Votes can not be counted more than once, and every vote counts (according to the voter.) As all voters have an equal opportunity to withhold or spend votes - how can this be unfair?
In current systems, a minority voter may never be offered a candidate worth a vote - all such votes don't count (according to the voter.) This is clearly unfair, and has only an appearance of proportional representation.
With the right maneuvering among a well-organized block of voters, I could imagine a situation where the system becomes a perpetual minority rule.
And this does not happen now?
This is likely the reason for low turn outs in many elections - the voters simply do not care.
... they frequently vibrate the air, radiate heat, and exude various chemicals ...
These signals appear to be unavoidable. When we lie, however, many of our behavioural signals appear to be avoidable: for example.
There is no dispute that we betray our own lies; but why do we betray our lies?
... Expected payoff is low in this tangent ...
Expected payoff for whom?
I am new to this forum; as far as I remember I came here via the QM sequence. I was immediately impressed by the material, and became interested in other sequences (I have a long term interest in rationality, and especially general semantics.)
In order to acquaint myself with the general gist of the forums, I made a couple of innocuous posts on this thread; to which I received this response:
... I mean it is bullshit.
I have a natural aversion to narcissistic types, and my hackles ...
... any rational defences are welcomed and may be appended below.
What part of that in unclear?
Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.
– James Baldwin
The obscure language was likely due to the political context of the original; try substituting 'identified' for 'faced'.
In the case that the second proposition (with respect QM) is irrelevant to the thread, any apparent dislike of the comment must associate to the first proposition.
... symbols (or strings of symbols) have different sense in different contexts ...
This in response to your comment:
This is an excellent quote ... I downvoted it here ...
Please elaborate.
I am new to LW, and I don't get it; this is supposed to be a forum promoting rationality, and anyone who dissed this comment appears to be behaving re-actively.
Any rational justifications as to why anyone would respond to the above comment are welcomed, and may be appended below.
A good resource on distinctions (if you are not yet aware of it), is George Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form. These ideas are being further explored (Bricken, Awbrey), and various resources on boundary logic and differential logic, are now available on the web.
When mapping labels (symbols) to their underlying concepts, look for the distinction, not the concept. Distinctions divide a particular perspective of the map; each side of the distinction being marked with a label. In early Greek philosophy the opposites were: love and strife (see empedocles.)
(An abstraction corresponds to a class of distinctions, where each particular distinction of the class, corresponds to another abstraction.)
Another Goethe quote, whilst on that tack; seems appropriate for disciples of GS.
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(re-posted on request.)
Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... intentionally vague deep sounding ... (symbols) ... to which wisdom can be associated. You've just given multiple meanings to the same ... (symbols) ... Those other meanings may be useful but the ... (symbols) ... themselves are nonsense.
That pretty much describes any proposition. If you wish, substitute the word 'noise' for the word 'symbol, then the paragraph describes an utterance.
There is a good resource on semiotics here.
Not necessarily deep; a couple of concrete interpretations:
'Do not let what you can not do, interfere with what you can do;' and 'If you wish to discover the unknown, begin by exploring what is known.'
There is often much hidden wisdom in interpretation of aphorisms, which perhaps explains my preference for the poetic turn of phrase.
There are numerous systems of verifiable secret ballot, for example this one.
Why should those whom are not 'fans' of any current member of the ruling regime, never be offered a meaningful vote? That is the point of non expiring votes, that minorities will have representation at least some of the time. The fundamental test of any democracy, is whether the incumbent regime can be peacefully overthrown.
If you wish to advance into the infinite, explore the finite in all directions.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If you wish to advance into the infinite, explore the finite in all directions.
That sounds incredibly deep. (By which I mean it is bullshit.)
You were likely referring to some of the recent work of Vincent Courtillot. A video summarizing some of his work here.
The most interesting aspect of this work, is that Courtillot did not start out with any intention of finding correlations with climate; his field is geomagnetism. Only after noticing certain correlations between geomagnetic cycles and sun spot cycles, did suspected correlations with natural climate cycles become evident.
On the basis that if one makes definite assertions, responses are more likely :-)
My question: Why is it an evolutionary advantage to betray our lies with behavioural clues? Until challenged with an alternative reason that makes any sense, my assertion remains the only possible reason.
However, if we can't trust our belief-forming faculties to tell us the truth about God, why should we trust them to tell us the truth about anything, including evolutionary science? If our cognitive faculties only tell us what we need to survive, not what is true, why trust them about anything at all?
Rewrite the paragraph; but remove all unnecessary particulars and emotive words, leaving the propositions in the abstract:
...... if we can't trust our beliefs ... to tell us the truth ... why should we trust them to tell us the truth ...? ... If our cognitiv
To lie convincingly, it is necessary to first believe the lie yourself; in other words once you deceive yourself, convincing others is easy. The reason for this phenomenon appears to be the behavioral clues offered when one knowingly lies. Why is it that we offer these behavioral clues when we lie? Surely it would be advantageous to disguise our lies?
The only possible reason appears to be, that these behavioral clues are the only way we have of knowing of ourselves, that we lie. Without this metaphorical 'crossing of fingers', we would have no way of knowi...
It would appear that many of these problems would be circumnavigated, if voters were permitted to save their votes. In the case that none of the candidates were to my liking, I could then save up my vote for any forthcoming election. When, after a 50 years of waiting, I am finally offered a candidate of my liking, I may then have an opportunity to spend all 50 of my votes at once (great for minorities who are never offered a meaningful choice.)
A system based upon non expiring votes would likely be sufficiently unpredictable to discourage strategic voting (...
Interesting that you should prefer 'they', referring to the plural data; some versions of the aphorism also use this form - in retrospect, I prefer this form.
Torturing data is a common problem in my field (geophysics). With large but sparse datasets, data can be manipulated to mean almost anything. Normal procedure: first make a reasonable model for the given context; then make a measureable prediction based upon your model; then collect an appropriate dataset by 'tuning' your measuring apparatus to the model; then process your data in a standard way. In t...
A perennial favourite: "If you torture the data enough, they will confess."
Often attributed to Ronald Coase, however this version was likely: "If you torture the data long enough, nature will confess" - perhaps implying a confession of truth. Another version, attributed to Paolo Magrassi: "If you torture the data enough, it will confess anything" - perhaps implying a confession of falsehood.
Personally, I find the ambiguous version of greater interest.