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Here's a list of books...

The Origin Of Species
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
The Handmaid’s Tale
A Tale of Two Cities
50 Shades of Grey
Principia
The Bible
War and Peace
A Theory of Justice
The Cat in the Hat
The Wealth of Nations
The Hunger Games

Imagine if this list was sorted by a bunch of college students. One group of students would use voting to rank the books while another group would use spending.  To be clear, the spenders wouldn’t be buying the books, they would simply be using their money to express and quantify their love for each book. All the money they spent would be used to crowdfund this experiment.

How differently would the voters and the spenders sort the books?  In theory, the voters would elevate the trash while the spenders would elevate the treasure. This would perfectly explain the exact problem with Google, Youtube, Netflix, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Medium and all the other sites where content is ranked by voting. Democracy is a major obstacle to the maximally beneficial evolution of society and its creations. Of course I might be wrong.

Evidence is something that all reasonable people expect.  Reasonable people expect medicine to be supported by evidence.  Reasonable people expect executions to be supported by evidence.  Reasonable people expect evolution to be supported by evidence.  Reasonable people expect love to be supported by evidence.   Reasonable people expect important things to be supported by evidence.  So when it comes to democracy... where are all the reasonable people?   Where's the expectation for evidence that voting is more effective than spending?

Naturally some, or even most, of you will be very inclined to try and justify/explain/defend democracy.  But if you do so, please acknowledge the fact that your defense is not based on any evidence that voting is more effective than spending.  Since your belief in the effectiveness of democracy isn't based on evidence, it must be supported by faith.  You trust that democracy is correlated with abundance.

Every theory of abundance is a religion (https://medium.com/@Amplify/my-favorite-story-in-the-bible-is-elijah-versus-the-prophets-of-baal-1d6331a7d291).  Some religions are more correct than others.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 13, 2018, 12:28:01 PM
In theory, the voters would elevate the trash while the spenders would elevate the treasure.

Oh?

Don't moviegoers vote with their dollars resulting in the types of movies that are currently being produced?

Democracy is inherently mob rule.

Quote from: Poison Tree on May 13, 2018, 12:58:10 PM
Oh?

Yeah, that seems like a pretty dubious claim.

Quote from: GSOgymrat on May 13, 2018, 01:07:05 PM
Don't moviegoers vote with their dollars resulting in the types of movies that are currently being produced?

X = the amount of money that you've spent on your favorite movie
Y = the amount of money that you would spend on it if you could earmark your Netflix subscription dollars to it

Is Y greater than X?  If so, how much greater is it? 

Buying and earmarking are different things.  With buying, the more expensive the movie is, the more profitable piracy becomes.  Creating a perfect copy of a movie is a lot easier than creating a perfect copy of a steak.  When it comes to digital goods, buying is an inherently defective system.

If you could earmark your Netflix fees, then you really wouldn't be buying movies and shows.  You'd simply be using your Netflix fees to quantify your valuation of the content.  If you really love the BBC show Planet Earth II, then in one year you could earmark around $100 dollars to it. 

Since buying and earmarking are very different systems, naturally they distribute money very differently.  It stands to reason that the earmarking distribution of dollars would far more accurately reflect the distribution of love.  Consumers would essentially be far more honest with producers and this would greatly improve the supply of shows and movies.

Let me try and put it as simply as possible.  With buying you want to hide your love.  You want to pay the lowest amount possible for movie tickets and DVDs.  But with earmarking there's absolutely no reason to hide your love.  The amount of money consumers earmark to content will accurately reflect their love, which will result in a more lovable supply of content. 

Well, different generations would rank books or other media, differently.  That is part of the variety in history that keeps it interesting.  At one time, the only two books literate English people had in their homes, were the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress.  That is why Franklin invented the lending library.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 13, 2018, 12:28:01 PM
Imagine if this list was sorted by a bunch of college students. One group of students would use voting to rank the books while another group would use spending.

So you'd just end up with two groups of drunk college students and no books.

You can still use your money to make your preferences clear -- when I got my Netflix membership, I sought out a place to leave feedback so that they knew I not only was joining to support their decision to carry the new MST3K, but that they were getting my money even though as a Kickstarter, I was getting all the new episodes in HD anyway and didn't actually need their service to see it.  Since Netflix has picked MST3K up for another season without the fans resorting to a Kickstarter campaign, obviously I wasn't the only one.

Also, don't forget that once you've paid your membership fee, you do engage in earmarking.  I have no doubt that Netflix keeps track of exactly what gets watchlisted, how often, where, and by whom.  And since the membership fee is a flat rate, it makes no difference to your wallet whether you mark a single program, or hundreds.

Quote from: trdsf on May 15, 2018, 12:31:19 PM
You can still use your money to make your preferences clear -- when I got my Netflix membership, I sought out a place to leave feedback so that they knew I not only was joining to support their decision to carry the new MST3K, but that they were getting my money even though as a Kickstarter, I was getting all the new episodes in HD anyway and didn't actually need their service to see it.  Since Netflix has picked MST3K up for another season without the fans resorting to a Kickstarter campaign, obviously I wasn't the only one.

Also, don't forget that once you've paid your membership fee, you do engage in earmarking.  I have no doubt that Netflix keeps track of exactly what gets watchlisted, how often, where, and by whom.  And since the membership fee is a flat rate, it makes no difference to your wallet whether you mark a single program, or hundreds.

I truly wish Netflix had more nature shows and more economics shows.  Right now Netflix has several nature shows but barely any economics shows. I perceive that it's a big problem that there's a severe scarcity of economics shows. How I earmark my fees should accurately reflect my perception.

Imagine an army scout who discovers a battalion of enemy soldiers. When he returns to his base he doesn't report his discovery. We should all intuitively appreciate that this soldier is defective. He had very important information but he didn't share it with his fellow soldiers. So as a result, his fellow soldiers are going to be inefficiently allocated. In other words, there's going to be a big disparity between where they are, and where they should be. There's going to be a seriously faulty distribution, all because the scout didn't share very important information with his unit.

Let me hedge my bets by putting it in terms of bees. Samantha the bee discovers a huge flower patch of Aloes. She automatically and naturally estimates the value/benefit/profitability/importance/relevance/usefulness of the patch. Her estimate is in terms of her precious calories. If, when she returns to the hive, she doesn't report her discovery/estimate to the rest of the hive, then we should all intuitively appreciate that she's a defective bee. Because she didn't share her important information, the hive's labor will be suboptimally divided. Again... faulty distribution.

Netflix has over 100 million subscribers who live all over the world. Presumably all these subscribers have eyes and brains. They all gather and process information about their environment. According to my own eyes and brains, economics is extremely important... so it's a huge problem that Netflix barely has any shows about economics. If I don't report this, then I am a defective subscriber... and again... faulty distribution. Sure, I can e-mail Netflix and make the case that they should have a lot more economics shows. But if this was truly an effective/efficient way for people to share their perceptions with each other, then what would we need markets for?

Netflix and all the rest, and most economics "education" is propaganda by the Oligarchy.

Most students are freshmen to seniors, ages  17-24,  most are religious or agnostic theists and also alot of them are mostly stupid. So we can conclude most would pick 50 Shades of Grey, The Cat in the Hat, The Hunger Games, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 15, 2018, 07:36:15 PM
Netflix has over 100 million subscribers who live all over the world. Presumably all these subscribers have eyes and brains. They all gather and process information about their environment. According to my own eyes and brains, economics is extremely important... so it's a huge problem that Netflix barely has any shows about economics. If I don't report this, then I am a defective subscriber... and again... faulty distribution. Sure, I can e-mail Netflix and make the case that they should have a lot more economics shows. But if this was truly an effective/efficient way for people to share their perceptions with each other, then what would we need markets for?

And not emailing them accomplishes what, exactly?  You can't be held responsible for them listening or not, but what you seem to be saying here is that it's not worth speaking up in the first place, and all that does is guarantee your voice is not heard.

Quote from: trdsf on May 16, 2018, 11:40:55 AM
And not emailing them accomplishes what, exactly?  You can't be held responsible for them listening or not, but what you seem to be saying here is that it's not worth speaking up in the first place, and all that does is guarantee your voice is not heard.

