Numbers rule

What Hacker News says

1. mdp2021Sep 2021
   So faulty it would take too much time to debunk it systematically.

   E.g., "lottocracy may reduce corruption": in a rational framework, it is more direct to tackle the issues of politics as a career.

   Now, what really makes one an enemy of some strands of current """cultural""" airs (where "cultivation" does not really fit into the concept), is the decadent abandonment to the lower, in a climate of senseless complicity to destruction - replacing constructive solutions with defeatist ones is a signal of such climate.

   We have centuries of practice of sophisticated voting systems, very specifically, and instruments more refined than they have ever been for the construction of the theoretical part - modelling, simulation etc.

   And one hears of lottocracy (not the first time) and "giving the rights to vote to children aged six". Unfortunately, "selected" is better than "random" by definition, and infant children have unmyelinated, immature brains holding scarce experience and very few intellectual keys.

   And it seems that some think it a good use of time to provoke instead of seriously propose.

   For a primer about at-least-slightly sophisticated voting systems, one text is: George G. Szpiro, "Numbers Rule: The Vexing Mathematics of Democracy, from Plato to the Present", Princeton University Press (2010)

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2. mdp2021Aug 2021
   Political science has plenty of literature about sophisticated voting systems (vs the simpler systems in general use today): there one can find a good part of the theoretical background. (I am focusing here on the feedback as fundamental to the goal.)

   An example: Numbers Rule: The Vexing Mathematics of Democracy, from Plato to the Present by George Szpiro is a primer.

   Of course it depends on the goal defining "improvement" - heuristics, informative/insightful/funny, educational, sinister goals (compulsion, sensationalism etc.).

   For example, votes should be clustered and weighted (the Professor has more more insight than the Child - so "weighted" - in some areas - so "clustered").

   Also: technically, that platform should be heavily modified to allow for fruitful discussion.

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3. baconnerJan 2013
   For those of you who want to read a bit more about the twin cities traffic metering program there's an entertaining chapter in Numbers Rule Your World that goes through the history and (very lightly) the stats behind it. http://junkcharts.typepad.com/numbersruleyourworld/
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4. mdp2021May 2024
   > nit-pick

   Or, extremely critical detail, suggesting potential core roots between broken policies and broken systems.

   > I'd take this over most other systems

   "A blow in the head vs a poke in the eye" (Monty Python). We should engineer well made systems.

   I have all the bells ringing in alarm in front of that system, going "Why did you early-stop ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!".

   Or do you have literature why mathematics forced that set of rules? Preference ranking based systems in history did not impose ranking all the options.

   Relevant Literature:

   George Szpiro - Numbers Rule: The Vexing Mathematics of Democracy, from Plato to the Present

   https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691139944/nu...

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