Re: [EM] Warren needs to double check his work.

[David L Wetzell]

KM:Congratulations. You have just said that your anti-evidence armor is
*so* strong that nothing I could ever produce today would change your mind.

dlw; That is not true and I have changed my mind as a result of my exposure
to the args used on this list.  What I said was that our diffs had to do w.
expectations about the degree of the feedback loop in terms of number of
competitive candidates from a change in election rules used and that
changing away from fptp for many single-winner election rules asap, as
seems to be plausible with some modification of irv in the USA, is the best
way to see the scope for change.

KM: No argument, no proof, whether it be from the US or outside it, from
national or international organizations, from theory or practice. No piece
of it can change your mind, not a one.

dlw: not true.

KM:That sounds awfully like faith to me. And I know that arguing with a man
of faith is a losing proposition. If you ever wonder why people act
"unprofessional" and don't respond to your assertions, perhaps it's because
there's no compromise to be found. Eventually, even a fool tires of arguing
with a wall.

dlw: It's not true that all arguments w. people with a priori "faith"
commitments are futile.  I've worked hard to give you good responses over
our diffs.  The fact I still presume that ending the US's two-party
dominated system isn't likely and am skeptical about the value-added of
most of the attempts to improve on irv in the short-run isn't due to faith.
 It's a product of my long-standing attempt to synthesize my the nature of
my country's failing democracy with electoral analytics to provide a tact
on how best to proceed.

It reflects my conservative disposition and a conservative disposition is
resistant to change.

KM:But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The way you make use of your
general defenses is entirely consistent with your statement that nothing
can convince you, because you seem to think that each defense is absolute
and frees you from having to actually address an objection.

dlw: I haven't addressed your objections???  My arg that the feedback loop
from a change in election rules is an attempt to deal with your objects.
 My args that the "loss" from the use of IRV in Burlington is over-stated
and that the campaign against IRV shows it has serious value added over FPP
are dealing with your objections.

You are being unfair to me.

KM: When you reply to any of my references to other nations by "American
exceptionalism", you never say how much evidence would be necessary to put
the claim of extremely specific American exceptionalism into doubt. You
just use it as a general defense, a way of brushing away every objection.

dlw: I don't use AE to brush away every objection.  My view is more like
successful electoral reform in a two-party dominated system reinforced by a
strong presidential system and many low-info voters habituated to said
system ought to presume the continued presence of a two-party dominated
system.  I go further to suggest that the presumption commonly held by
electoral reformers that the purpose of electoral reform is to end the
two-party dominated system is unnecessary and even counter-productive
within the USA.

Now, I could be wrong.  God knows it's hard to get electoral reform in the
US with most reform-oriented orgs playing defense against the new Jim Crow
and putting a lot of their bets on very ambitious CFRegulations that will
be hard to enforce without electoral reforms.  But it fits the evidence of
the USA as far as I can tell.

KM:When you come with assertions that anybody not agreeing with you in
Burlington is either a useful fool or one of Them, you never bother backing
this up with an actual money trail, nor do you reconcile it with reports
that it was the IRV campaign who got the most out-of-town money, let alone
account for the extreme specificity (violation of Occam's razor) required
to claim that we, on a mailing list somewhere, are being manipulated by
some Shadowy Others. You just use it as a general defense.

dlw: Okay, that is a valid critique.

I don't think you're on the dole or fools.  I think you've invested a lot
of time and energy into an approach to electoral analytics whose "value"
for the US is diminished by the emph on IRV by progressive activists in the
USA.  As such, my view is you gravitate to evidence that suggests what you
proffer is more valuable and that this gets given more air-time by some for
dubious reasons.

And, yes it is interesting that the out-of-town money in the IRV campaign
out-weighed the in-town money.  I'd like to read more about that.It
goes to show how many folks really believed IRV was going to change the
dynamics of the US political system by forcing the parties to hew to the
true center.