I've personally e-mailed plenty of organizations... including Netflix.  I always wonder exactly how many people actually read my e-mail... and judge my idea.  Usually when I e-mail organizations I don't get a response.  There was only one instance when I received a response from two different people in the organization.  In that case I could be certain that at least two people heard my voice and judged my idea. 

The beauty of forums is that I can be certain that plenty of people hear my voice and judge my ideas.  With that in mind, I'll share an idea with you and everybody else...

Two years ago skepticon used a fundraiser to decide who to prank (https://skepticon.org/april-fundraiser-lets-pull-a-prank/).  Basically the donors used their money to help rank the potential candidates.  Two birds were killed with one stone.  Money was raised for skepticon and a decision was made. 

What if AtheistForums.com used a fundraiser to rank atheists?   People could vote and/or donate for their favorite atheists (ie Richard Dawkins).  How differently would voting and donating rank the atheists?  Here are the benefits of this idea...

1. Money would be raised for this website
2. We'd all learn which atheists are the most beneficial
3. We'd all learn about the difference between voting and spending

I'm sure you've heard of the wisdom of the crowd concept.  But which is wiser... a crowd of voters or a crowd of donors?  We should really figure out the answer to this question. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 16, 2018, 04:19:34 PM
I'm sure you've heard of the wisdom of the crowd concept.  But which is wiser... a crowd of voters or a crowd of donors?  We should really figure out the answer to this question.

The real problem I have with this is that it gives an outsized voice to a small minority of donors.  If you have one donor plunking down $10,000 on Richard Dawkins, and eight thousand donors putting down a dollar each on Matt Dillahunty, is it really reasonable to say that Dawkins is the crowd's choice?

It makes having a voice dependent on having resources that have absolutely nothing to do with having an informed opinion.  Let's say donors were limited to only making a single $1 donation in the name of their choice.  You know what?  I have had times when that was asking too much of my wallet, when my personal finances were cut that fine that I couldn't justify even a dollar.

It also makes the decision dependent on factors that have nothing to do with what's being decided.  Would you have a ranking of the historical importance of presidents done by size of donation?  No, of course not, because here comes the Koch brothers with a dump truck full of money to spend on Reagan or Dubya, and to hell with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln or Roosevelt.

Fundamentally, it imports the precise problem with our political system into other decision-making systems.

Quote from: trdsf on May 16, 2018, 05:27:26 PM
The real problem I have with this is that it gives an outsized voice to a small minority of donors.  If you have one donor plunking down $10,000 on Richard Dawkins, and eight thousand donors putting down a dollar each on Matt Dillahunty, is it really reasonable to say that Dawkins is the crowd's choice?

The atheists would be ranked by donating and voting.  There would be two rankings... 1. voting ranking and 2. donating ranking.  You could carefully compare the two rankings and tell us which one you prefer.

I definitely understand the fact that wealth is unequally distributed.  But I personally haven't seen any evidence that voting ranks things better than spending does. 

As far as I know, nobody has ever tried to juxtapose voting and spending. It's hard for me to articulate just how strange and scary this is... given how frequently we use these two types of input. Voting and spending are not minor details in our society... they are major things. They both shape our society. They both have enormous consequences.  They both change and control our lives in countless ways.  Therefore, juxtaposing voting and spending is the most important thing. Formal scientists have obviously overlooked the incredible necessity of this experiment... but I have not.

So I'm really not saying that we should only use donations to rank the atheists.  I'm saying that we should use both donating and voting to rank them.  Then we can all carefully compare and contrast the two rankings.

My best guess is that the donating ranking will be better than the voting ranking.  Honestly I don't even know who Matt Dillahunty is.  I spend far more time studying economics than atheism.  Yet, even though I'm not very informed about atheists... with voting I'd have the same exact influence over the rankings as the experts.  With donating, on the other hand, it's a very different story.  I'd donate a lot less money to help rank atheists than I would to help rank economists. 

Even though I consider my best guess to be considerably informed... it is just a guess.  What really matters is evidence.  Even if you disagree with me about the effectiveness of markets, hopefully you should strongly agree with me about the importance of evidence.  Juxtaposing voting and spending would provide us with the evidence that we need to have a more productive discussion. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 16, 2018, 07:37:06 PM
The atheists would be ranked by donating and voting.  There would be two rankings... 1. voting ranking and 2. donating ranking.  You could carefully compare the two rankings and tell us which one you prefer.

I definitely understand the fact that wealth is unequally distributed.  But I personally haven't seen any evidence that voting ranks things better than spending does. 

As far as I know, nobody has ever tried to juxtapose voting and spending. It's hard for me to articulate just how strange and scary this is... given how frequently we use these two types of input. Voting and spending are not minor details in our society... they are major things. They both shape our society. They both have enormous consequences.  They both change and control our lives in countless ways.  Therefore, juxtaposing voting and spending is the most important thing. Formal scientists have obviously overlooked the incredible necessity of this experiment... but I have not.

So I'm really not saying that we should only use donations to rank the atheists.  I'm saying that we should use both donating and voting to rank them.  Then we can all carefully compare and contrast the two rankings.

My best guess is that the donating ranking will be better than the voting ranking.  Honestly I don't even know who Matt Dillahunty is.  I spend far more time studying economics than atheism.  Yet, even though I'm not very informed about atheists... with voting I'd have the same exact influence over the rankings as the experts.  With donating, on the other hand, it's a very different story.  I'd donate a lot less money to help rank atheists than I would to help rank economists. 

Even though I consider my best guess to be considerably informed... it is just a guess.  What really matters is evidence.  Even if you disagree with me about the effectiveness of markets, hopefully you should strongly agree with me about the importance of evidence.  Juxtaposing voting and spending would provide us with the evidence that we need to have a more productive discussion.

We can already see by the damage done to the American political system that a donating system doesn't work.  It's not about who has the best evidence, it's about who has the most resources to throw around.

In a voting system, evidence is more meaningful.  If everyone has one free vote, you have the potential to bring voters around to your way of thinking by power of superior evidence.

In a donation system, all it takes is a few high-resource individuals working in concert to control the outcome, regardless of who has evidence on their side.  The evidence clearly states that we live in a period of accelerated climate change brought about by human actions.  The resources, in the hands of those who profit from the industries most responsible for climate change, have muddied the issue so badly (and dishonestly) that we're not doing the things we need to do to mitigate the damage -- not because facts are on their side, but only because resources are.

That's the problem with a donor-based system: it doesn't find out what the public wants, it only finds out what the people with resources want.

Quote from: Gilgamesh on May 13, 2018, 01:40:30 PM
Democracy is inherently mob rule.

I think there is a difference between "mob rule" and "majority rule".  Mobs are not necessarily a majority, just a localized violent group.  A majority can be calm, rational, and non-violent.  A mob is almost by definition, angry, violent, and irrational. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 16, 2018, 11:04:38 PMThat's the problem with a donor-based system: it doesn't find out what the public wants, it only finds out what the people with resources want.

You're biased towards voting, I'm biased towards donating.  So what do you think about my specific idea of ranking skeptics using voting and donating? 

Quote from: trdsf on May 16, 2018, 11:04:38 PM
We can already see by the damage done to the American political system that a donating system doesn't work.  It's not about who has the best evidence, it's about who has the most resources to throw around.

In a voting system, evidence is more meaningful.  If everyone has one free vote, you have the potential to bring voters around to your way of thinking by power of superior evidence.

In a donation system, all it takes is a few high-resource individuals working in concert to control the outcome, regardless of who has evidence on their side.  The evidence clearly states that we live in a period of accelerated climate change brought about by human actions.  The resources, in the hands of those who profit from the industries most responsible for climate change, have muddied the issue so badly (and dishonestly) that we're not doing the things we need to do to mitigate the damage -- not because facts are on their side, but only because resources are.

That's the problem with a donor-based system: it doesn't find out what the public wants, it only finds out what the people with resources want.

I fully agree that donation wealth is not the best measure of the best candidates.  In fact, two of my greatest concerns for the US democracy are the claims that "corporations are people" and that "spending money is freedom of speech".

