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Cake day: July 18th, 2021

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  • I should clarify - rather than ‘backfire,’ exaggeration in Majority Judgment either does nothing or carries a social cost. Here’s why:

    • If a minority exaggerates votes, the median stays unchanged.
    • If everyone exaggerates equally, the same winner emerges, but an artificial high tide of exaggerated grades obscures the real depth of public opinion. This defeats one of MJ’s key strengths: the ability to show when all candidates are viewed poorly and therefore create pressure for better options.

    Regarding partisan concerns: Yes, MJ is vulnerable if partisan blocks coordinate to exaggerate grades. However, MJ offers two meaningful advantages in a two-party system:

    1. Voters can grade third-party candidates highly without ‘wasting’ their vote, as they can still support their party’s candidate.
    2. Once again, poor candidates from both parties could receive revealing low grades, encouraging better alternatives.

    Of course, you were hinting at the fact that MJ’s success in a two-party system depends on fostering a political culture where candid evaluation flows more freely than partisan loyalty. But this is the current that all voting systems must swim against; partisan pressure can steer dolphins’ fins at the polling station regardless of the method used.


  • Either ranked-choice voting or majority judgement.

    Here's why

    Majority Judgment:

    1. Voters grade each candidate on a scale (e.g. Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, Reject)
    2. The winner is determined by the highest median grade
    3. Ties are broken by measuring how many voters gave grades above and below the median

    Ranked Choice Voting:

    1. Voters rank candidates in order of preference
    2. If no candidate has >50%, the lowest-ranked candidate is eliminated
    3. Their votes transfer to those voters’ next choices
    4. Process repeats until someone has majority

    Majority Judgment optimizes for:

    1. Consensus/Compromise.

    By using median grades, it finds candidates who are “acceptable” to a broad swath of voters. A candidate strongly loved by 40% but strongly disliked by 60% will typically lose to someone viewed as “good enough” by most. This pushes politics toward centrist candidates who may not be anyone’s perfect choice but whom most find acceptable. The grading system lets voters express “this candidate meets/doesn’t meet my minimum standards” rather than just relative preferences

    2. Merit-based evaluation

    Voters judge each candidate against an absolute standard rather than just comparing them. This can help identify when all candidates are weak (if they all get low grades) or when multiple candidates are strong. It moves away from pure competition between candidates toward evaluation against civic ideals

    Ranked Choice Voting optimizes for:

    1. Coalition building

    By eliminating lowest-ranked candidates and redistributing votes, it rewards candidates who can be many voters’ second or third choice. This encourages candidates to appeal beyond their base and build broader coalitions. Unlike MJ, it’s more focused on relative preferences than absolute standards

    2. Elimination of “spoiler effects”

    Voters can support their true first choice without fear of helping their least favorite candidate win. This allows multiple similar candidates to run without splitting their shared base. The system is built around the idea that votes should transfer to ideologically similar alternatives


    Both systems optimize for honest voting more than plurality voting, but in different ways:

    MJ encourages honest evaluation because exaggerating grades can backfire if too many others don’t follow suit RCV encourages honest ranking because putting your true preference first doesn’t hurt your later choices

    The key philosophical difference is that:

    • MJ asks “What level of support does each candidate have across the whole electorate?”
    • RCV asks “Which candidate has the strongest coalition of support when similar preferences are consolidated?”

    This means MJ tends to favor broad acceptability while RCV tends to favor strong but potentially narrower bases of support that can build winning coalitions. Neither approach is inherently more democratic - they just emphasize different aspects of democratic decision-making. </details>


  • Thanks for sharing your method.

    As to your take on Anki, I think it’s fair and accurate. I agree with you in that the learning curve is not in the features or the interface, but as you said: in the pacing. I really hope I can try to space the cards as much as possible, so that a regular practice doesn’t become burdensome.


  • I’m generally skeptical of comments on the internet, so almost every time I have read comments like this one that you’re reading right now, I’ve been like “yeah right”. Kinda like how “lol” means “laughing out loud” but when you read it online you don’t really expect whoever wrote “lol” to have laughed out loud? Anyway, I was drinking coffee, I read your comment, I snorted in laughter, and now my white shirt is full of coffee.