KM: And when I object that you can't just claim this and that and this too,
and then be free of any counter, you reach for your meta-armor: "Sunk cost
immunity!".

dlw: Marketing matters.  I argue that if I'

Re: [EM] Warren needs to double check his work.

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 06/25/2013 07:15 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:

KM2:So you're saying that nothing short of actually trying the
experiment in public elections will change your mind?
Then I believe I am done here. I can't change your position, so all I
can do is to argue to others that your position is flawed.

dlw2: Yes, our diffs are epistemic.  The thought experiments commonly
used here are not persuasive to me, since I'm trying to hold onto a
realistic notion of voters that views voter-utilities or political
spectrumes as at best useful heuristics.


Congratulations. You have just said that your anti-evidence armor is 
*so* strong that nothing I could ever produce today would change your 
mind. No argument, no proof, whether it be from the US or outside it, 
from national or international organizations, from theory or practice. 
No piece of it can change your mind, not a one.


That sounds awfully like faith to me. And I know that arguing with a man 
of faith is a losing proposition. If you ever wonder why people act 
"unprofessional" and don't respond to your assertions, perhaps it's 
because there's no compromise to be found. Eventually, even a fool tires 
of arguing with a wall.


But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The way you make use of your 
general defenses is entirely consistent with your statement that nothing 
can convince you, because you seem to think that each defense is 
absolute and frees you from having to actually address an objection.


When you reply to any of my references to other nations by "American 
exceptionalism", you never say how much evidence would be necessary to 
put the claim of extremely specific American exceptionalism into doubt. 
You just use it as a general defense, a way of brushing away every 
objection.


When you come with assertions that anybody not agreeing with you in 
Burlington is either a useful fool or one of Them, you never bother 
backing this up with an actual money trail, nor do you reconcile it with 
reports that it was the IRV campaign who got the most out-of-town money, 
let alone account for the extreme specificity (violation of Occam's 
razor) required to claim that we, on a mailing list somewhere, are being 
manipulated by some Shadowy Others. You just use it as a general defense.


And when I object that you can't just claim this and that and this too, 
and then be free of any counter, you reach for your meta-armor: "Sunk 
cost immunity!". Like some diplomat holding up a wallet, you seem to 
think that it is absolute: that it can make any requests for evidence 
evaporate, no matter how particular the claim being tested is. You never 
specify when the sunk cost might be met, and you never say how 
tangential a claim has to be before it is no longer protected by sunk 
cost immunity. Apparently any claim (American exceptionalism, very 
specific economies of scale, conspiracy) will be protected as long as it 
can be somehow linked up with a pro-IRV position.


Why not just claim that US voters get an instinctual satisfaction in 
watching the IRV process run to completion, and so that no other method 
can provide what IRV provides? You'd be done with it once and for all. 
Then when someone else asks for evidence, just pull out your wallet 
again. Ridiculous? Yes, but that's because it doesn't match your 
intuition. The logic is the same: "anything pro-IRV is protected by sunk 
cost immunity".


Instead of specific counters, you use general defenses. I liked you 
better when you bothered to look into the facts and then said that 
perhaps Brazil isn't applicable to my point because it is a 
dominant-party system. But nowadays it doesn't appear you have the time 
for that. It doesn't appear you have time to check my data, either, or 
you'd find out that Olson's results about IRV and Condorcet error 
resistance aren't contingent on there being many candidates. But it's so 
easy to just use another general defense, another catch-all armor plate: 
in this case the "it doesn't matter when there are few candidates" 
response that has served you so well against advanced methods in the past.


But I should thank you for making clear what you had previously only 
shown in an indirect, sneaky manner: that there is nothing that can 
change your mind. Then I know there is no point in continuing the 
discussion, except perhaps as to show others just how much you stack the 
deck.