As I understand the origin of the first, corporations are technically made up of people (as opposed to partnerships which existed only so long as the partners lived).  And to protect corporations from dissolving when some people died, the courts allowed them some benefits that would help continue them through time because of stockholder consequences.

The idea that "money is free speech" followed years later.  The Supreme Court decided that if corporations were 'groups of people", they could, as a group, decide to donate money to political candidates the same as individuals.

The decision was not widely approved by legal authorities and individual groups whose primary intent was to promote political discussion (as opposed to corporations, whose primary function is to enhance stockholder wealth). 

I think the decision is illogical because the next step is to allow corporations to vote. It will take an excess of political corporate influence to reverse this decision.  Or the line may be crossed where it has gone to far into the details of law to be reversed.

Quote from: Cavebear on May 17, 2018, 01:49:10 AM
I think there is a difference between "mob rule" and "majority rule".  Mobs are not necessarily a majority, just a localized violent group.  A majority can be calm, rational, and non-violent.  A mob is almost by definition, angry, violent, and irrational.

Yes, elites don't like majority rule, they like minority rule, usually rule by their ideological minority.  Mob rule is anarchism.  Not many advocates of that here.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 17, 2018, 01:52:50 AM
You're biased towards voting, I'm biased towards donating.  So what do you think about my specific idea of ranking skeptics using voting and donating?

I don't think it tells us anything useful.  It only tells us who's got resources they're willing to waste, it tells us nothing about the individuals upon whom the money is placed.

Again, if you've got a pool of, say, a thousand donors and the vast majority of them are putting in $1 to $5, a few are putting in $10 or $20, and a small number $50 or $100, all on Dawkins, Harris (Sam or Tracie), Mehta, Dillahunty, Dennett, Hitchens, Hirsi Ali, Randi, Sagan, whoever.  And then I come along and put in $20,000 on myself.  You haven't learned anything; I've completely screwed your stats for no reason other than that I have the money to -- unless you're willing to declare me the highest ranked skeptic solely on the basis that I can buy myself the title.

That's no way to make decisions.

Quote from: trdsf on May 17, 2018, 10:41:43 AM
I don't think it tells us anything useful.  It only tells us who's got resources they're willing to waste, it tells us nothing about the individuals upon whom the money is placed.

Resources they are willing to waste?  So it's wasteful to financially support the continued existence of this forum that they use? 

Quote from: trdsf on May 17, 2018, 10:41:43 AMAgain, if you've got a pool of, say, a thousand donors and the vast majority of them are putting in $1 to $5, a few are putting in $10 or $20, and a small number $50 or $100, all on Dawkins, Harris (Sam or Tracie), Mehta, Dillahunty, Dennett, Hitchens, Hirsi Ali, Randi, Sagan, whoever.  And then I come along and put in $20,000 on myself.  You haven't learned anything; I've completely screwed your stats for no reason other than that I have the money to -- unless you're willing to declare me the highest ranked skeptic solely on the basis that I can buy myself the title.

That's no way to make decisions.

Here's a very simplified example outcome of what you're generally predicting...

Voting Rankings

500 votes - Richard Dawkins
1 vote - trdsf

Spending Rankings

$20,000 - trdsf
$897 - Richard Dawkins

From my perspective, this outcome would prove me wrong and prove you right.  The experiment would prove that a crowd of voters is wiser than a crowd of donors.  It would confirm your belief and falsify my own. 

I certainly don't want to have a wrong belief... do you?  Do you want to have a wrong belief?  Do you want me to have a wrong belief?  I think this experiment would be incredibly useful if it falsified my belief in markets. 

Let me try and put it like this.  There are two puddings on a table... voting pudding and donating pudding.  We are standing in front of the table debating which pudding tastes better.  You're arguing that the voting pudding tastes better and I'm arguing that the donating pudding tastes better.  I suggest it would be very useful if we actually tried both puddings.  You say that this wouldn't be useful because the voting pudding will taste better than the donating pudding.  Eh?  That doesn't make any sense. 

Here's a very short video about Karl Popper and falsification (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-sGqBsWv4).  His complaint was that Marxists changed their argument so that it couldn't be falsified by evidence. 

I have the belief that donating is superior to voting.  Is there any evidence that can falsify my belief?  Sure, of course.  If the experiment I proposed results in the voting ranking being superior to the donating ranking, then this evidence would falsify my belief.  This would be really beneficial because I don't want any beliefs that are bullshit. 

I am in favor of donating, if the people donating will donate "both" of their kidneys.  Then they have some skin in the game.  I they win the bet, then they get at least one kidney back.  Donating money (which is worth zero) is simply fraud.  All money today is fraud.  All of society operates on lies, fraud and theft.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 17, 2018, 11:38:39 AM
Resources they are willing to waste?  So it's wasteful to financially support the continued existence of this forum that they use?

In the most pedantic definition, yes.  It's not a necessity, it can be lived without.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 17, 2018, 11:38:39 AM
I have the belief that donating is superior to voting.  Is there any evidence that can falsify my belief?  Sure, of course.  If the experiment I proposed results in the voting ranking being superior to the donating ranking, then this evidence would falsify my belief.  This would be really beneficial because I don't want any beliefs that are bullshit.

I have already twice given you the evidence -- the distortion of the climate change debate, and of the American political/election system -- and you've not addressed either.  We've done the test, and we can see the damage.  We can already see that one of the puddings is not good.

Quote from: trdsf on May 17, 2018, 02:17:00 PMI have already twice given you the evidence -- the distortion of the climate change debate, and of the American political/election system -- and you've not addressed either.  We've done the test, and we can see the damage.  We can already see that one of the puddings is not good.

We know the demand for donuts, sneakers and laptops... but we don't know the demand for environmental protection, national defense or space exploration.  We've never known the demand for these things.  They are public goods... supplying them is the very point of the government. 

Do you have any idea how much I truly value the environment?  Last year I created a thread protesting that the Rose Bowl murdered Syncaris pasadenae (https://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=430482&p=33069500).  Do you seriously think that this thread adequately quantifies my love for nature?  Do you think that a strongly worded letter to my congressperson would effectively communicate my demand for environmental protection? 

If the government has no fucking clue how much I truly care about the environment... then it has no fucking clue how much anybody truly cares about the environment.  If the demand for environmental protection isn't at all known... then how in the world could the supply be anywhere close to optimal? 

Now I could certainly endeavor to cite several high-quality sources to try and help you understand public finance.  The problem is, when I've done this in the past with other members of this forum, as far as I can tell, it hasn't accomplished a damn thing. 

So here's the deal.  I will accept that your belief is based on all the evidence that is available to you.  You will accept that my belief is based on all the evidence that is available to me.  And then, since we both care about evidence, we will jointly conduct a simple and relevant experiment that will provide both of us with even more evidence. 

Alternatively, we can simply consider each other to be idiots.  But this really isn't my preference.  My preference is mutual respect and cooperation. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 17, 2018, 03:06:20 PM
So here's the deal.  I will accept that your belief is based on all the evidence that is available to you.  You will accept that my belief is based on all the evidence that is available to me.  And then, since we both care about evidence, we will jointly conduct a simple and relevant experiment that will provide both of us with even more evidence.

I think you're missing my point -- you're saying "do the experiment" and I'm pointing to where the experiment is already being done.  The evidence already exists -- I find it convincing, enough that I don't see the need to test the hypothesis further.

Quote from: trdsf on May 17, 2018, 03:30:32 PM
I think you're missing my point -- you're saying "do the experiment" and I'm pointing to where the experiment is already being done.  The evidence already exists -- I find it convincing, enough that I don't see the need to test the hypothesis further.

The experiment that you're pointing to... do you think that I don't already see it?  Democracy and markets are so entangled that obviously the evidence is open to interpretation.  You and I are interpreting the evidence very differently.  You're blaming the market for all of society's problems while I'm blaming democracy. 

The experiment that I'm proposing would completely untangle democracy and markets.  Democracy would be solely and entirely responsible for one ranking of skeptics while the market would be solely and entirely responsible for another ranking of skeptics.  Then we would compare the two rankings. 

