Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

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  > get your state to use STAR voting instead of first past the post and you get more than two choices, and then liars can be evicted even if their state/district goes >60% to the left or right.

This. Or any cardinal voting, such ask approval, ends up being a huge win.

The system is flawed from its roots. People need a voting system that allows them to specify their conscious, not vote on strategy only. The latter only leads to a race to the bottom. Unfortunately ranked voting systems do not allow for this, and we've seen those predictions come true in places like New York.

  > It's also the thing I don't understand about party loyalty.

What I don't understand is how a lot of people will state both parties are corrupt and then also be party loyal. My parents are some of these types of people, but it is also pretty common. Together we'll happily criticize any member of the left, we'll happily criticize the abstract notion of politicians, but as soon as a name like Donald Trump leaves my mouth there's accusations of communism. I've literally had conversations where we both agree Biden is too old, we both agree that the country shouldn't be run by geriatrics or anyone over 60, but as soon as the next part is mentioned about how this means I don't want Trump then they start talking about how he's a special case and will contradict everything that they said before. They literally cannot understand how I voted Biden but also happily criticize him and state that I think he was unfit to be president.

We've turned politics into religion. It's not just the right (though I'd argue it's more common), but so many people love to paint everything as black and white. Anyone who thinks the world isn't full of shades of gray is a fucking zealot and we've let that go on for too long.

> Or any cardinal voting, such ask approval, ends up being a huge win.

I kind of dislike approval voting because it's marginally worse than score/STAR to begin with, and on top of that has an ugly failure mode where the ballot looks like a first past the post ballot and then some non-trivial percentage of people don't realize they can vote for more than one candidate and you're back to being stuck with a two-party system. Whereas score makes it clear something's different but still only takes ten seconds to explain ("rate each candidate on a scale of 1 to 10").

> What I don't understand is how a lot of people will state both parties are corrupt and then also be party loyal.

Tribalism. People convince themselves that both options are bad but one is worse and then fight their own brothers who picked the other one.

But the lesser of evils is still evil and the ability to change your vote to the other team is the only leverage you have against either of them, so what happens if you relinquish it?

Given a decision between the devil you know and the devil you don't, choose the one that you have not tried.

  > it's marginally worse than score/STAR to begin with, and on top of that has an ugly failure mode

To be clear, I strongly prefer STAR, but approval is the "good enough" where I'd shut up other than nerdy nit-picky conversations (which I enjoy as much as any other nerd). Approval seems to work out well enough in practice (hell, it's how most people figure out where to eat and even HN is some mixture of Approval and 3-2-1 if you can downvote lol).

The way I like to explain score vs ranking to people is like measuring things with a normal ruler vs measuring things but your ruler only has inches on it. People seem to get it and the importance of specifying how much more you like one candidate over another or how little your indifference is between some.

But I think we both understand these systems sufficiently and probably shouldn't derail. I just want to make sure we don't fall into doing the same thing I'm complaining about over here[0]

  > the lesser of evils

But that's kinda my point. With the example of my parents we can agree that it is a choice between two evils but then they cannot understand how I say I hold my nose while begrudgingly choosing one rather than vote with full devotion. In reality that means one of us doesn't actually believe in a choice between the lesser of two evils[1]. They claim this, but don't act on it. I think this is strikingly common.

That is a far worse form of tribalism because they lie to themselves. They've convinced themselves they believe something that they don't actually believe in. What I'm worried about is how common this is. Even down to the mundane cliche, where I jokingly define as "something everyone can recite, but no one can put into practice." Road to hell I guess...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45225341

[1] Give me the choice between the lesser of many evils! I joke, but as much as I love cardinal voting I won't make the claim that it is a cure all. But given a choice between two evils or many evils (and no other information), I'll take many evils. My chances are better in being able to pick a lesser one.

Duverger’s law: first past the post results in two party system.

Any vote that is not proactively for the major party that is the closest to your political beliefs is effectively a vote for the major party least aligned.

> What I don't understand is how a lot of people will state both parties are corrupt and then also be party loyal.

Both teams are corrupt, but in different ways.

On my team it’s rules being bent but not broken, a few bad apples, everyone was doing it, parents wanting to give their children the best start in life, the inevitable results of the need to raise campaign funds to continue their great work, and/or they’ve already rightly been suitably punished.

On the other team it’s a problem that runs through all of them, reflecting their poor character, the lack of basic decency resulting from their hollow look-out-for-number-1 political beliefs, and is undoubtedly representative of a much wider problem that’s being covered up.

I think you missed my entire point, so much that I thank you for demonstrating it. Rather than some abstract "my parents", I can say "like this."

  > Both teams are corrupt, but in different ways.

Who has denied this? Is this not such an obvious assumption that it need not be explicitly stated? Need I make clear that you and I are not in fact the same person?

This is a given.

  > On my team
  > On the other team

And what? We obviously have decided who we believe the lesser of evils is. That was never the point. The point is that by showing strong devotion to the lesser of two evils is still showing devotion to evil! There's a big difference between begrudgingly choosing between two evils in a rigged game and aligning with that evil.

One does not need always compare. We can both evaluate a single political party by its merits, absent of everything else, while also being able to evaluate how they stand comparatively. In fact, you can't even do the latter without doing the former first!

All you've accomplished is perpetuating the two evils. You perpetuate the evil you vote for my allowing them to excuse their actions in justification of fighting the greater. You have no power to change what you've chosen as greater and you've abdicated the power to make your lesser even less evil, instead choosing to gave it power to become more evil!

Think carefully about what you say. It's not only Siths who speak in absolutes, but evil does thrive on over-simplification.

Jesus. They were literally answering your question of “how can anyone be committed to someone they describe as a lesser evil”, very clearly not even using a specific side as the lesser evil, and you’re mad that anyone is able to elucidate or understand the reasoning used? You didn’t want to know how people do that, you just wanted to mention that they are terrible people and it’s a bad choice?

  > your question of “how can anyone be committed to someone they describe as a lesser evil”,

That was not my question

The problem is that the GP forgot the /s

  >  the GP

michaelt?

We're at a point where if that is parody then it is indistinguishable from reality. I hope you're right and that it is parody. But hell, just the other week I saw someone pull out the "bUt YoU dIdN't UsE a SoTa MoDeL" card in reference to a GPT-5 output and I mistakenly assumed this was a joke.

Sarcasm doesn't seem to translate well over the internet. Fewer clues and people conflate the ability to read with literacy. I love sarcasm, but it appears Descartes was right

  > Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they’re in good company.

I hope it was sarcasm, because I didn't want to offend anyone. Perhaps I'm reading too much in the details, but highlighting my team and the other team made me think that. (Anyway, I agree that it's better to avoid sarcasm online.)

I hope you're right. I used to default to assuming sarcasm but that changed. I hope I'm wrong though, because you are right, there are enough elements where I did take a second to consider if it was

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