Posts made by rob

@andy-dienes Hey Andy glad to see you make an appearance! Still have hope you'll come back more regularly.

I agree with most that you say, and while as Discord server may make sense, I think there is still a lot of value in forums. This one, potentially, will get better as we add voting widgets and other gizmos, which I don't see working on Discord. Forums tend to have more permanence, if there is a great conversation, it can be linked to in the future. It seems better for readers not just writers. This forum has yet to live up to a lot of this stuff, but it can. I don't think Discord can, really. Discord seems like it might be good for "lively conversations," which may be entertaining but seem less likely to, I dunno, make the world better?

I do have a feeling this whole topic can take off in a wider way, to a mass audience, if approached well. If a random person comes to this forum, I'm not sure they will immediately see a reason they should care about this stuff. Ok, political polarization messed up their Thanksgiving dinner or something, but beyond that.... why do we need this stuff? If it is "I don't feel represented" or "I want to fully express myself at the ballot box" or even "we could improve the average happiness of voters regarding which candidate won the election", I'd argue they are kinda missing the point.

The main problem we are trying to solve, to me, is the politically-based polarization that is tearing apart society and preventing us from working together for a common goal.

And while others here don't seem to have made this connection (yet?), to me the problem has gotten 100 times more urgent very recently, given that we're suddenly in an AI arms race, which a divided society is especially not ready for. It's sort of like nuclear weapons, except that generative AI spins gold right up until it destroys us all. And one nice thing about nuclear weapons is we can be pretty sure that the weapons themselves aren't going to decide on their own to wipe us out. Another nice thing about nuclear weapons is that the people who build them actually know how they work. (generative AI such as GPT-4 is essentially an enormous matrix of floating point numbers that no one on the planet truly understands why it works the way it does)

(hey I've been accused of being alarmist before. Usually I don't think I am. Here, yeah, I'm pretty freaking alarmist.)

So I'd hope we can make something that draws people in and demonstrates the value of these tools. And if we were able to use our tools to work out our own differences, we'd be demonstrating a model of how to find consensus to the rest of the world.

Ambitious? Yes. Necessary? Most absolutely yes.

Got three and a half hours to watch something fascinating? And scary AF? Enjoy.

"the problem is that we do not get 50 years to try and try again and observe that we were wrong and come up with a different theory and realize that the entire thing is going to be like way more difficult than realized at the start, because the first time you fail at aligning something much smarter than you are, you die."
Youtube Video

this one is equally good but Sam Altman is obviously not as pessimistic (but he does admit he is scared)

Youtube Video

@sarawolk I'd love for you to participate rather than sit back and watch. I think you should start by coming to the forum and posting and being a part of it, rather than just coming in and acting like you own it.

You say you've put 2 years of work into the forum. How? By drafting the by-laws or something? I've seen that Jack actually did the hard work of putting the forum up, something I had originally signed on to do so I was well aware of the size of the task.

The fact of the matter is, you are claiming good things are going to happen at the forum, because you have people ready to come in and do these things. And I don't believe that. I have not seen these people, I honestly don't think they exist. And if they happen to exist, I don't trust their motives, since it doesn't make sense to want to dedicate time to improve a forum you don't participate in, unless you have some other agenda. Mostly, I don't trust that any such individuals will stay motivated, given that they haven't been interested in the forum to date.

What I've seen is the forum floundering because we can't make it better because a group that has no involvement with it, and is often unresponsive for months, has undue control. The forum is almost dead. You claim to have technical people, but when push comes to shove (such as when you've got a singular tech admin with a serious case of Tourettes), where are they?

I will retract my offer and let you run the show as you wish. While I don't think you have the motivated dev and mod teams you describe, please prove me wrong and do great things.

[edited since it was harsh]

[edited]

@sarawolk said in Reddit: Reconsidering the r/EndFPTP Rules:

I agree with you that some well done moderation there would have likely kept @Andy-Dienes and others more engaged and made them feel more respected.

Well if you read the thread you'll see there was moderation, by me. I jumped in and smoothed things out. When I called rbj out for being aggressive and told him why it's not ok, he said "Yes. You are exactly correct, @rob."

I've been doing a fair amount of that here, even though I am not in any official sense a moderator. I've had admin power for some time, and here and there use it to deal with spammers and such. But mostly, I just jumping in as a regular user when someone goes out of line and trying to bring it back.

In the course of the thread above (which you really should read if you want to know how I handle moderation here), rb-j "doxxed" Andy by posting screenshots showing proof that Andy had used some particular identity at Reddit that he doesn't use now. Or something like that. Doxxing. I dealt with that like this:

I thought that was moderated about as well as it could have been, although I probably would have DM'd rbj right off the bat if I felt like I was an official moderator. RBJ is very cantankerous (he's always getting banned at EndFPTP and other places and seems proud of it), but he is also really smart and makes good contributions on the legislative side.