Let me try and put it as accessibly as possible.  Bob and Frank both build a house together.  You and I both recognize serious problems with the house.  However, you blame Bob while I blame Frank.  So I propose a way to figure out who is truly to blame.  Bob will build one house all by himself while Frank will build another house all by himself.  You and I will then compare the two houses in order to discern whether Bob or Frank is to blame for all the problems.   

Quote from: Xerographica on May 17, 2018, 04:06:33 PM
The experiment that you're pointing to... do you think that I don't already see it?  Democracy and markets are so entangled that obviously the evidence is open to interpretation.  You and I are interpreting the evidence very differently.  You're blaming the market for all of society's problems while I'm blaming democracy.

Yes, I do think you don't see it.  You haven't even attempted to address it until this post; you've consistently resorted back to "well we need to run the experiment" in the face of what I've offered as experimental results.  Now, I'd like to know on what basis you think that the failure is democracy rather than money.

My point is, and remains, that a resource-based decision process is inherently biased in favor of those with resources, not those with evidence and rational arguments.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 17, 2018, 04:06:33 PM
The experiment that I'm proposing would completely untangle democracy and markets.  Democracy would be solely and entirely responsible for one ranking of skeptics while the market would be solely and entirely responsible for another ranking of skeptics.  Then we would compare the two rankings. 

Let me try and put it as accessibly as possible.  Bob and Frank both build a house together.  You and I both recognize serious problems with the house.  However, you blame Bob while I blame Frank.  So I propose a way to figure out who is truly to blame.  Bob will build one house all by himself while Frank will build another house all by himself.  You and I will then compare the two houses in order to discern whether Bob or Frank is to blame for all the problems.

But that's been done as well: local politics, the municipal elections in small cities, in townships and villages, where money very rarely plays a dominant role if any meaningful role at all, and it's just voters choosing between individuals they probably know personallyâ€"I know, I've run for office under such circumstances, and I strongly doubt anyone spent more than a couple hundred dollars on their entire campaign, primary and general both.

In the absence of the distorting effect of money, democracy works just fine, and I can say that as one of the losing candidates in the general election.

It's why I am convinced that the best solution to what's wrong with our national democracy is more democracy.

Interestingly, there is a market-like solution that evens out the resource problem by both ensuring everyone has the same resources, but still allowing preferential rankings--the equivalent of spending more on a choice than on other choices, without that ability to rank being based on one's personal resources: the various ranked-voting systems, like single transferable vote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote) or instant-runoff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting), or even cardinal voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_voting).  I have no problem with those; in fact, I think by and large they'd be healthier options than our current first-past-the-post system.

Quote from: trdsf on May 17, 2018, 05:46:00 PM
Yes, I do think you don't see it.  You haven't even attempted to address it until this post; you've consistently resorted back to "well we need to run the experiment" in the face of what I've offered as experimental results.  Now, I'd like to know on what basis you think that the failure is democracy rather than money.

I already provided an explanation...

"My best guess is that the donating ranking will be better than the voting ranking.  Honestly I don't even know who Matt Dillahunty is.  I spend far more time studying economics than atheism.  Yet, even though I'm not very informed about atheists... with voting I'd have the same exact influence over the rankings as the experts.  With donating, on the other hand, it's a very different story.  I'd donate a lot less money to help rank atheists than I would to help rank economists."

What do I know about dogs?  Not much.  If a friend dragged me to a dog show, then I might vote for my favorite dog.  It's not like it would cost me anything.  But if I was given the opportunity to spend my money to help rank the dogs, then I definitely would not be willing to spend much money.  I'd certainly be willing to spend a lot less money than the people who are very knowledgeable, and passionate, about dogs. 

Voting and donating would rank prominent skeptics very differently.  Go ahead and rank the prominent skeptics according to your own preferences.  Then we will see whether your own ranking is closer to the voting ranking or the donating ranking. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 17, 2018, 06:16:29 PM
I already provided an explanation...

"My best guess is that the donating ranking will be better than the voting ranking.  Honestly I don't even know who Matt Dillahunty is.  I spend far more time studying economics than atheism.  Yet, even though I'm not very informed about atheists... with voting I'd have the same exact influence over the rankings as the experts.  With donating, on the other hand, it's a very different story.  I'd donate a lot less money to help rank atheists than I would to help rank economists."

This is an assertion, not an explanation.  It says nothing about why you think donating will be better, only that you think it would be better.

It also doesn't address the fundamental imbalance brought in by the fact that not all donors bring equivalent resources.  The problem of the process controlled by the few who have much remains.

Also, why shouldn't your vote count, just because you're not an expert?  You can in that case consider your vote as your evaluation of the experts' analyses.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 17, 2018, 06:16:29 PM
What do I know about dogs?  Not much.  If a friend dragged me to a dog show, then I might vote for my favorite dog.  It's not like it would cost me anything.  But if I was given the opportunity to spend my money to help rank the dogs, then I definitely would not be willing to spend much money.  I'd certainly be willing to spend a lot less money than the people who are very knowledgeable, and passionate, about dogs. 

Voting and donating would rank prominent skeptics very differently.  Go ahead and rank the prominent skeptics according to your own preferences.  Then we will see whether your own ranking is closer to the voting ranking or the donating ranking.

Again, why should resources have anything at all to do with your level of influence?  If I had a million dollars, that doesn't make me better able to analyze arguments than someone who only has a few thousand, or even nothing.  I might have just hit the lottery.

If you really want to introduce the market to democracy, the way you want to do it is ranked voting systems, as I indicated in my last response.  Everyone has equal resources to apply, and the freedom to apply them as desired.  Otherwise you only reproduce everything that makes the overall American political system not work.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 17, 2018, 06:16:29 PM
I spend far more time studying economics than atheism.

Let me just add relative to this that my degree is in political science.

Quote from: trdsf on May 17, 2018, 08:13:31 PM
This is an assertion, not an explanation.  It says nothing about why you think donating will be better, only that you think it would be better.

It also doesn't address the fundamental imbalance brought in by the fact that not all donors bring equivalent resources.  The problem of the process controlled by the few who have much remains.

Also, why shouldn't your vote count, just because you're not an expert?  You can in that case consider your vote as your evaluation of the experts' analyses.
Again, why should resources have anything at all to do with your level of influence?  If I had a million dollars, that doesn't make me better able to analyze arguments than someone who only has a few thousand, or even nothing.  I might have just hit the lottery.

If you really want to introduce the market to democracy, the way you want to do it is ranked voting systems, as I indicated in my last response.  Everyone has equal resources to apply, and the freedom to apply them as desired.  Otherwise you only reproduce everything that makes the overall American political system not work.

If wealth was entirely determined by winning the lottery or inheritance then I'd be perfectly fine with democracy.  But the fact is that nobody randomly allocates their money.  Everybody endeavors to efficiently allocate their money and this primarily determines how wealth/influence is distributed.  You think it's beneficial to override/disregard how influence is distributed by countless consumers... but nothing could be further from the truth.  All you end up doing is harming everybody. 

You haven't studied economics and you expect me to try and teach it to you.  Well, I'm telling you that the best way to understand the difference between spending and voting is to actually see the difference.  This is the point of my proposed experiment.  Members of this forum can vote and/or donate for their favorite atheists.  Then we will all be able to see the difference between voting and spending. 

The best way to learn economics is to actually do it. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 17, 2018, 10:26:16 PM
If wealth was entirely determined by winning the lottery or inheritance then I'd be perfectly fine with democracy.  But the fact is that nobody randomly allocates their money.  Everybody endeavors to efficiently allocate their money and this primarily determines how wealth/influence is distributed.  You think it's beneficial to override/disregard how influence is distributed by countless consumers... but nothing could be further from the truth.  All you end up doing is harming everybody. 

You haven't studied economics and you expect me to try and teach it to you.  Well, I'm telling you that the best way to understand the difference between spending and voting is to actually see the difference.  This is the point of my proposed experiment.  Members of this forum can vote and/or donate for their favorite atheists.  Then we will all be able to see the difference between voting and spending. 