So enjoy your anti-evidence armor, and thanks for telling me what you 
otherwise only implied. Your persistent special pleading and refusal to 
follow the same rules and courtesy of discourse as everybody else just 
angers me. In so doing, you only drive me further from the IRV campaign. 
And so I am tempted to recommend you continue your "logic" and thus 
repel even more people. But nobody should have to face this sniping, 
this special pleading, this armored presumption of being invincible. So 
I am not going to recommend that.


---

All who'd feel like arguing with DLW, remember what he said abo

Re: [EM] Warren needs to double check his work.

[David L Wetzell]

>
> KM1:Alright, then tell me what kind of evidence would change your mind as
> to whether the scarcity of competitive candidates is an artifact of
> Plurality or inherent to single-winner elections. (If no such evidence
> can exist, then there's no point in discussing.)
>
> dlw1:Let's switch to IRV + American forms of PR(in more local elections)
> and watch the feedback loop.   We should be able to observe over time
> how the dynamics of elections shift, as voter-prefs get better
> cultivated.  When folks get habituated to the new system then it'd be
> easy to put multiple alts to IRV on various ballots, using IRV to choose
> between them, and then we'd see from various experiments  whether
> upgrading from IRV continues a feedback loop in improving the quantity
> as well as quality of competitive candidates on the ballot.
>

KM2:So you're saying that nothing short of actually trying the experiment
in public elections will change your mind?
Then I believe I am done here. I can't change your position, so all I can
do is to argue to others that your position is flawed.

dlw2: Yes, our diffs are epistemic.  The thought experiments commonly used
here are not persuasive to me, since I'm trying to hold onto a realistic
notion of voters that views voter-utilities or political spectrumes as at
best useful heuristics.

KM2: Though, on another level, I could argue that IRV itself has already
been tested in the US. Yes, I'm going to use the B-word. But you have
already made it clear enough that you consider Burlington to be an anomaly:
therefore, it appears only widespread center-squeezing will be enough to
show the inferiority of IRV.

dlw2: Exactly, this illustrates our epistemic diffs.   Why put so much
resources to end the use of IRV in Burlington if it is such an ineffective
rule?  The bank-rollers of the recall campaign weren't worried about IRV's
not always electing the Condorcet winner.  With one more election, folks
would have adjusted so that IRV, ie GOPers wd've forced their party to the
center or voted strategically for the Democratic party, and IRV would work
reliably.  It would've made the two biggest parties hew towards the center
and accommodate outsiders.  The dissatisfaction with IRV was $pun with evil
intent in Burlington and you propagate the $pin with your perfectionism.
 If the number of competitive candidates proliferates and IRV is found
inadequate in multiple elections then change will be possible.  Meanwhile,
there was no good reason to stifle the adoption of IRV there and my view is
that you bring it up to elevate the short-term import of your preferred
alternative electoral rules.

This is what it feels like, "Oh, if only our rules were in place then this
wouldn't have happened."  Well, the opponents of reform are good at
figuring out ways to manipulate people's perceptions of election rules and
dividing and conquering those who push for reform.  They'd have adapted
their attacks if a different rule had been in use in Burlington.

KM2:If anything, I'm reminded of a right-populist party over here. Their
policies have been criticized many times. One of their replies is simply:
"we've never been in power, so you don't know that it would turn out that
bad".

dlw2: Well, IRV hasn't never been in power and I'm not pushing for it alone
nor am I claiming it's the end-all-be-all of electoral rules.  I'm
defending it as the best known progressive alternative to fptp against
critics who rely on relatively abstract models and the presumption of a
strong feedback loop from switching to their rules to the increase in the
number of competitive candidates.  I am skeptical of how strong the
feedback loop would be in important single-winner elections.