    I guess I’m also kinda mad at myself for laughing so hard at such a silly joke. Regardless, have an updoot 👍



  • and Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis and Pascal’s wager, all subject to serious validity threats. All of these thought experiments are unfalsifiable. They can all be explained with different theories. They all rely on circular reasoning. They all anthropomorphize entities that maybe don’t resemble humans at all. They all fall for the mind projection fallacy. They all are prey to selection bias, because they cherry-pick scenarios among countless alternatives.


  • My brother has a Framework 13 and mainly uses a combination of NixOS and Windows. Most of the time he uses NixOS, but sometimes the software he needs is broken on Nix. When that happens, he reverts to a previous version of Nix or he boots onto Windows. He has Windows installed in one of the external-drive socket thingies that he keeps plugged in at all times in case he needs Windows.

    Apart from the occasional broken Nix package, he has had issues with the hyper-sensitive two-finger scrolling in Gnome (which I would say is not directly a Framework or Nix problem). Also, a while back, when I bought the computer with him, we bought Oloy RAM because it was fast and cheap, but that lead to weird crashes. Framework support helped us test the sticks and eventually we sold those sticks and got the Framework-tested Crucial sticks, which solved the problem. Finally, I remember he had to be careful about not just closing the laptop but actually clicking “sleep” and then closing it, because otherwise it would get super hot and lose a lot of battery.

    Despite these struggles, he recently told my Mac-loving girlfriend that he will not get a “disposable” computer. I take this to mean he will keep using his Framework laptop.


  • How do you choose what facts matter? How do you choose how to communicate them? Who do you communicate them to? What does news reporting mean to you? What about news reporting makes it worth your precious time alive? What purpose do the people around you have when they amplify, ignore, or quiet your facts? These are all questions that are answered, explicitly or not, by everyone who communicates or relates to facts.

    We could play the impossible “no agenda” game. We could lie to ourselves and to others. Or, we could notice that whenever we are dealing with the truth, we have a point of view. We stand here and not there. We can learn to travel around the mountain of truth, so that we mitigate our blindspots. We can be explicit about where in the mountain we are standing (The north base? The vegetated slope? The summit?).

    Instead of playing the “god trick”, we can situate our knowledge. That’s the best we can do. Check out this article by Donna Haraway on situated knowledge. It changed my life. https://philpapers.org/archive/harskt.pdf






  • I appreciate your passion for scientific literacy - it’s crucial for combating misinformation. However, I’d like to share some perspectives that might broaden our understanding of scientific knowledge and how it develops.

    First, it’s worth noting that the distinction between “theory” and “hypothesis” isn’t as clear-cut as we might think. In “The Scientific Attitude,” Stephen McIntyre argues that what truly defines science isn’t a rigid set of rules, but rather an ethos of critical inquiry and evidence-based reasoning. This ties into the “demarcation problem” in philosophy of science - the challenge of clearly defining what is and isn’t science. Despite this ongoing debate, science continues to be a powerful tool for understanding our world.

    Your stance seems to align with positivism, which views scientific knowledge as objective and verifiable. However, other epistemological approaches exist. Joseph A. Maxwell’s work on critical realism offers a nuanced view that acknowledges both the existence of an objective reality and the role of human interpretation in understanding it.

    Maxwell defines validity in research not just as statistical significance, but as the absence of plausible alternative explanations. This approach encourages us to constantly question and refine our understanding, rather than treating any explanation as final.

    Gerard Delanty’s “Philosophies of Social Science” provides a historical perspective on how our conception of science has evolved. Modern views often see science as a reflexive process, acknowledging the role of the researcher and societal context in shaping scientific knowledge.

    Larry McEnery’s work further emphasizes this point, describing how knowledge emerges from ongoing conversations within communities of researchers. What we consider “knowledge” at any given time is the result of these dynamic processes, not a static, unchanging truth.

    Understanding these perspectives doesn’t diminish the power or importance of science. Instead, it can make us more aware of the complexities involved in scientific inquiry and more resistant to overly simplistic arguments from science deniers.

