asklemmy

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chaogomu, in What is Lemmy's Favorite Beverage? [Ranked-Choice Poll]

Ranked choice is probably the worst option for a poll like this...

I'm betting if you ran this exact poll under different rules, say multiple choice allowing unlimited selection, you'd get a vastly different answer.

This is because Ranked Choice is a horrible voting system. If First Past the Post wasn't so bad, RCV would have the title of worst system ever created.

Hell, the site you linked even has a "pros and cons" section where they even admit to the massive problems with the system but then hand wave them away.

Ballot exhaustion alone is a showstopper. They pretend that the voter "just didn't choose someone popular enough to win" when the reality is much more insidious. The most common form of ballot exhaustion is when your 2nd or 3rd choice is eliminated in the first round, and then your 1st choice is eliminated in a later round.

And because of how votes are counted, if you had put your 2nd choice in the 1st slot, they could have won the election, even if they were not your literal favorite.

Up to 20% of ballots cast in RCV elections are thrown out due to ballot exhaustion. That's enough votes to massively shift who wins or loses.


The basic truth here is that RCV is good at one thing. Preventing fringe candidates from spoiling an election between two front-runners. It can prevent another Bush v Gore, but that's it.

Also, in real world use, it's fucked up several elections.

Due to the need for centralized counting, the 2021 NYC mayoral race had 130,000 extra votes that turned out to have been test ballots that should never have been in the same location as the actual election ballots.

https://www.thecity.nyc/2021/6/29/22556830/nyc-board-of-election-pulls-preliminary-mayoral-results

Centralize counting and an overly complex system also resulted in the wrong winner being chosen in California. The wrong winner was sworn in and served in the position for a full month before the error was found.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Alameda-County-admits-tallying-error-in-17682520.php


There are vastly better options than RCV.

You can read up on them here. https://www.starvoting.org/

And here, https://electionscience.org/

fearout,
@fearout@kbin.social avatar

So if you were to choose the best system for multi-candidate voting that would work for most real-life elections or multiple-choice rankings, which one would it be?

chaogomu,

Absolute best would be STAR.

https://www.starvoting.org/

A good runner-up would be Approval.

https://electionscience.org/

fearout,
@fearout@kbin.social avatar

Thanks for the links. I’ve heard of star, but approval is new to me. I’ll read up on those

chaogomu,

Approval is super easy and can be used at small scale, and at large scale too.

But here it is in less than 2 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orybDrUj4vA

Doing it at large scale, is just scaling it up. And the great thing is, it easily handles as many options as you throw at it.

TooL,

Came here to take a silly poll about drinks, came away with some actual interesting reading about better election methods. Thanks man. A shame this will never change in the US but one can dream…

Risk,

There’s also Single Transferable Vote.

tikitaki,
@tikitaki@kbin.social avatar

i appreciate the strong passion and education about the poll on everyone's favorite beverage

Risk,

I’m trying to figure out the pros and cons of the STAR Voting method versus the pros and cons of the STV method. Can anyone help fill me in?

chaogomu,

Do you have 3 hours?

This live stream explains it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-dzK3YIAf8

The TLDR, or TLDW here;

The difference between RCV (also called IRV) and STAR is the difference between an Ordinal system and a Cardinal system.

An Ordinal system is a ranked system. Chose one or the other, but never both. A vote for A means you cannot also support B. This lead to some math shit that actually gives preferential treatment to two party systems.

RCV claims to support third parties and solve the spoiler effect. The truth is the opposite in every way. It eliminates fringe parties that would spoil elections, but also falls prey to spoiler effects when you have very similar candidates. It's actually a mess.


STAR on the other hand is a Cardinal voting system. A vote for A is a vote for A and a Vote for B has no impact on A. A good example is saying that I give Chocolate Milkshakes 5 out of 5 stars and New Coke 1 out of 5. But here's the main difference to an Ordinal system, I can also give a Banana Smoothies 5 out of 5 stars. Because I'm rating them as individuals, not in comparison to each other.

STAR is literally a 5-star review of the candidates, and the two with the highest average (or just highest scores) are then put head to head. Each ballot is then looked at, if Chocolate Milkshakes are rated higher on any given ballot than Banana Smoothies, Milkshakes get the vote of that person. If they're the same, a vote of No Preference is logged, and the No Preference votes are also made public at the end.

Risk,

No no, I was asking about the differences between Single Transferable Vote and STAR - not RCV/IRV.

chaogomu,

RCV is the single winner version of STV.

Every single fault of RCV is present in STV, but because it's a multi-winner format, the complexity and lack of transparency in the counting process are far worse.