KM:And furthermore, tell me why we shouldn't just use what you call
> "multi-winner elections" like runoffs and not have to take on faith that
> no single-winner method can produce diversity.
>
> dlw: We need both diversity and hierarchy.  This is why we need a mix of
> election rules, some encouraging diversity/equality, others encouraging
> hierarchy/order.  We need the latter because of the need for collective
> action and coordination.
>

KM2: So long as there are parties, there will always be hierarchy. Fred
Gohlke argues pretty well for this. He does that because he thinks party
hierarchy is a bad thing. I'm not going to comment on whether it is, here,
because it is besides the point. Instead, I'll only say: Why?

dlw2: The state holds a monopoly on the legit uses of violence to prevent
the growth of violence.  This monopoly leads to hierarchy.  Hierarchy is
also a part of making changes possible.  If we are to search for long-term
alternatives to nuclear and non-renewable energy, we'll need to coordinate
research which will require hierarchy to parcel out different tasks and to
abet the dissemination and rewarding of good work.

Single winner election rules abet the transparent formation of hierarchy.
 They also should promote checks and balances to k

Re: [EM] Warren needs to double check his work.

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 06/25/2013 12:25 AM, David L Wetzell wrote:

KM:Alright, then tell me what kind of evidence would change your mind as
to whether the scarcity of competitive candidates is an artifact of
Plurality or inherent to single-winner elections. (If no such evidence
can exist, then there's no point in discussing.)

dlw:Let's switch to IRV + American forms of PR(in more local elections)
and watch the feedback loop.   We should be able to observe over time
how the dynamics of elections shift, as voter-prefs get better
cultivated.  When folks get habituated to the new system then it'd be
easy to put multiple alts to IRV on various ballots, using IRV to choose
between them, and then we'd see from various experiments  whether
upgrading from IRV continues a feedback loop in improving the quantity
as well as quality of competitive candidates on the ballot.


So you're saying that nothing short of actually trying the experiment in 
public elections will change your mind? Then I believe I am done here. I 
can't change your position, so all I can do is to argue to others that 
your position is flawed.


Though, on another level, I could argue that IRV itself has already been 
tested in the US. Yes, I'm going to use the B-word. But you have already 
made it clear enough that you consider Burlington to be an anomaly: 
therefore, it appears only widespread center-squeezing will be enough to 
show the inferiority of IRV.


If anything, I'm reminded of a right-populist party over here. Their 
policies have been criticized many times. One of their replies is 
simply: "we've never been in power, so you don't know that it would turn 
out that bad".



KM:And furthermore, tell me why we shouldn't just use what you call
"multi-winner elections" like runoffs and not have to take on faith that
no single-winner method can produce diversity.

dlw: We need both diversity and hierarchy.  This is why we need a mix of
election rules, some encouraging diversity/equality, others encouraging
hierarchy/order.  We need the latter because of the need for collective
action and coordination.


So long as there are parties, there will always be hierarchy. Fred 
Gohlke argues pretty well for this. He does that because he thinks party 
hierarchy is a bad thing. I'm not going to comment on whether it is, 
here, because it is besides the point. Instead, I'll only say: Why?


There are nations that only use what you call multi-winner rules. There 
are even nations on the American continent that do so. Yet they manage. 
Their lack of what you call single-winner elections for partisan 
positions do not seem to measurably harm them in comparison with similar 
nations that do use such election rules.



I classify multiple stage elections as hybrids between multi-winner and
single-winner elections.  I think they're costly but good systems.  If
we replaced all of our current fptp systems with a partisan primary in
the US with the FairVote upgrade on top two primary, it'd improve the
system.  But I'd rather not use one election rule for all elections.  I
think it'd be hard to get turnout up and fair in the first election,
even with four winners.


If Abd is right, then low turnout is a feature, not a bug.

And what do you mean by "and fair in the first election"?


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Re: [EM] Warren needs to double check his work.

[David L Wetzell]

KM:Alright, then tell me what kind of evidence would change your mind as to
whether the scarcity of competitive candidates is an artifact of Plurality
or inherent to single-winner elections. (If no such evidence can exist,
then there's no point in discussing.)

dlw:Let's switch to IRV + American forms of PR(in more local elections) and
watch the feedback loop.   We should be able to observe over time how the
dynamics of elections shift, as voter-prefs get better cultivated.  When
folks get habituated to the new system then it'd be easy to put multiple
alts to IRV on various ballots, using IRV to choose between them, and then
we'd see from various experiments  whether upgrading from IRV continues a
feedback loop in improving the quantity as well as quality of competitive
candidates on the ballot.