I'm curious how you think moderation should be done. Clear rules are nice to have, but there are always gray areas. More importantly, you need someone with good judgement to enforce them in a way that doesn't unnecessarily drive people away. Would you disagree with any of that?

@sarawolk I'm fine with that wording. (as I said in a different thread, when 3 people disagreed with me about any such rule, and I edited it out of my proposal)

There is an issue, though, with the "keep claims factual" idea. There are many in this field that will regularly demand that their view is the one and only correct one. I've seen it a lot. So debating "factual" and for that matter "constructive" can be tricky. Is it factual that IRV is an improvement over Plurality? I tend to think it is, but there are those that disagree.

I remember back in the day a particular well-known and prolific member of the voting theory community (who doesn't participate in this forum and has toned down his approach in the decade since) would berate anyone who didn't agree with the FACT that score voting was objectively the best system because it produced the best utilitarian results according to some way of directly measuring it, and therefore by definition means the most happiness and therefore, it's best. By definition. Not an opinion, fact. He literally drove me off from the community for years. He started almost all of his replies with "Wrong."

That's what I think is the problem that comes up time to time. You can call it partisanship, or negative politics, or whatever. Or just being too strident.

Regardless, I think there is probably no need for specific wording about that, but moderators would simply need to have good judgement.

Any code of conduct is subject to interpretation. I think my posts are far from inflammatory, but you and @Sass have disagreed. (jeez, I was offering significant time and effort to the forum, noted that the forum was nearly a ghost town, and that with Jack departing it could potentially go offline, and advocated for running the forum democratically with every decision I'd make. That's inflammatory? Sorry I don't get that.)

Here is a thread where things got ugly, around that issue, with it devolving into personal attacks ("bullshit!" "denial isn't a river in egypt", "big fucking deal!" "this is so stupid" etc).
https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/256/new-method-i-think-hare-squared/12

@sarawolk said in My proposal for this forum:

We recruit some new volunteers to our Forum Council, Tech Committee, and Moderation Committee.

From where? The forum has been nearly a ghost town for most of its existence. But if a team of volunteers want to step up, that sounds like a plan and it doesn't sound like you need what I've offered. I will admit it seems a bit like magical thinking to me, but maybe you know something I don't.

I suggest you assemble this team of volunteers first, let them convince you that they are actually going to stick around and do the work, then make decisions. To me, it doesn't make sense to make decisions assuming a bunch of people are going to be ready to take on responsibilities, especially if those people haven't been participating in the forum already. I just don't see it happening.

When talking to Jack, he seemed to be convinced there was tech team ready to jump in. So maybe I'm wrong. I just have seen no signs of this.

We keep the forum constructive and drama free.

Offering to step up and run this democratically, per the original vision, doesn't sound like drama, and I would consider it constructive. I'm not attacking you or anyone else. I'm just saying the forum wasn't gaining traction, for very predictable reasons. Meanwhile the only person who has taken on day-to-day responsibility for the forum, Jack, says he's not willing to do that anymore. I have offered to spend a lot of my time, time that most people on the council don't seem to have, to both fill in the role Jack had played, while otherwise making positive things happen.

Also regarding drama: I've gone out of my way to try to suppress drama on the forum, only once using my admin powers (in a case of doxxing, I edited a post and diplomatically DM'd its author [1]), but often stepping in [2], sometimes in the awkward situation of, well, our tech admin posting stuff that many found offensive, off-topic and divisive. I don't know if anyone else ever has, other than a couple people weighing in, such as @spelunker did when he first arrived and was greeted by some toxic content, or as @Andy-Dienes did in that same situation. (I believe we've lost Andy, one of our best contributors --- I don't want to speak for him but I believe the "tone" of the forum was a significant thing that drove him away, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't because of a discussion of the future of the forum, since he also wished for some significant changes [3]).

Regardless, I am not trying to rehash events of two years ago, and am not attacking anyone. I don't see how this is escalating anything. I do feel that general issues about the forum's future should be resolvable in public at the forum. I understand taking things to private discussion for very specific cases, but for discussing how decisions are made at the forum and such..... why the need for secrecy? If you are worried about someone coming to the forum and being put off by my post...well, sorry, but I don't get it. If they are going to be put off by anything, it is that there is little activity, and whatever activity there is is not easy to find without several clicks, and if they do that, sometimes it is toxic and off topic. Not that we are talking about options to make the forum better.

I am honestly confused as to Jack's ongoing role. I understood he was wanting to back away due to frustration over a non-responsive council. If this wasn't the case, I would never have offered to step up.