If you really want proportional or multi-winner elections, then a better option is this.

It's based off of Score the same way that STAR is, but tweaked to be multi-winner.

Risk,

Ah, okay - thanks for the explanation.

I do like the idea of multi-winner elections because of the increased chance of having a representative for your specific issues taken to a national assembly. In the UK things are split up into boroughs, which seems illogical for cities and aside from being grandfathered in likely only persists because it enables gerrymandering.

Speculater, (edited ) in Lemmy, what are your "missed flight" stories?
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

I posted one! But I just remembered another! Showed up on the 9th of September for my flight, 3 hours early. My flight was on the 6th…

rishabh,

OMG! I can only imagine the train of realization that must’ve hit you dragging you through the full range of hysterical emotions!

Speculater,
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

I was too embarrassed to be upset lol. Plus I was like 19? The ticket lady hooked me up. I couldn’t afford another ticket at the time. I think she got me credit and I paid the difference.

rishabh,

Fair enough!

johnlsullivan2,

I did the same thing! My mom had booked the flights for us and I thought we were flying back on Friday. She had booked Thursday instead so when I called to check-in the flight had already left. The agent was really cagey about it too and didn’t outright tell me the flight left that day. Weird and expensive af and now I’ve got a lifelong complex.

jbcarroll, in Can lemmy be used as a blog (with comment section)?

@utopify_org Wordpress has an ActivityPub plugin that may work in your case.

65gmexl3, (edited )
@65gmexl3@lemmy.world avatar

jbcarroll@friendica.jb-net.us

wow you’re posting this from frendica? do you see my comment? i know mastodon can see lemmy post but not up-to-date. Is it the same in frendica?

jbcarroll,

@65gmexl3 Yep they all talk ActivityPub! Friendica is one of the few that also supports Diaspora protocol so I can talk to people there too.

jbcarroll,

@65gmexl3 Oh and about your other question: it looks like you posted 2 days ago but I received it 13 hours ago at my server, so a little delay. Mainly the nature of working with federated servers is that things aren't always instantaneous.

65gmexl3,
@65gmexl3@lemmy.world avatar

thanks foe the update. im curious if the federation issue is with friendica or lemmy

jbcarroll,

@65gmexl3 Looks like sending from my server was pretty quick, but I'm running a single user node on a probably overpowered server, haha. Could be something with Lemmy or just the amount of tasks your lemmy server is experiencing.

zerbey, in Do you prefer PC or laptop?

I have a laptop for work, it’s useful for that purpose because it’s portable. I’ve owned several personal laptops over the years and rarely used them because I just don’t need one. If I traveled more I’d consider buying one.

zerbey, in Lemmy, what are your "missed flight" stories?

Never missed a flight, but my luggage once went to Manchester and I went to London. We were both supposed to go to London. I had just left my finacee in the US (we’re married now), I was jet-lagged, and just wanted to go home and be heartbroken, and Monarch Airlines sucked anyway. Either way, I think me blowing my stack at the baggage rep. was not one of my finer moments.

Got my luggage back a week later with a $25 check to apologize. Hmmph.

bmorton, (edited ) in Best options for Non-Google cloud storage as of 2022?

This is perhaps for a narrower audience, but if you run a consumer version of Windows (not Server), you can get Backblaze unlimited storage for $70/year per device.

They support encryption with a key you provide in the client, which is super convenient. Restoring individual files is pretty straightforward, but an entire drive was a bit of work last time I had to do it. For the price, it’s a nice piece peace of mind for 10TB+ of versioned storage.

PeachMan,
@PeachMan@lemmy.one avatar

That’s what I personally use, but it’s important to note that Backblaze is meant to be a BACKUP, not “cloud storage” like OP asked about. The goal of backup is just to make sure your local files have a copy somewhere. If somebody’s asking for a cloud storage solution, they’re generally looking for an offsite place to store all their files.

Obviously there’s a lot of grey area, as some cloud storage companies offer “backup” services for some (but not all) of your local files. But in general, these are two different things.

raubarno, in What does an ideal world look like to you?

I don’t dream much but I would like to live in a world where all the information published is free to modify and share (i.e. all the research data, hardware assembly instructions, firmware, microcode, software, books is copyleft). Intellectual property exists only as share-alike materials, you must publish the internals alongside with the end-user product (e.g. you can buy a CD, or download a content online). All the software is open-source, copyleft. Paywalls can only exist to cover infrastructure costs, you can still copy the content that is behind the paywall as long as you include the original author. This would break all the walled gardens of information.

