[EM] Taking a break

[Richard, the VoteFair guy]

Kristofer ~

You are the E-M list participant whose opinions I value the most!  I 
read your posts much more carefully than posts from any other participant.

In addition, I greatly appreciate your use of your software to reveal 
very important insights.

Especially recently regarding HOW OFTEN failures/disadvantages occur in 
the various methods.  That has helped reduce the myopic tendency to 
focus on the simplistic, binary categorization regarding whether a 
method "never fails" or "can possibly fail" a fairness criterion.

Also your recent calculations reveal that a compromise between Condercet 
methods and IRV-like eliminations yields lower vulnerabilities to 
failures that involve strategic/tactical voting.  Here I'm thinking of 
increased appreciation for the Benham, Condorcet-IRV, Smith-IRV, and 
Ranked Choice Including Pairwise Elimination methods.

I too stopped responding to every misrepresentation/mischaracterization 
here in the forum.

I'm in the process of figuring out how to highlight and summarize lots 
of misunderstandings so that Oregon can adopt the 
Oregon-state-legislature-approved referendum that will adopt ranked 
choice ballots for electing Oregon governors and Oregon members of 
Congress.  That's where it will be most helpful to get cooperation in 
election-method reform.  Especially from Star voting promoters who seem 
to be learning the wrong lessons from the recent defeat of that method 
in Eugene Oregon.

I'm hoping that collaboration among election-method reformers happens in 
time to stop our planet from getting toasted.  It's a long road because 
single-winner elections are just the first step toward PR methods for 
legislatures, which is where elected politicians can change laws to 
yield dramatically better benefits for voters.  (Of course voters 
outnumber the biggest campaign contributors, yet those contributors 
currently control big political parties by exploiting plurality 
vulnerabilities.)

Otherwise I'm just scanning posts in this forum mostly to keep on top of 
any new insights.

I too am tired of the same opinions being repeated without those writers 
apparently reading and understanding what others point out.

Kristofer, I'll miss your contributions.

You are correct that Wikipedia needs lots of help!  I gave up on that 
battlefield when I realized that editors/writers have become the 
majority of admins.  Subject-matter-experts have been booted out.  I was 
never banned but it came too close mostly because I hurt an admin's ego. 
  Plus it's difficult to find academic references to every detail that 
subject-matter experts know, especially on topics such as election 
methods where governments don't pay academics to do meaningful 
pioneering research of the kinds you, Kristofer, have been pioneering 
here.  Sad.  Yet Wikipedia is a battlefield worth fighting on.

FWIW, I also now seldom write posts on the r/EndFPTP because a bot 
downvotes everything I post.  Specifically it immediately downvotes each 
new post, and then adds downvotes to keep the voting ratio around 80 
percent (upvotes per overall votes) to prevent those posts from the E-M 
version of "going viral."  Sometimes I write comments there, but mostly 
those get attention only from someone who has time to repeatedly argue I 
am wrong and they are right.  I finally stopped responding to every one 
of those misunderstandings -- including ones from some people who also 
read this forum.

Kristofer, I hope you continue to at least sometimes scan some messages 
in this forum.  Perhaps to recognize times when you can write a few 
sentences to keep these discussions from being overwhelmed by repeated 
biased opinions.

Again, thank you Kristofer for all your contributions!!!!!!  They have 
increased the rate at which civilization is slowly progressing toward 
higher levels of democracy!!!

Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy



On 5/26/2024 5:28 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> I've decided to take a break from EM. I'm not sure if I'll unsubscribe 
> or just not read the list mails.
> 
> Part of this is the Wikipedia stuff. Part is real world things unrelated 
> to EM. And part of it is that I don't have enough energy left to defend 
> my opinions, and there's been a lot of "why do you think X" mails on 
> list lately.
> 
> Now, "why do you think X" is perfectly legitimate. Responding to them 
> would just require more than I have at the moment.
> 
> I'll end by saying two things. First, to echo Michael's earlier plonk 
> post: if someone says something outrageous or bizarre and you see no 
> response from me, that's not because I agree. It's because I didn't see it.
> 
> Second: just to repeat, if anybody wants to start doing Wikipedia work, 
> let me know by mail and I'll give a list of articles that could be 
> improved, and how.
> 
> I think that should be it.
> 
> Oh, one more thing. I was doing some cleanup of one of my list folders. 
> But in retrospect, I think my email filter that sends things to the list 
> folders has been too broad. Thus, mails sent directly to me, off-list to 
> this email address with an [EM] tag in the subject might have been sent 
> to a list folder instead, and so I might have deleted them.
> 
> -km
> ----
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