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I pointed out on SodaHead that the "thumbs-up" on the upper right of
each post was an example of Approval voting, and those who think
Approval is too complicated or undemocratic were free to restrict
their votes to a single post. :)<br>
<br>
Mike<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial,
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<br>
On 3/21/2012 6:09 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAO82iZxrJBC28NX+h0FOkrqn_QF7utVwd+O0zRmH_sXpPTYKeQ@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">What strikes me most about the comments is how many of
them are positively proud of their loudmouth know-nothingism. The
same people who think it's a liberal plot seem to enjoy showing
off their closed-mindedness. That is, they see it not as a
rational argument, but as a tribal counting-coup on those egghead
liberals.
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<br>
</div>
<div>Finding better rational arguments is not going to change such
people's minds. I'm not really sure what would. It seems that
they make up their minds pretty quickly and reflexively. Now I
know that such blowhards are overrepresented on the internet,
but the truth is they tend to make more than their share of
noise in any context, so it's important to have some strategy to
deal with them.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>... Separately, I think your point about the demographics is
a good one. Obviously, the sample sizes are small and so
basically none of it is reliable (statistically significant),
but still, it can give some clues. As far as I can see states on
that map which have the most-significant (not largest)
advantages for "Yes, approval" are New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Minnesota, South Carolina, Oregon, and Florida. Smaller states
would be unlikely to show significance even if there were an
advantage, but the small New England states might be promising
too.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Jameson<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
2012/3/21 Kristofer Munsterhjelm <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:km_elmet@lavabit.com"
target="_blank">km_elmet@lavabit.com</a>></span><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>On 03/20/2012 01:51 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
I know that online polls are silly. But thousands of
people see them,<br>
and if they see that the idea actually has support, some
of them will be<br>
more open to consider if it has merit.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
While the poll has comments of low quality, and the users
seem to be against Approval at the moment, I do think even
those low-quality comments can be useful.<br>
<br>
Namely, they give us insight into the objections, fair or
not, to Approval itself. There are partisan arguments ("this
is a liberal plot to deny conservatives their voting
power"), what can be done about them? Can we point out
places where conservatives are being hurt by vote-splitting?
Can we point at Ron Paul when responding to a libertarian?<br>
Then there are method centric arguments. Some are just
confused about what the thing means, as one can see by the
"oh, and let the voters vote for a single candidate many
times" type of posts. Others think it violates one-man
one-vote. How can we clear that up? Perhaps by rephrasing it
in terms of thumbs-up/thumbs-down? If each voter gets ten
options to either do thumbs-up (approve) or not (don't
approve), then the voting power is the same for each. Maybe
that is a better phrasing than approve/not in any case, and
maybe it's a better format, too, because it clears up the
confusion between "haven't made a choice about X" (no
approval) and "have voted, but didn't like X" (also no
approval).<br>
<br>
And so on...<br>
<br>
The demographics, if representative, may also give some idea
as to where it will be hard to sell. What kinds of people
like Approval the least? Why?<br>
<br>
I do note that there are very few arguments about chicken
dilemma situations. If there are barriers to Approval being
adopted, that isn't it - at least not yet. Though one could
of course say that the reason nobody objects using the
chicken dilemma is that they haven't studied the thing
enough to know there actually *is* a chicken dilemma
problem.<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
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