That said, I think we need a lot more than what Jack has been doing, as I have outlined above. Basically, someone who is likely to be here on a daily basis, managing the social side, adding features and organizing the site and content etc. I don't see why a forum would be expected to succeed in the absence of this.

In any case, my offer stands for the time being but unless I hear strongly enough that people want this, I'm mostly assuming that the few left at the forum aren't interested.

1. (the doxxing has been removed but this is one conversation where moderation was otherwise needed) https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/256/new-method-i-think-hare-squared/12

2. https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/301/deutschland/14
   https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/303/the-metadiscussion
   Note that if Jack wasn't the admin of the board, and we had anyone else who was actively moderating, a better way to handle it is for a moderator to delete the post, and DM Jack to diplomatically explain why without making a big public deal.

3. Here is where Andy suggested improvements , we all agreed, and nothing happened. If I had the role I propose, I would have put it to an open vote (on the forum), notified the council, and unless there were objections within a week or two, made the changes:
   https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/227/way-too-many-categories
   I would have, separately, proposed and held a vote on changing the front page to be the "recent activity page", with a banner for links to other things at the site such as the CES forum archive.

@sarawolk I get notification emails from the forum. Is it possible gmail is flagging it as spam? I remember that happened at one point.

@jack-waugh It's good to know NodeBB has worked without a hitch. I suggested it in the first place (when I was going to be the one deploying it), and worried afterwards that it might end up being problematic. The only reason for using it (as opposed to just a hosted forums plan) was so we could bend it to our will, but that hasn't happened yet. I've got a whole bunch of cool stuff I'd be ready to add (mostly voting widgets, static pages and shared source code and data files) once we can be confident there is someone to fulfill the role of "standing at the ready in case trouble arises"

Still hoping to have a call with you where we can talk about technical and logistical stuff. I'd like to know as much as possible before the council meeting so it is clear what I am proposing.

@jack-waugh said in My proposal for this forum:

Jack's role

I would like to know what you think that is.

You are free to describe it in your own words, but what I intended is that you have been the person who got it running and keeps it running, and if changes are made, makes them.

I am aware you have chosen not to be particularly involved in what you call social aspects. However, you have been the most prolific poster, often posting new things when the board seems dead, which often gets the discussion happening again. While this is something that anyone can do, it appears to me to be a positive contribution you've been making to the social side.

But mostly I meant you "run" the forum in a technical sense.It appears that, after getting it running (which was a pretty big undertaking), you haven't done a whole lot in terms of improving it other than to just keep it running. That's not a complaint, just an observation. My own view is that regular improvements would be a plus, and for that to happen, we need a combination of someone having the drive and ability to do such improvements, and a more streamlined process for getting approval for doing them. (i.e. publicly put it to the forum and going with what people agree to, rather than waiting for council meetings that may never happen)

@keith-edmonds said in My proposal for this forum:

If you want to take over the technical responsibilities of the forum, have the forum adopt an official stance on electoral methods or disband the board I would think that the proper place to bring it up would be to the board. I think the method you have taken seems undemocratic and the appearance is important. At a bear minimum you could have called for a vote on this from the people on the forum

I actually would like to call a vote of the people on this forum. But prior to doing so, I want to engage them in a discussion. That's all I'm doing here, trying to get a feeling, from the people here, of what they want. I plan to be at the council meeting when it happens (unless it is made clear ahead of time that people here are against what I am proposing, in which case I probably won't bother).

And if we are going to have a vote, we need to have more than one option to vote for. Right now there is one, the proposal above (that I run the technical side, with important decisions made by open vote of forum participants). The status quo, having Jack continue to run the forum, isn't an option as far as I can tell.

Key point: If there is something other than my suggestion on the table, now would be a good time for someone to come forward with it.

So before we have a vote, I'd like to know if anyone else is offering to step up to fill Jack's role. As well as if anyone wants to step up and do moderation and "social" duties, or some of the other things I've suggested I'd take primary responsibility for until someone offers to do so (design/content issues, including reworking the categories [1]).

At least then it would look more like a populist upraising to overthrow the government instead of a coup.

I'm not suggesting overthrowing anything. I'm seeing what people want. If enough want what I am suggesting, we can simply ask nicely. But the whole point is to discuss it here, with the people who use the forum.

I think the method you have taken seems undemocratic

I'm surprised you'd see anything I'm doing as undemocratic. The whole idea of this is to be more democratic. This is what I said above:

the forum should be run democratically, with participants able to vote on everything substantial. We can even include in that a process for people to vote to have someone other than me run it. (if a majority want me to step down, I will do so without protest and help in the process of transitioning it to someone else)

I'm not sure how much more democratic I could be. That is literally my primary motivation for trying to do this, and for proposing this forum in the first place 2 or 3 years ago: that we try to make a voting community that aggressively leans into using our own stuff.