The best way to learn economics is to actually do it.

No one asked you to teach me economics, and I never said I haven't studied itâ€"it is part and parcel of studying political systems.

I repeat, influence determined by resources is inherently unfair, and the proof is in the damage already rampant in the American political system.  We have seen the difference, and you still haven't provided anything to back up your assertion that the marketplace is a better decider.  I've given my evidence, where's yours?

My claim -- backed up by the evidence of how our political system has been perverted by the influence of money -- is that all consumers/voters deserve equal voices.  Yours is that a voice's importance is determined not by who has the best evidence, but by who has the most money.  We already know that's not a fair way to conduct our nation's business, just based on what's happened to our political system.

For example, majorities across the board (including among Republican voters) support stricter gun control (https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/04/gun-control-polls-background-checks-firearms-498881) -- even before the Las Vegas and Parkland shootings, and the numbers are higher since.  But the money thrown around by the NRA is being used to thwart the will of the majority.  What, exactly, is fair about that situation?  The system you propose is exactly that: money trumps majorities.  You cannot and will not convince me that that is a reasonable way to do things, because we already know from experience that it is not.

You also have twice ignored the ranked vote option as a way to introduce the marketplace into the vote without making it dependent on individual available resources.  Do you accept that it would work, or at least admit that you haven't an answer as to why it wouldn't?

Quote from: trdsf on May 17, 2018, 11:20:05 PM
No one asked you to teach me economics, and I never said I haven't studied itâ€"it is part and parcel of studying political systems.

I repeat, influence determined by resources is inherently unfair, and the proof is in the damage already rampant in the American political system.  We have seen the difference, and you still haven't provided anything to back up your assertion that the marketplace is a better decider.  I've given my evidence, where's yours?

My claim -- backed up by the evidence of how our political system has been perverted by the influence of money -- is that all consumers/voters deserve equal voices.  Yours is that a voice's importance is determined not by who has the best evidence, but by who has the most money.  We already know that's not a fair way to conduct our nation's business, just based on what's happened to our political system.

For example, majorities across the board (including among Republican voters) support stricter gun control (https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/04/gun-control-polls-background-checks-firearms-498881) -- even before the Las Vegas and Parkland shootings, and the numbers are higher since.  But the money thrown around by the NRA is being used to thwart the will of the majority.  What, exactly, is fair about that situation?  The system you propose is exactly that: money trumps majorities.  You cannot and will not convince me that that is a reasonable way to do things, because we already know from experience that it is not.

You also have twice ignored the ranked vote option as a way to introduce the marketplace into the vote without making it dependent on individual available resources.  Do you accept that it would work, or at least admit that you haven't an answer as to why it wouldn't?

The "ranked vote option" wouldn't work because it doesn't involve any personal cost.  You say that you've studied economics... but here I am having to explain to you the fundamentally basic concept of cost.  Let's say that you decide to donate your kidney.  In this case, you personally pay the cost, which is the only way that your decision can truly be rational.  What if I decide to donate your kidney?  Can my decision be rational?  Of course not.  I do not pay the cost... you do. 

Bob votes for war knowing there's no chance that he will be drafted.  Frank, on the other hand, votes for war knowing that he almost certainly will be drafted.  Whose decision was more rational? 

Here's a relevant and common joke among economists.  Two economists are walking along and they happen to end up in front of a Tesla showroom.  One economist points at a shiny new car and says, "I really want that!"  The other economist replies, "You're lying". 

Here's the explanation from the perspective of a psychologist...

QuoteIf a woman told us that she loved flowers, and we saw that she forgot to water them, we would not believe in her "love" for flowers.  Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.  Where this active concern is lacking, there is no love. - Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

There is no love without sacrifice. 

Here's the explanation from the perspective of biology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle)...

QuoteThe handicap principle is a hypothesis originally proposed in 1975 by Israeli biologist Amotz Zahavi to explain how evolution may lead to "honest" or reliable signaling between animals which have an obvious motivation to bluff or deceive each other. The handicap principle suggests that reliable signals must be costly to the signaler, costing the signaler something that could not be afforded by an individual with less of a particular trait.

Spending money is a costly signal, which is what makes it a credible signal. 

I could go on and on and on citing source after source after source.  But would it do any good?  If you're so certain that voting is not bullshit... then why not agree to the contest?  Your god (voting)  will rank prominent atheists... and so will my god (spending).  Then we will see whose god is the real one. 

Well, I for one aint spending any money on ranking atheists, so that's one vote for trdsf...

Quote from: Shiranu on May 18, 2018, 03:08:34 AM
Well, I for one aint spending any money on ranking atheists, so that's one vote for trdsf...

Out of curiosity, who are your favorite atheists? 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 04:05:58 AM
Out of curiosity, who are your favorite atheists? 

Can't say I have any, at least not because of anything to do with their religious beliefs. George Carlin is the closest I guess to being interesting to me because of his religious beliefs, but those beliefs are also heavily dramatized and exaggerated for the lawls.

There are a million things I look for in a person before I look at their religious beliefs.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 03:02:25 AM
The "ranked vote option" wouldn't work because it doesn't involve any personal cost.  You say that you've studied economics... but here I am having to explain to you the fundamentally basic concept of cost.  Let's say that you decide to donate your kidney.  In this case, you personally pay the cost, which is the only way that your decision can truly be rational.  What if I decide to donate your kidney?  Can my decision be rational?  Of course not.  I do not pay the cost... you do.

No, you don't have to explain cost to me.  I just reject the idea that cost should have any relevance to indicating preferences, and have already shown how using cost thwarts, rather than reveals, the public will.

The cost to the voter in ranked voting is having to actually stop and think about the ballot and one's actual preferences.  It's still possible that a voter could go in and just put a '1' next to their preference and walk out of the booth and be done with it.  The cost there is that they've chosen to throw away any further voice should their candidate be eliminated as votes are tallied.  This is an acceptable cost because it's based not on a voter's bank balance, but on their own estimation of how much time and thought they want to put into what they're doing.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 03:02:25 AM
Bob votes for war knowing there's no chance that he will be drafted.  Frank, on the other hand, votes for war knowing that he almost certainly will be drafted.  Whose decision was more rational?

Insufficient data to answer, because we don't know their reasons.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 03:02:25 AMHere's a relevant and common joke among economists.  Two economists are walking along and they happen to end up in front of a Tesla showroom.  One economist points at a shiny new car and says, "I really want that!"  The other economist replies, "You're lying". 

Here's the explanation from the perspective of a psychologist...

There is no love without sacrifice. 

Here's the explanation from the perspective of biology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle)...

Spending money is a costly signal, which is what makes it a credible signal. 

I could go on and on and on citing source after source after source.  But would it do any good?  If you're so certain that voting is not bullshit... then why not agree to the contest?  Your god (voting)  will rank prominent atheists... and so will my god (spending).  Then we will see whose god is the real one.

Ah, there's that refrain, "let's just run the experiment" when IT'S ALREADY BEING RUN and WE ALREADY HAVE THE RESULTS.  You have not refuted any of the points I have brought up:

• that finance-based preference distorts rather than reveals public intent;
• that making public preference subject to the whims of individual and group resources thwarts public will rather than clarifies it;
• that when money isn't a significant factor, public intent is better revealed; and
• that it is possible to allow weighted preferences without tying it to individual resources.

I will further posit the following:

• Weighting votes to personal resources is explicitly anti-democratic since it allows a small handful of individual with large resources to completely overwhelm the majority;
• No amount of money validates a poorly-reasoned position; and
• No amount of money invalidates reliable evidence.

Your experiment is completely without merit until and unless you can explain why Person A's money should carry more weight in a decision-making process than Person B's evidence-based reasons.

And spending money is not a credible signal when large amounts can be thrown into the system by a small number of individuals at a small relative cost to themselves.  The Kochs can throw millions around on their causes and candidates at a small relative cost to themselves -- even zero cost, on the expectation that they're going to make it back through favorable legislation and tax breaks.  Making a $100 donation is a large relative cost to me.

Who's sacrificing more?  Who's putting more of their resources - relatively speaking - into that?