    By embracing some psychological flexibility around terms like “theory” and “hypothesis,” we’re not opening the door to pseudoscience. Rather, we’re acknowledging the nuanced nature of scientific knowledge and the ongoing process of inquiry that characterizes good science.

    What do you think about these ideas? I’d be interested to hear your perspective and continue this conversation.


  • Check out Christian Welzel’s work on how values have changed over time. The world is becoming more secular and more democratic. Secular in this context means that religion plays less and less of a role in every day life. Democratic in this context means that they believe everyone should be able to pursue their interests and we should have a system that increases all of our capabilities to pursue our interests.

    An implication of adopting democratic values is that you understand that your identity is not defined by “white”, “able-bodied”, or whatever, but by the fact that we are aware. By doing this, you’re not giving special treatment to your in-group (whichever it may be), but you’re considering all of humanity (and all aware beings) as equals and as a group that you belong to. Cosmopolitanism is an example of this stance.

    Something else that is happening is that the world is becoming more reflexive. Check out Anthony Giddens’ texts on this.

    But, to answer your question directly, yes, grandparents and parents are generally less welcoming and less tolerant.


  • Reading How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barret and A Liberated Mind by Steven Hayes will answer your question. More broadly, emotion construction theory and relational frame theory will answer your question.

    Self awareness can be seen as set of relational frames. Relational frames are things like “equal” and “opposite”, “I” and “you”, “here” and “there”, “now” and “then” “more” and “less”… Each of relational frame (like “I”, “equal”, “here”, “now”) is like a Lego piece that you can combine with other relational frames (“I am here now”). Piece by piece, frame by frame, thought by thought, you build a sense of self! This is also roughly how feelings are built. Interestingly, your sense of self is not necessarily the same thing as self-awareness; people can believe all kinds of things about themselves and not be aware of them!

    You can use self-awareness to examine emotions (e.g. “I notice that I am sad”). You can also create emotions based on your sense of self (e.g. “I failed, and therefore I am sad”). Sometimes, someone’s sense of self does not accept certain emotions (e.g. “Real men don’t cry”), and this rigid and skittish sense of self will do all kinds of things to escape self-awareness. One of therapy’s goals is to shine a light (the light of self-awareness) onto the sense of self, so that people can become psychologically flexible and resilient.





  • Agile is indeed more of a mindset than a rigid system. In my recent experience helping a tabletop game team, we applied Agile principles to great effect. Rather than trying to perfect every aspect of the game at once, we focused on rapidly iterating the core mechanics based on player feedback. This allowed us to validate the fundamental concept quickly before investing time in peripheral elements like the looks of the game.

    This approach embodies the Agile value of ‘working product over comprehensive documentation’ - or in our case, ‘playable game over polished components’. By prioritizing what matters most to players right now, we’re able to learn and adapt much more efficiently.

    Agile thinking helps us stay flexible and responsive, whether we’re developing software or board games. It’s about delivering value incrementally and being ready to pivot based on real-world feedback.


  • I appreciate your candor about not wanting to speak on topics outside your expertise. That’s commendable. I wonder if we can still talk with the understanding that we may not know it all. I truly believe curiosity is able to sidestep many of the problems related with ignorance.

    You’re right to be cautious about appeals to authority. My intention wasn’t to suggest NASA’s use of Agile validates it universally, but rather to counter the OP comic’s implication that Agile is inherently incapable of achieving significant goals like space exploration.

    Regarding Agile-like practices in earlier NASA projects, you’re correct that concrete evidence is limited. However, we can analyze their approaches through the lens of Agile principles. Scrum, for instance, aims to foster characteristics found in high-performing teams: clear goals, information saturation, rapid feedback loops, adaptability to changing requirements, and effective collaboration. These elements aren’t exclusive to Scrum or even to modern Agile methodologies. The key is recognizing that effective project management often naturally gravitates towards these principles, whether formally adopting Agile or not.

    It’s an interesting area for further research: have complex engineering projects historically incorporated elements we now associate with Agile? If so, how?

    Your skepticism is valuable in pushing for a more nuanced understanding of project management across different domains.