@keith-edmonds said in My proposal for this forum:

I would be strongly opposed to limiting any discussion on any topic that is at least somewhat related to electoral reform.

If you are specifically talking about my agreeing with the EndFPTP rule that we shouldn't "bash alternatives to FPTP", you, @spelunker and @Toby-Pereira all disagreed with me. Here's why all three of you are wrong and we should go with my suggestion:

Haha, just kidding that's how someone who was not being democratic would handle it.

That sounds like an informal vote of 3-1 against my idea. Democracy wins, I lose. But I still count that as a win.

I edited the proposal above to note that we should not have rules against any voting-theory-relevant opinion. (instead we should attempt to guide any discussion away from combativeness and conspiratorial stuff, but with good judgement that, obviously, would allow your famous professor acquaintance to present his views)

[1] Discussions of changing the categories and which is the front page. Jack chose not to move forward on anything until the council approved it, which meant that nothing happened. This to me is evidence that the status quo is not working.
https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/231/fewer-categories?=1679902300647
https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/227/way-too-many-categories?=1679902300650
https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/293/forum-change-requests-that-need-council-approval

@jack-waugh I would describe bottom two runoff as a baby step toward recursive IRV. It goes just far enough to guarantee condorcet compliance, while one level of recursion ("hare squared as I used to call it) goes further, I think. Multiple levels of recursion go further, with infinite recursion being as far as it could theoretically go.

I just wouldn't consider Reverse STAR an IRV variant, really. Reverse STAR is two stage, but I can't see how you can extend that much further. Short of doing what I suggested above, use IRV recursion, but when it gets to maximum depth, using Score rather than Plurality. As I mentioned, I think that would converge to the same results as using plurality at final stage.

@jack-waugh said in Recursive IRV:

Recursion could also be applied to other IRV variants.

Which IRV variants? Just curious.

The algorithm I currently have could work with various differences, such as instead of doing plurality as the last step, it does something like Score or Borda count. Or considering that the winner is the one with the least last place votes.

My hypothesis, far from proven, is that they would all converge to the same result. If that were actually proven, that would be pretty notable, I'd think.

@toby-pereira That's fair. I find it a rather extreme perspective, but I'm ok with sincere discussions of it. Sometimes people come into forums like this and get really ranty with extreme, conspiracy theoryish stuff and I think that drives people away. I don't want this to turn into an anti-FairVote place any more than I want it to be anti-CES or anti-EqualVote.

I think the folks at EndFPTP, which has much higher traffic and is a lot more "riff raff", saw it become a problem where the forum was losing its focus, and it seems like infighting was destroying any forward momentum. Of course, that forum, by its name, is more dedicated to having a "goal."

(I think we have the same goal, really, but are approaching it a bit differently)

Can we draw the line at anti-democracy?

I know @spelunker you were put off by some of the stuff that was a bit on the extreme when you first arrived at this forum. I don't think it was "claims that IRV is worse than FPTP", but still, it was divisive and lacking the kind of nuance I'd hope for here. More "heat than light."

In any case, I think good judgement is needed to be a good moderator. And if it has a fallback to voting on anything contentious, I don't see us going too far in the direction of over-moderated to the point of suppressing important debates or discussions or otherwise feeling like free discussion can't take place.

@spelunker I don't have a strong opinion on much with multi-winner. since it's never really been my interest as I think it's unrealistic in most US elections without major structural changes to government.

Regardless, I don't like the "throws away ballot data" complaint. Every voting system throws away ballot data. That's actually the whole point, take megabytes of data about preferences and convert it to a single winner. Lossy compression to the extreme.

Some methods, such as Condorcet ones, very explicitly throw away a certain kind of data. By considering only order and not "absolute position", they remove (most) strategic incentives. But it is throwing away data nonetheless. It's on purpose.

Maybe they could say "throws away ballot data prematurely" and I wouldn't complain.

@jack-waugh Are you saying that individuals are acting non-rationally, or that there is a "tragedy of the commons" situation? (collective irrationality) Those are very different things.

If it is indeed tragedy of the commons situations, that is a good bit of what social choice theory and applications tries to address.

https://economind.org/2013/12/18/individual-rationality-and-collective-irrationality/

Or maybe you mean stupid in a different way than non-rational.

@jack-waugh Anything in particular strike you as interesting, or that you strongly agree or disagree with?

I think wisdom of crowds works best when there is some selection force in play to amplify the views of those that are best at guessing. For instance, prediction markets, where people who are bad at making predictions lose their money and stop betting, while those who are good at it throw more and more money at it.

But not everything is as easy as prediction markets to determine what is "good" contribution to be rewarded.

The biggest problem happens when they measure and reward the wrong thing, such as engagement instead of preference.