KM:And furthermore, tell me why we shouldn't just use what you call
"multi-winner elections" like runoffs and not have to take on faith that no
single-winner method can produce diversity.

dlw: We need both diversity and hierarchy.  This is why we need a mix of
election rules, some encouraging diversity/equality, others encouraging
hierarchy/order.  We need the latter because of the need for collective
action and coordination.

I classify multiple stage elections as hybrids between multi-winner and
single-winner elections.  I think they're costly but good systems.  If we
replaced all of our current fptp systems with a partisan primary in the US
with the FairVote upgrade on top two primary, it'd improve the system.  But
I'd rather not use one election rule for all elections.  I think it'd be
hard to get turnout up and fair in the first election, even with four
winners.

dlw

dlw


On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 5:10 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km_el...@lavabit.com> wrote:

> On 06/24/2013 11:22 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
>
>> Another might add, "This is why the number of competitive candidates and
>> the extent of low-info voters matters in the comparison".
>>
>
> Alright, then tell me what kind of evidence would change your mind as to
> whether the scarcity of competitive candidates is an artifact of Plurality
> or inherent to single-winner elections. (If no such evidence can exist,
> then there's no point in discussing.)
>
> And furthermore, tell me why we shouldn't just use what you call
> "multi-winner elections" like runoffs and not have to take on faith that no
> single-winner method can produce diversity.
>
>

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Re: [EM] Warren needs to double check his work.

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 06/24/2013 11:22 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:

Another might add, "This is why the number of competitive candidates and
the extent of low-info voters matters in the comparison".


Alright, then tell me what kind of evidence would change your mind as to 
whether the scarcity of competitive candidates is an artifact of 
Plurality or inherent to single-winner elections. (If no such evidence 
can exist, then there's no point in discussing.)


And furthermore, tell me why we shouldn't just use what you call 
"multi-winner elections" like runoffs and not have to take on faith that 
no single-winner method can produce diversity.



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Re: [EM] Warren needs to double check his work.

[David L Wetzell]

Another might add, "This is why the number of competitive candidates and
the extent of low-info voters matters in the comparison".

dlw


On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:31 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km_el...@lavabit.com> wrote:

> On 06/24/2013 09:33 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
>
>> There should be a few more fewer ranks in the red in his example.
>> http://rangevoting.org/**IrvIgnoreExample.html
>>
>> Also, I don't think voters care that much if their deeper preferences
>> aren't consulted when their top prefs get elected or come in 2nd place
>> and so it seems contrived to make a big deal out of it.  This does get
>> at why little is lost when only 3 rankings are allowed with IRV, which
>> then makes it easier to use those rankings as approval votes for a first
>> round that reduces the number of candidates much more quickly.
>>
>
> One man might say: "This does get at why little is lost when only 3
> rankings are allowed with IRV".
> The other man might say: "This does get at why full IRV is not much better
> than 3-candidate IRV".
>
>
>

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Re: [EM] Warren needs to double check his work.

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 06/24/2013 09:33 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:

There should be a few more fewer ranks in the red in his example.
http://rangevoting.org/IrvIgnoreExample.html

Also, I don't think voters care that much if their deeper preferences
aren't consulted when their top prefs get elected or come in 2nd place
and so it seems contrived to make a big deal out of it.  This does get
at why little is lost when only 3 rankings are allowed with IRV, which
then makes it easier to use those rankings as approval votes for a first
round that reduces the number of candidates much more quickly.


One man might say: "This does get at why little is lost when only 3 
rankings are allowed with IRV".
The other man might say: "This does get at why full IRV is not much 
better than 3-candidate IRV".




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