All you're talking about is plutocracy.  And if you really want to know what that looks like, open your eyes and look around you.

Trdsf, I really fail to understand your opposition to my proposed experiment.  You say, with emphasis, that the experiment is already being conducted and we have the results.  But the experiment currently being conducted is completely different to my proposed experiment.  I have no idea why you can't tell the difference between the two experiments.  It's not like the difference is minor... it's major.

With a presidential election, for example, the candidates are first ranked by donations... and then the top-ranked candidates are ranked by voting.  We don't see how the candidates would have been solely ranked by voting or solely ranked by donating.

With my proposed experiment we will be able to see and compare how the prominent atheists are solely ranked by voting and solely ranked by donating. 

With the presidential election we only end up with one ranking.  But with my proposed experiment we will end up with two rankings... 1. voting ranking and 2. donating ranking.  This will allow us to compare the rankings.  With the presidential election we can't compare rankings because there is only one ranking.  You can't compare one thing. 

Despite the fact that presidential elections do not provide us the opportunity to compare voting ranking and donating ranking... you are certain that the voting ranking is superior to the donating ranking.  How can you be certain about this when you can't even see and compare the two rankings?   

Let's say that you are correct that the voting ranking is truly superior to the donating ranking.  Why in the world would you oppose my proposed experiment?  All it would do is provide additional evidence that voting is superior to donating.  You could say, "See!  I told you so!  Voting is superior to donating! I'm right and you're wrong!" 

Right now you're simply pointing at one ranking and saying, "Look, voting is clearly superior to spending!" 

Also, I completely understand the parable of the Widow's mite.  Clearly she made a bigger sacrifice than the wealthy donors.  But this doesn't mean that we should disregard the fact that the sacrifice she made for food was a lot larger than the sacrifice she made for God.  You think you benefit the poor by disregarding their preferences/priorities.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 05:26:43 PM
With my proposed experiment we will be able to see and compare how the prominent atheists are solely ranked by voting and solely ranked by donating.   

Assuming we actually did your experiment, how would we know which result was "better"? You earlier made an apology with pudding, saying that we needed to taste them both to see which was better; what if you and I have different tastes in pudding? Are you saying anything more meaningful then "my preference is better than your preference because I prefer it?"

Quote from: Poison Tree on May 18, 2018, 05:57:01 PM
Assuming we actually did your experiment, how would we know which result was "better"? You earlier made an apology with pudding, saying that we needed to taste them both to see which was better; what if you and I have different tastes in pudding? Are you saying anything more meaningful then "my preference is better than your preference because I prefer it?"

That is the exact point, as Stalin says, it isn't what votes are cast, but who counts them, that counts.

Xerographica, I use emphasis because based on your responses, I feel I need to draw your attention to the major points.  Also, because it reflects the emphases I would make if I were reading this aloud.

We do see how decisions are made in voting systems where money isn't a controlling factor, by looking at how local elections work.  So we can do comparisons.  I explained that already.

You continue to fail to address the problem of resources.  A billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no meaningful personal expense, while it would be difficult for me to spare $100 -- you keep talking about 'cost' but the costs are absolutely not the same, relative to the donor.  That $100 costs me a lot more than those thousands cost a billionaire, but your system does not account for that.

You're not measuring how people value things, you're only measuring who has the most money to play with -- I can't explain it any more clearly than that.  You aren't measuring anything meaningful.  You're certainly not measuring anything that has to do with actual public preference.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 05:26:43 PM
Also, I completely understand the parable of the Widow's mite.  Clearly she made a bigger sacrifice than the wealthy donors.  But this doesn't mean that we should disregard the fact that the sacrifice she made for food was a lot larger than the sacrifice she made for God.  You think you benefit the poor by disregarding their preferences/priorities.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

I don't know where this comes from.  I am talking about giving everyone an equal voice regardless of their resources.  There is no rational way you can twist that into saying I'm "disregarding their preferences/priorities", especially since I've already shown how preferences can be measured without making them dependent on personal resources.

And you still haven't refuted any of the points I have made.  You completely ignore the problem of relative cost, you completely ignore the alternatives that allow preferential ranking without making it contingent on personal resources, you completely ignore the already available evidence that this is not a way to truly judge public opinion.

You're simply not measuring what you think you're measuring.  The fact that one person with high resources can come in and completely change your results based on nothing more than their own resources negates your entire argument that you're measuring public preferences.

I'm going to quote myself here, because I have to think that the point is lost on you so far:

Quote from: trdsf on May 17, 2018, 10:41:43 AM
Again, if you've got a pool of, say, a thousand donors and the vast majority of them are putting in $1 to $5, a few are putting in $10 or $20, and a small number $50 or $100, all on Dawkins, Harris (Sam or Tracie), Mehta, Dillahunty, Dennett, Hitchens, Hirsi Ali, Randi, Sagan, whoever.  And then I come along and put in $20,000 on myself.  You haven't learned anything; I've completely screwed your stats for no reason other than that I have the money to -- unless you're willing to declare me the highest ranked skeptic solely on the basis that I can buy myself the title.

You yourself have already admitted that this is a perfectly plausible outcome under your system and that it undermines your point completely.  You don't seem to understand that because this is a perfectly plausible situation, it means that your system cannot be a reliable measure.

Bluntly put, your premise is fatally flawed and therefore your "experiment" is meaningless.

Quote from: Poison Tree on May 18, 2018, 05:57:01 PM
Assuming we actually did your experiment, how would we know which result was "better"? You earlier made an apology with pudding, saying that we needed to taste them both to see which was better; what if you and I have different tastes in pudding? Are you saying anything more meaningful then "my preference is better than your preference because I prefer it?"

Right now we are debating which pudding tastes better, but we haven't even tasted and compared them.  Once we taste and compare them, we can still debate which pudding tastes better, but at least our debate will be informed by our first-hand knowledge of exactly how both puddings actually taste.  You can say, "I've tasted both puddings and the voting pudding tastes much better than the donating pudding!"

It's not like we'd have to climb Mount Everest in order to taste the puddings.  We would all simply be given the opportunity to vote for our favorite atheists and/or donate to this forum in their name.

We should all share who are favorite atheists are anyways.  We should all make a donation to this forum anyways.  None of us will be forced to do these things, but they really aren't unreasonable things. 

A long time ago, while on a date with a girl, I spotted a big tree that was completely packed with birds.  I told my date that we should stand under the tree.  Whoever got pooped on first would be the winner.  She didn't think it was such a good idea.  That was fine, I acknowledged and accepted that perhaps what I was suggesting wasn't entirely reasonable.   In this case though it's a completely different story.  What I am suggesting is entirely reasonable and the results can potentially be incredibly informative and useful. 

What's kinda fascinating about this experiment is that, unlike most experiments, the participants won't be randomly selected... they will be self-selected.  Anybody who think it's a good idea to boycott the donating part will prevent their preferences from influencing the donating rankings.  Therefore, the only people who will influence the donating rankings are going to be the people who think doing so is a good idea.  The only people who make the donating pudding are going to be the people who think it will taste better with their input.  Of course this doesn't guarantee that they'll like it better than the voting pudding. 

Anyways, the worst case scenario isn't so bad... and the best case scenario is epic.  We will actually figure out the truth about voting versus spending.

Stop assuming monkeys can come to any common agreement.  Any agreement is just a sign of temporary shared prejudice.

Quote from: trdsf on May 18, 2018, 06:57:15 PMYou continue to fail to address the problem of resources.  A billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no meaningful personal expense, while it would be difficult for me to spare $100 -- you keep talking about 'cost' but the costs are absolutely not the same, relative to the donor.  That $100 costs me a lot more than those thousands cost a billionaire, but your system does not account for that.

I already acknowledged that it's a fact that people don't value money equally.  But it's also a fact that people don't value makeup equally.  Is there anything that people equally value? 

It's true that a billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no personal expense.  A billionaire certainly can donate $10,000 to this forum in order to influence the donating rankings.  But will this happen?  How many billionaires do you think care about how prominent atheists are ranked? 

I think billionaires certainly make big donations to churches.  So this forum and the atheist movement would benefit by preventing billionaires from making big donations? 

