When were you when the UK was kill?

[Spastic]

I know what standard deviation is I feel like you're trying to sound very smart or something idk but that's a terrible idea to bring to voting. Voting apathy would be at an all time high if a person's vote didn't matter because you hate standard deviation so much that you wish to eliminate it from voting. I just don't really see how it would work in a real world non simulation environment, it's a terrible idea.

[grue]

[Ben]

I know what standard deviation is I feel like you're trying to sound very smart or something idk but that's a terrible idea to bring to voting. Voting apathy would be at an all time high if a person's vote didn't matter because you hate standard deviation so much that you wish to eliminate it from voting. I just don't really see how it would work in a real world non simulation environment, it's a terrible idea.

i dont see how someone with an understanding of standard deviations would call them an arbitrary number so i just tried to contextualize what i meant in any case

how would a person's vote stop mattering? id understand if i said "a 'yes' vote would require a 55% whereas a 'no' would require 50% still" because, then if you want yes then your vote matters less than the no-ers. all i am asking for is for people to be more solidly for what they want so that there is no uncertainty in the measurement

[Ben]

approach it from another angle: if the vote had been 32,000,001 to 31,999,999 wouldnt you go "huh well a vote is a vote, but thats a little nutty"?

thats an extreme case, but it proves that theres a threshold at which we say "okay that's a solid vote". if they won by a single vote, you wouldnt say "thats a solid decision", you would be like me. i just happen to think it doesnt have to be one single vote, it can be a few percent

---

this logic is the exact same as this old joke

A lawyer is sitting in a bar having a drink when a beautiful women sits down next to him. The lawyer seeing opportunity buys the women a beer and proceeds to hit on her. He then asks her, "Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?"

The women looks at him and says, "You know for a million dollars, sure."

The Lawyer then asks, "Would you sleep with me for 20 dollars?"

The women is instantly upset and yells, "Twenty dollars, what do you think I am some kind of whore?!"

The lawyer then looks at her and says, "Well, we have already established that fact. Now we are just negotiating."

[Delirious Biznasty]

my first thought: yes 60% may be much but 55% isnt so bad
my second thought: well, a higher threshold may force people to have better arguments

So you're saying you'd be more in favor of the decision if it was more one sided?

[Ben]

if i want to know what 2 + 2 is, theres going to be a few lame arguments and then there's going to be the answer "4". this is a very objective truth

if 2 + 2 were polled, it would not come to 52/48. it would be nearly 100/0 (there would be joke votes, there would be crazy people votes. this is our standard deviation. maybe 98/2). assuming people vote honestly and there is no sleaze, then yes one argument should be more one-sided than the other for it to be asserted as true, or the "right" decision

if it were a question that nobody really knew, or had, the answer to because the truth was so obfuscated... or if the number of good solutions were so many but different, then you'd see that the answer is as arbitrary as flipping a coin- 50/50. in those cases, why have a vote?

in this case, though technically more people voted "out" than in, if every person had just flipped a coin before going to the poll instead we would get the same result. do you see why this is silly?

[Ben]

i understand that in practice what im suggesting is weird. and, who knows what would happen

but all of the things we have now, they were not created by some omniscient deity last week. they all were once "weird" and people didn't know what would happen. then, they kept happening until it became normal. that doesnt make them right, or correct

i dont get this outlook. clipping your toenails, in practice, is kind of unattractive... but what's the alternative? NOT clipping them? that doesnt make it better, in the long-term youre going to have gross gangly talons. making changes to these things isn't disrupting a perfect system- even if its a terrible idea (which it isnt), our current ideas arent all that great either

---

and- i have no political stake in the "decision", honestly im so incapable of having an opinion on this. grue makes good points that at very least its encouraging the weird european right wing and thats bad, but i also dont like all the 20-somethings asserting that old people need to die so they can get what they want

i dont care about this number in particular, just yes/nos that have no rhyme or reason to them and us all putting our hands on our hips and going "yep, yep, we did it. we have made this important decision as a country, but we just as well have made the other decision. everyone go home"

