I think the only 'power' that votes have is to help determine the outcome. Once the outcome is determined, they have no further power. The votes have the same amount of 'power' regardless of whether the option they voted for won or lost. |
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That sounds like saying probability doesn't exists because after the outcome is determined it's always 100% or 0%.
The point, however, is that the large minority's opinion is simply ignored, because they lost by a marginal difference.
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rmsgrey
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #18 on: Nov 23rd, 2016, 6:24am » |
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on Nov 22nd, 2016, 6:03pm, rloginunix wrote:| I would observe that the fact that a candidate can win the Electoral and lose the Popular Votes tells us that there must be a skew factor or some sort of (unbalanced) differential in the way EVs are distributed. In a perfectly balanced system if a candidate is the first one to race to, say, 270 EVs - no matter the path through the "state-EVs graph" - then the arithmetic sum total of all his/her PVs better be greater than the remaining PVs and conversely. I am too lazy to dig through the details to find where the screw is though. |
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The whole concept of gerrymandering is based on the idea that the winner of the popular vote and the winner of the most constituencies votes needn't be the same.
The simplest example is probably the one with 9 voters divided into 3 constituencies of 3 votes each. By dividing 2-1, 2-1, 0-3, one side can win the election 2-1, while losing the popular vote 4-5.
Since all three constituencies are equal size and all three have equal weight in the outcome, there's no obvious way of "correcting" the outcome short of abandoning the idea of having elected representatives for specific constituencies - any attempt to arrange the constituencies so that the results are as uniform as possible runs into the fact that different regions/groups hold different priorities; attempting to make each constituency's outcome as unanimous as possible runs into the fact that each region has a significant minority opposition. And then there's the traditional method of assigning constituency boundaries which consists of trying to concentrate your opposition's supporters in as few constituencies as possible while spreading yours over as many as possible without risking your majority in any of them...
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dudiobugtron
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #19 on: Nov 23rd, 2016, 11:57am » |
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on Nov 22nd, 2016, 11:25pm, towr wrote:
That sounds like saying probability doesn't exists because after the outcome is determined it's always 100% or 0%. |
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I disagree. It's just recognising that each side of a coin has the same chance of occurring, regardless of the outcome. Heads and tails both played their part, and had the same 'power'. Flipping heads doesn't mean you are 'ignoring' tails.
Quote:| The point, however, is that the large minority's opinion is simply ignored, because they lost by a marginal difference. |
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This is indeed an issue, though! But it's not an issue with the voting process - it's more of an issue with the way elected representatives function. If they were able to fairly represent everyone, instead of only representing one group, then this wouldn't be as much of an issue.
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rloginunix
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #20 on: Nov 23rd, 2016, 12:00pm » |
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Nice example, rmsgrey!
Then it means that with more than two strong contenders things may get even trickier. Say, there are 15 voters split across 3 states as 6, 5, 4 with the corresponding numbers of EVs and 3 strong contenders are running:
state1: c1(3) c2(2) c1(1) and so c1 wins 6 EVs by winning just 3 PVs
s2: c1(0) c2(5) c3(0) - c2 wins 5 EVs
s3: c1(0) c2(0) c3(4) - c3 wins 4 EVs
Bottom line - c1 becomes the president by winning only 20% of PVs while c2 and c3, each, won more PVs. Hm.
Anyway, anyone willing to share how the election numbers work in their country?
Better yet - how about we design a Universal Voting Algorithm.
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rmsgrey
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #21 on: Nov 24th, 2016, 4:18am » |
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on Nov 23rd, 2016, 12:00pm, rloginunix wrote:| Better yet - how about we design a Universal Voting Algorithm. |
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Only if the first step is to define the qualities we want a suitable algorithm to have.
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towr
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #22 on: Nov 24th, 2016, 10:21am » |
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Not a bad first step.
I'm starting to think voting for people is inherently a terrible idea, because most people will vote with their gut, but their gut's expertise lies in digesting food, not facts.
So I'd say, vote on what qualities you want your president to have, and a procedure to find someone with those qualities. Then maybe at the end you'll get someone qualified.
Another idea is to give people multiple votes, for example one +1_vote and one -1_vote, then maybe you won't end up with a winner that's absolutely loathed by half of the voters. You'll get some inoffensive schmuck that everyone can shrug their shoulders at.
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dudiobugtron
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #23 on: Nov 24th, 2016, 12:26pm » |
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Afaik it's impossible to make a (sensible) rank-order voting system where the outcome between two candidates isn't affected by the order you rank the other candidates. (Arrow's impossibility theorem.)
It's also impossible to make any (sensible) deterministic voting system which isn't manipulable by strategic voting.
(Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem.)
For example, in towr's +1 and -1 system: imagine there are 3 candidates - one you really like, one you would be fine with, and one that you would hate. You should ideally give your -1 vote to the candidate you hate, but it might be more strategic to give it to the one you would be fine with, if they are the main competitor.
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towr
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Re: Brexit
« Reply #24 on: Nov 24th, 2016, 1:09pm » |
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Theory is well and nice, but if we're considering a voting system to be used by actual voters, I'm not sure how relevant those concerns are. People's behaviour tends to be poorly described by theory (be it logic, economics, game theory or whatever).
I suppose the only way to find out would be to test it.
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