Also, no dictatorships.

cantstopthesignal, in How can we improve Lemmy’s SEO so we can google “(question) lemmy” instead of relying on “(question) reddit”

We just need years of community created content. EzPz

sunbeam60, in People from the "hotter" regions, how do you deal with the heat?

Houses are built differently in hot areas. Very few windows facing south. Shutters on all windows. All windows deeply recessed. Channel the wind, ie have a deep through channel that spans across the house so any pressure differential causes air to exchange. Tiled floors. No/low insulation.

In Northern Europe, we live in sweat boxes designed for letting in maximum light and keeping beat inside the house.

roostopher, in Best options for Non-Google cloud storage as of 2022?

One thing to keep in mind with something like Syncthing is where the physical location of the other machine(s) is. The nice thing about cloud storage is that your data is in an entirely different geographic region, so if there’s a hurricane, flood, fire, etc. your data is still safe. That being said, I use Google drive at the moment so I’ll also be keeping an eye on this post for alternatives.

PeachMan,
@PeachMan@lemmy.one avatar

Right, if you’re relying on self-hosted storage you need an offsite backup. Backblaze is cheap.

WigglingWalrus,
@WigglingWalrus@feddit.uk avatar

Similar boat to you. The “perk” of using Google Drive, is that I use it for everything else so it keeps everything in the same place for me.

robotrash, in What is the best type of pet to have as a buddy?

You should work on taking care of yourself/your home before moving to another life that relies fully on you.

QuietStorm,
@QuietStorm@lemmy.fmhy.ml avatar

your right, ok ill try…

odigo2020,

With that said, I think that a companion pet can often help one make those changes. Since it sounds like money and allergies are a bit of an issue, I would suggest looking at rats. They are incredibly loyal and affectionate, clean, intelligent. They only live about 2-3 years, which sucks, but if you find that pet ownership isn’t for you (and it’s okay if it isn’t), you aren’t beholden to an animal that will live 4-5 times as long.

robotrash,

This is a good recommendation!

borlax, in Do people become less of a twat as they age?
@borlax@lemmy.borlax.com avatar

From what I’ve seen it’s a bell curve most of the time. People grow up and stop being little twats and eventually get to the point where they start to become big twats.

phase_change, in Without looking at a map, what region of the US do you think Kentucky is?

The South. Just below Indiana, the middle finger of the South. And I say this as a Hoosier for much of my life.

cosmic_slate, in Do you prefer PC or laptop?
@cosmic_slate@dmv.social avatar

Laptop by far, it’s not even close. There’s practically no advantage to a PC I’d be missing at all. I can quickly grab it and bring what I’m meddling with anywhere I go quickly, and the battery makes it so I can jump between my desk, couch, or down the street. If I need to run an external peripheral for some strange port, I have a Thunderbolt external PCIe enclosure at my desk.

That said, I wouldn’t consider a Chromebook a practical replacement. Not because it’s a laptop, but because a lot of what I fiddle with is just easier on a normal OS.

hactar42, in Lemmy, what are your "missed flight" stories?

When I was in the military I had to fly from Seattle to Wichita Falls, TX for training. With a connecting flight in DFW… I get to the airport Sunday morning and discovered I missed my flight by an hour because of daylight savings time. This was after my ex swore up and down daylight savings was the following week.

So, I call the military travel office and they get me another flight to DFW, but there are no more flights to Wichita Falls. Since I had to be in class the next morning, they told me they’d get a one-way rental. The only catch is they had to call my commander and get authorization. Not my boss, or my bosses boss or anyone even close. The freaking commander.

Luckily for me my older sister lived in Dallas. So, I tell them not to wake up my commander at 7 am on Sunday because my dumbass believed my ex, and that I’d call them right back. I get ahold of my sister, explained the situation and she agreed to drive me 2 1/2 hours to Wichita Falls. I call back the travel office and and they book me a flight that is scheduled to get into DFW at 2pm. Then it gets delayed and delayed and delayed. I land around 10:30pm and my sister drives me to Wichita Falls. We get in around 1am. And she still has to drive back home and go to work the next day. 20+ years later I still feel bad about it, but totally greatful for having an awesome sister.

Gork,

I can think of only a few reasons why the military would have you take training in Texas:

  • Gunslingin’ with revolvers, single and akimbo
  • Practicing the perfect “Yeehaw”
  • Wrasslin’
  • Combat maneuver training in boots with spurs
  • Lasso training
hactar42,

You’re spot on. I was down there for the “Yeehaw” training.

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