Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youā€™ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post ā€” thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)

  • bitofhope@awful.systems
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    2 months ago

    Itā€™s fractally wrong and bonkers even by Yud tweet standards.

    The worst common electoral system after First Past The Post - possibly even a worse one - is the parliamentary republic

    Iā€™ll charitably assume based on this he just means proportional representation in general. Specifically he seems to be thinking of a party list type method, but other proportional electoral systems exist and some of them like Dā€™Hondt and various STV methods do involve voting for individuals and not just parties.

    with its absurd alliances and frequently falling governments

    The alliances are often thought of as a feature, but itā€™s also a valid, if subjective, criticism. Not sure what he means by ā€œfrequently falling governmentsā€, though. The UK uses FPTP and their PMs seem to resign quite regularly.

    A possible amendment is to require 60% approval to replace a Chief Executive; who otherwise serves indefinitely, and appoints their own successor if no 60% majority can be scraped together.

    Why 60%? Why not 50% or 70% or two thirds? Approval of whom, the parliament or the population? Would this be approval in the sense of approval voting where you can express approval for multiple candidates or in the sense of the candidate being the voterā€™s first choice Ć  la FPTP? What does the role of a dictator Chief Executive involve? Would it be analogous to something like POTUS, or perhaps PM of the UK or maybe some other country?

    The parliamentā€™s main job would be legislation, not seizing the spoils of the executive branch of government on a regular basis.

    Good news! In most parliamentary republics that is already the main job of the parliament, at least on paper. If you want to start nitpicking the ā€œon paperā€ part, you might want to elaborate on how your system would prevent this kind of abuse.

    Anything like this ever been tried historically?

    Yea thereā€™s a long historical tradition of states led by an indefinitely serving chief executive, who would pass the office to his chosen successor. A different candidate winning the supermajority approval has typically been seen as the exception rather than the rule under such systems, but notable exceptions to this exist. One in 1776 saw a change of Chief Executive in some British overseas colonies, another one in late 18th century France ended the dynasty of their Chief Executive, and a later one in 1917 had the Russian Chief Executive Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov lose the office to a firebrand progressive leader.

    ChatGPT was incapable of understanding the question.

    Now to be fair to ChatGPT, it seems that even the famed genius polymath Eliezer Yudkowsky failed to understand his own question.

    • bitofhope@awful.systems
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      2 months ago

      Iā€™m almost surprised Yud is so clueless about election systems.

      Heā€™s (lol) supposedly super into math and game theory so the failure mode I expected was for him to come up with some byzantine time-independent voting method that minimizes acausal spoiler effect at the cost of condorcet criterion or whatever. Or rather, I would have expected him to claim heā€™s working on such a thing and throwing all these buzzwords around. Like in MOR where he knows enough advanced science words to at least sound like he knows physics beyond high school level.

      Now I have to update my priors to take into account that he barely knows what an electoral system is. Itā€™s a bit like if the otherwise dumb guy who still seems a huge military nerd suddenly said ā€œthe only assault gun worse than the SA80 is the .223ā€. For once youā€™d expect him to know enough to make a dumb hot take instead of just spouting gibberish but no.

      • swlabr@awful.systems
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        2 months ago

        Heā€™s (lol) supposedly super into math and game theory

        Itā€™s kind of the inverse of a sports fan that is into sports because of the stats. Heā€™s into the stats for the magical thinking

    • V0ldek@awful.systems
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      2 months ago

      in late 18th century France ended the dynasty of their Chief Executive

      Famously: below 60% approval!