[grue]

so here's an argument: why do you assume that "yes" should have stronger reasoning than "no"? assuming "yes" = "change the law", why should changing be more difficult to happen than staying as it is? in fact, laws go obsolete very fast. if anything (i'm mostly progressive about things), changing the law should be easier, keeping old laws should be what needs stronger justification.

so in this strict sense, whenever you have a referendum, it should take only 40% for the "yes" to win, because progress should trump conservatism. conservatives would disagree and take your stance, that reform is what needs to be justified.

what I'm saying is you're defaulting that one side should be more scrutinized than the other, and that's a political standpoint that is not universal. the balance can be only achieved by a 50/50, ie giving both sides a similar shot at justifying themselves. "no" isn't a default stance (or shouldn't be), "no" is a political decision to conserve current law rather than change it. and you can't have a 60/40 for both "yes" and "no", not without choosing by default to have a democratic system that prefers either progressivism or conservatism.

so while your contention may make sense from a mathmatical standpoint, it's unfair in practice, because you're inadvertly giving more weight to one side over the other

[shagg]

Ben is kind of implying Congress's power to overturn a decision with 2/3 majority vote.

He wants a higher degree of agreement than 50/50 contestation.

--

I'm similar in thought, I s'pose.

In statistics, 5% is often the minimum for something to be significant. So a 53% to 47% at least would likely convince me that (assuming everyone was well informed and of equal rationale) there is some credence to the vote

[grue]

I get that

but my contention is that, let's say the Remain/Leave vote in the UK

if you're saying that Leave should have 55%+ votes to be acceptable, you're also saying that Remain needs only 45%+ votes to be acceptable

and that's favouring conservatism over progressivism

the sort of 2/3 rules that happen in Parliament/Congress whatever usually only apply to structural alterations, such as impeachments or constitution changes, where conservatism is understood to be usually better than progressivism. ie, it's generally understood that you need a Very Good Reason to change the Constitution, otherwise it stays as it is.

does this apply to referendums? I would say that people need a Very Good Reason to leave the EU, but they also need a Very Good Reason to stay. otherwise, you're preferring one over the other. if you think both need equal weight, as I do, you require a 50/50 vote

[Ben]

ok i see what youre getting at there and youre right that this situation gets sticky BECAUSE

the vote isnt "pink or green", its "keep the building the same or paint it"- that is, a no vote isn't really a vote for something, its a vote for nothing. this would mean that a "yes" needs to get to 55% but a no would just have to "be sure that yes doesnt hit 55%", which is easier. in this specific example, you do need more guidelines. maybe, you need a 55% on either side to shut everyone up for X years. if nobody gets that, it gets brought up again in a year when arguments are better heard and people, maybe, know more. or it's decided by someone larger (like shagg mentioned, a lot of american politics falls to the legislature if necessary). or, some other solution WHICH IS BETTER THAN THE ONE WE HAVE NOW and just because i cant think of something as i sit here eating peanut butter cups at 1:45 on a sunday doesnt mean our current system is bulletproof

anyway, in the 2016 US election you will be voting, essentially, for "pink or green" but in 2020 you will be voting (likely) for the incumbent candidate vs a new one (keep it plain or paint it). it isn't enough in our politics to "fail to vote for the new guy", the current guy also needs to get a good amount of the vote. if this fails, it goes to congress. you see, something has to give here and theres no "going back" once the vote starts

i mean, imagine if in the US one guy votes for trump and two people vote for hillary. are we really going to bow our heads and go "but alas, this is the process of voting. she got more votes than him, and so we are bound by our duty". no, we would go "hey hey hey now that's a little silly, something went wrong here". this doesnt literally apply because we already account for this in the US, but im just giving another example of where a system thats just "one number vs the other, whoever is bigger wins" fails

[Ben]

let me rephrase my initial point: the results demonstrate a minor, even statistically minor, majority and yet we are still declaring a solid, definitive winner

and to restate just in case: this may as well have been a vote over whether shoes should generally be made taller. i have little to no interest in the political implications and really am just interested in the numbers. also i know that the government might just decide to do nothing at all in face of the vote