Also, if you're concerned about wealth inequality, isn't it strange to argue against a billionaire making a big donation to this forum?  Would you argue against Bill Gates giving his money away to poor people? 

Quote from: trdsf on May 18, 2018, 06:57:15 PMYou're not measuring how people value things, you're only measuring who has the most money to play with -- I can't explain it any more clearly than that.  You aren't measuring anything meaningful.  You're certainly not measuring anything that has to do with actual public preference.
I don't know where this comes from.  I am talking about giving everyone an equal voice regardless of their resources.  There is no rational way you can twist that into saying I'm "disregarding their preferences/priorities", especially since I've already shown how preferences can be measured without making them dependent on personal resources.

If I make a donation to this forum to help rank prominent atheists, how would my donation not measure the intensity of my preferences?  Your argument is that, since Bill Gates can make a much bigger donation than I can, that my own donation won't communicate what's important to me.  That's categorical untrue.  You can ask me how much I donated and for who and my answer will reflect my preferences and priorities. 

You have this idea that it's beneficial for my input to have just as much weight as Bill Gates' input.  I strongly disagree... and so would the millions and millions of people who decided to give their money to him rather than to me.  You want to diminish his input, but you really haven't addressed or acknowledged the fact that doing so would essentially diminish the input of the millions of consumers who prefer his products to mine. 

QuoteI'm a millionaire, I'm a multi-millionaire. I'm filthy rich. You know why I'm a multi-millionaire? 'Cause multi-millions like what I do. That's pretty good, isn't it? - Michael Moore

I can't stand Michael Moore, but it is really easy for me to understand that decreasing his influence is the same thing as disregarding the preferences of the millions of people who want him to have more influence.  So you just see that Moore is a millionaire... and millionaires are bad.  I see Moore and recognize that his influence is the result of doing things that have benefited millions of people.  I clearly see that he represents, protects and serves their interests.  Arbitrarily reducing his influence is the same thing as reducing all their benefit. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 18, 2018, 06:57:15 PMAnd you still haven't refuted any of the points I have made.  You completely ignore the problem of relative cost, you completely ignore the alternatives that allow preferential ranking without making it contingent on personal resources, you completely ignore the already available evidence that this is not a way to truly judge public opinion.

I haven't ignored the fact that cost is relative, but I don't see it as a problem.  It is the natural consequence of consumer choice and the fact that producers aren't equally beneficial. 

I haven't ignored the alternatives either.  I explained that none of them involve any personal sacrifice.

Quote from: trdsf on May 18, 2018, 06:57:15 PMI'm going to quote myself here, because I have to think that the point is lost on you so far:
You yourself have already admitted that this is a perfectly plausible outcome under your system and that it undermines your point completely.  You don't seem to understand that because this is a perfectly plausible situation, it means that your system cannot be a reliable measure.

Bluntly put, your premise is fatally flawed and therefore your "experiment" is meaningless.

How could my proposed experiment possibly be meaningless?  You clearly think that the voting ranking would be much better than the donating ranking.  Right?  So why wouldn't my proposed experiment corroborate your story? 

On the one hand, you argue about how and why voting is so obviously superior to spending.  But on the other hand, you also argue that a direct comparison of voting and spending would be meaningless.  Your arguments are mutually exclusive.  They contradict each other... one of them must be false. 

Having a different way of ranking subjective preference does not show that it is an Objectively better way.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 08:01:37 PM
and the best case scenario is epic.  We will actually figure out the truth about voting versus spending.

How? You seem to have just skipped over the thrust of my objection.
The first comment of yours I objected to in this thread was

Quote from: Xerographica on May 13, 2018, 12:28:01 PM
In theory, the voters would elevate the trash while the spenders would elevate the treasure.

without having some Objective standard of trash/treasure--for books, pudding and atheists--how could we ever even pretend to determine if your assertion is true? That is the big flaw in your proposed experiment.

Pretend we've run all three experiments (books, pudding and atheists), giving us three sets of lists (voting books vs spending books; voting pudding vs spending pudding and voting atheists vs spending atheists). We could look at how the sets of lists differ, but how would we determine which rankings was better. You could choose your favorite set of lists, as could trdsf and I, but who would be right? How would we be any closer to resolving the issue than we are now?

You've said that

Quote from: Xerographica on May 13, 2018, 12:28:01 PM
Democracy is a major obstacle to the maximally beneficial evolution of society and its creations.

and implied that "Spending" would address that problem. That implies that you know what is, Objectively, "maximally beneficial" to society, just as you'd need to know the Objective best ranking of books, pudding and atheists.


An analogy:
I say popular vote is the maximally beneficial way of electing a president because* it would have given us president Gore and Clinton and because it values voters individual choices. My friend Leonardo says that the electoral college is the maximally beneficial way of electing a president because it gave us Bush and Trump and because it values states as units. Who is Objectively correct?

*ignoring the candidates running different campaigns and changes in voter turnout resulting from switching systems.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 09:04:31 PM
I already acknowledged that it's a fact that people don't value money equally.  But it's also a fact that people don't value makeup equally.  Is there anything that people equally value? 

It's true that a billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no personal expense.  A billionaire certainly can donate $10,000 to this forum in order to influence the donating rankings.  But will this happen?  How many billionaires do you think care about how prominent atheists are ranked? 

I think billionaires certainly make big donations to churches.  So this forum and the atheist movement would benefit by preventing billionaires from making big donations? 

Also, if you're concerned about wealth inequality, isn't it strange to argue against a billionaire making a big donation to this forum?  Would you argue against Bill Gates giving his money away to poor people? 
If I make a donation to this forum to help rank prominent atheists, how would my donation not measure the intensity of my preferences?  Your argument is that, since Bill Gates can make a much bigger donation than I can, that my own donation won't communicate what's important to me.  That's categorical untrue.  You can ask me how much I donated and for who and my answer will reflect my preferences and priorities. 

You have this idea that it's beneficial for my input to have just as much weight as Bill Gates' input.  I strongly disagree... and so would the millions and millions of people who decided to give their money to him rather than to me.  You want to diminish his input, but you really haven't addressed or acknowledged the fact that doing so would essentially diminish the input of the millions of consumers who prefer his products to mine. 

I can't stand Michael Moore, but it is really easy for me to understand that decreasing his influence is the same thing as disregarding the preferences of the millions of people who want him to have more influence.  So you just see that Moore is a millionaire... and millionaires are bad.  I see Moore and recognize that his influence is the result of doing things that have benefited millions of people.  I clearly see that he represents, protects and serves their interests.  Arbitrarily reducing his influence is the same thing as reducing all their benefit. 
I haven't ignored the fact that cost is relative, but I don't see it as a problem.  It is the natural consequence of consumer choice and the fact that producers aren't equally beneficial. 

I haven't ignored the alternatives either.  I explained that none of them involve any personal sacrifice.
How could my proposed experiment possibly be meaningless?  You clearly think that the voting ranking would be much better than the donating ranking.  Right?  So why wouldn't my proposed experiment corroborate your story? 

On the one hand, you argue about how and why voting is so obviously superior to spending.  But on the other hand, you also argue that a direct comparison of voting and spending would be meaningless.  Your arguments are mutually exclusive.  They contradict each other... one of them must be false.

Perhaps money donated to politicians by an individual should be compared to percentage of owned money.  What is "nothing" to Bill Gates is "serious money (and nearly impossible)" to me.  Shouldn't that matter?

Quote from: Poison Tree on May 18, 2018, 10:31:25 PMThe first comment of yours I objected to in this thread was without having some Objective standard of trash/treasure--for books, pudding and atheists--how could we ever even pretend to determine if your assertion is true? That is the big flaw in your proposed experiment.

Pretend we've run all three experiments (books, pudding and atheists), giving us three sets of lists (voting books vs spending books; voting pudding vs spending pudding and voting atheists vs spending atheists). We could look at how the sets of lists differ, but how would we determine which rankings was better. You could choose your favorite set of lists, as could trdsf and I, but who would be right? How would we be any closer to resolving the issue than we are now?