[grue]

ok i see what youre getting at there and youre right that this situation gets sticky BECAUSE

the vote isnt "pink or green", its "keep the building the same or paint it"- that is, a no vote isn't really a vote for something, its a vote for nothing. this would mean that a "yes" needs to get to 55% but a no would just have to "be sure that yes doesnt hit 55%", which is easier. in this specific example, you do need more guidelines. maybe, you need a 55% on either side to shut everyone up for X years. if nobody gets that, it gets brought up again in a year when arguments are better heard and people, maybe, know more. or it's decided by someone larger (like shagg mentioned, a lot of american politics falls to the legislature if necessary). or, some other solution WHICH IS BETTER THAN THE ONE WE HAVE NOW and just because i cant think of something as i sit here eating peanut butter cups at 1:45 on a sunday doesnt mean our current system is bulletproof

anyway, in the 2016 US election you will be voting, essentially, for "pink or green" but in 2020 you will be voting (likely) for the incumbent candidate vs a new one (keep it plain or paint it). it isn't enough in our politics to "fail to vote for the new guy", the current guy also needs to get a good amount of the vote. if this fails, it goes to congress. you see, something has to give here and theres no "going back" once the vote starts

i mean, imagine if in the US one guy votes for trump and two people vote for hillary. are we really going to bow our heads and go "but alas, this is the process of voting. she got more votes than him, and so we are bound by our duty". no, we would go "hey hey hey now that's a little silly, something went wrong here". this doesnt literally apply because we already account for this in the US, but im just giving another example of where a system thats just "one number vs the other, whoever is bigger wins" fails

I think you're oversimplifying

for example, when Scotland voted to stay in the UK, the Queen came out reinforced in her power. there were questions on the solidity of the UK, and those were solved by a majority "no" ("no, we don't want to leave the uk"). that "no" is as significant as the "yes" and as politically valid. it's so important that it's now being used to attack the eu referendum, because now it's "ok we said 'no', but now you're screwing us over, so we might change our minds"

same with the EU. there was a vast xenophobic campaign against the EU during the referendum. choosing "stay" for a lot of people wasn't just "don't paint the house", it was much more, for example it was "no, we are not xenophobic", or "yes, we believe the EU is good for us". you're putting all the validity on one side of the vote and forgetting that standing for the other side of the vote is equally a political statement. it's not a "vote for nothing", that's where I think you're wrong.

so in the same way that if the uk's decision to leave backfires and they end up in the gutter, people can say "well, you did choose to leave"; if the uk chose to STAY and it backfired, people could say "well, you did choose to stay". they are both conscious decisions. and in any political point, changing or not changing are conscious decisions, always. adding new gun laws or leaving the laws as they are, in america, are a big talking point because both decisions are politically very important. changing the schengen treaty to add border control or leave it as it is, in the eu, are opposite decisions each with huge implications on how things will go in the future.

as for the numbers game: technically a democratic country can elect its own destruction. democracy is based on the iffy belief that people will consciously engage in politics, and participate. when they don't (like in your 'only three people cast a vote example'), you are having bigger structural problems than how valid that election is, imo

[Ben]

if it elects its own destruction, or its own apathy, im going to whine about it. i think this is my point. also i know there are deeper issues in this case but im just talking the numbers game

i go back to my previous example: if it were 32,000,001 "leave" vs 31,999,999 "stay" and so therefore everyone had to leave, wouldnt you as a human being look at those numbers and say "hoo boy thats a little unsettling"? yknow, just because generally the utilitarian idea is to please the most people by popular vote except in this case the margin of superior-pleasure is one guy? would you feel good about that? i mean, regardless of whether that had to be the call we make, i wouldnt feel good about it

i would extend that few-person discrepancy to a few-percent discrepancy

[grue]

yes, but if it were 32,000,001 "stay" vs 31,999,999 "leave" i would say the same thing, thats the point im trying to make