You might be correct that there won't be any consensus that the voting ranking or donating ranking is superior.  But you're overlooking something seriously significant.  Even if the experiment doesn't convince everyone that spending is better than voting... it could potentially convince some people.  The only way it wouldn't convince some people is if everybody agreed that the voting ranking is superior. What are the chances that everyone will agree that voting is better than spending?  If everyone did agree that voting is better than spending, what would the implications be? 

In this thread... who is my ally?  Who fundamentally agrees with me that donating is superior to voting?  Nobody.  In this thread... who is my rival?  Who fundamentally disagrees with me that donating is superior to voting?  One person... trdsf.  What about yourself?  You are neither my ally or my rival.  The same is true of everybody else in this thread. 

Team Donating: Xero
Team Voting: trdsf
Sidelines: everyone else

The experiment would fundamentally change this.  Everyone in the sidelines would end up either in Team Donating or Team Voting.  It's hard for me to effectively articulate just how significant this is.  It would be a paradigm shift.  Instead of nearly everybody believing that voting is good for some things while spending is good for other things... everybody would believe that either voting or spending is always better for everything.  The entire country would have a big debate.  Everyone would seriously question the logic of using two very different forms of input... voting and spending... to rank things. 

To be clear... I am sort of assuming that you will consistently either prefer the voting ranking or the donating ranking for books, pudding, atheists and so on.  If this isn't the case, then you'd perceive that voting and spending were equally effective.  Except... when you were at the supermarket trying to decide whether a steak is worth $20 bucks... naturally you'd think, "Sheesh, why in the world am I trying to figure out if this steak is worth my money???  It would be just as effective to simply vote for it!"  So Team Equal is actually Team Voting. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 09:04:31 PM
I already acknowledged that it's a fact that people don't value money equally.  But it's also a fact that people don't value makeup equally.  Is there anything that people equally value?

No, no, no, no, NO.  You just don't get it.  What you propose can never tell us how much value an individual's donation has to that donor without asking for a whole lot more information than just "how much do you want to spend to vote for this person".  You can not tell that my $100 donation is a lot more 'meaningful' relative to my resources than a billionaire's $10,000 donation is to his without knowing ahead of time what our individual resource levels are.

Also, since all you're talking about is aggregate dollars, you can't know whether that represents the collective will of many small donors, or of a small handful of large donors unless you count the votes.

And that right there means that the vote and not the money is the important factor if you want to learn anything about public attitudes and preferences.

If you're after information, you run a properly designed poll.  If what you're after is a fundraiser, just run a fucking fundraiser, but don't pretend it's got some deeper meaning than that.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 09:04:31 PM
How could my proposed experiment possibly be meaningless?  You clearly think that the voting ranking would be much better than the donating ranking.  Right?  So why wouldn't my proposed experiment corroborate your story?

It's meaningless because I have demonstrated that it doesn't reliably measure anything.  And your answer to that fatal flaw is "But but but run the experiment anyway!"?  No, you have severe methodological flaws to fix first.  You don't have a measure of the relative value of the donation to the donor and you don't have a safeguard against the system being gamed by a small number of high resource individuals.

Almighty Bob preserve us from economists with theories...

How would this system protect against a large number of women using their money to get something like the morning after pill, and a small number of men with a large amount of money using it to introduce a huge system of convoluted rules to prevent them getting it?

One way to avoid the affect of wealth in politics would be "one person, one dollar".  Or 10.  The amount acceptable would be voted on
"one person one vote" suddenly, no campaigns. 

See?  I just solved EVERYTHING!  ;)

Quote from: Cavebear on May 19, 2018, 08:27:23 AM
One way to avoid the affect of wealth in politics would be "one person, one dollar".  Or 10.  The amount acceptable would be voted on
"one person one vote" suddenly, no campaigns. 

See?  I just solved EVERYTHING!  ;)

When the real crash comes, people will be made equal with a vengeance.

Quote from: trdsf on May 19, 2018, 08:09:03 AM
No, no, no, no, NO.  You just don't get it.  What you propose can never tell us how much value an individual's donation has to that donor without asking for a whole lot more information than just "how much do you want to spend to vote for this person".  You can not tell that my $100 donation is a lot more 'meaningful' relative to my resources than a billionaire's $10,000 donation is to his without knowing ahead of time what our individual resource levels are.

I can't know exactly how valuable $100 dollars is to you, but I'm pretty sure most people would be pretty happy to find a $100 dollar bill sitting on the sidewalk.  If you donate $100 dollars to help rank atheists then I'd guess you care a decent amount.  What are the chances that my guess is incorrect? 

Quote from: trdsf on May 19, 2018, 08:09:03 AMAlso, since all you're talking about is aggregate dollars, you can't know whether that represents the collective will of many small donors, or of a small handful of large donors unless you count the votes.

If we conducted my proposed experiment then ideally we'd all be able to clearly see the shape of the demand.   

Quote from: trdsf on May 19, 2018, 08:09:03 AMAnd that right there means that the vote and not the money is the important factor if you want to learn anything about public attitudes and preferences.

You say this, but then you turn around and say that my proposed experiment would be meaningless.  How is that possible?  Do you not understand that you're arguing that the voting rankings will be a lot better than the donating rankings?  Or, perhaps you're assuming that nobody, except for yourself, will be able to realize that the voting rankings are a lot better than the donating rankings? 

Quote from: trdsf on May 19, 2018, 08:09:03 AMIf you're after information, you run a properly designed poll.  If what you're after is a fundraiser, just run a fucking fundraiser, but don't pretend it's got some deeper meaning than that.

If your belief is correct that voting is clearly superior to donating... then how could my experiment not demonstrate that your belief is correct?  Again, are you assuming that nobody but you will recognize that the voting rankings are clearly superior to the donating rankings? 

Quote from: trdsf on May 19, 2018, 08:09:03 AMIt's meaningless because I have demonstrated that it doesn't reliably measure anything.

Sorry guy, but I really don't think you're hearing yourself.  You're saying that the experiment will be meaningless because donating doesn't reliably measure anything.  The experiment wouldn't only show us the donating rankings... it would also show us the voting rankings so that could compare the two rankings.  If you are correct that the donating rankings will be meaningless, while the voting rankings will be meaningful, then how could the experiment itself be meaningless?  Again, are you assuming that you're the only member of this forum who will notice that the voting rankings are clearly superior to the donating rankings? 

Quote from: trdsf on May 19, 2018, 08:09:03 AMAnd your answer to that fatal flaw is "But but but run the experiment anyway!"?  No, you have severe methodological flaws to fix first.  You don't have a measure of the relative value of the donation to the donor and you don't have a safeguard against the system being gamed by a small number of high resource individuals.

Why would you try and "repair" the donating when you obviously want everybody to understand just how broken it is?  With your alterations to donating... we wouldn't be comparing voting and donating... we would be comparing voting and pseudo-donating.  You would say, "Look at how clearly superior voting is to donating!!"  And I would reply, "No, if anything we see how superior voting is to pseudo-donating."  Then we'd have to repeat the experiment and use donating instead of pseudo-donating. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 19, 2018, 08:09:03 AMAlmighty Bob preserve us from economists with theories...

I think it's better for Bob to protect us from people who oppose reasonable economic experiments.  For somebody who is so certain that voting is clearly superior to donating, you sure oppose an experiment that would allow us to compare for ourselves the voting rankings to the donating rankings. 

Quote from: Jason78 on May 19, 2018, 08:19:50 AM
How would this system protect against a large number of women using their money to get something like the morning after pill, and a small number of men with a large amount of money using it to introduce a huge system of convoluted rules to prevent them getting it?

Nothing would prevent the side with the most money from making things legal or illegal.  Right now the people who want prostitution to be illegal simply vote for it to be illegal.  They don't have to spend any money to get what they want.  Why would this be beneficial for rules but not for clothes, computers and cars?  Why do we care about the demand for these things but we don't care about the demand for rules?  Why does demand matter for some things but not others? 

There should be a rule that if you're an atheist you don't simply accept assumptions... you challenge and question them.  Right now I'm the only one who is challenging and questioning the assumption that we don't need to know the demand for rules.  That's a problem. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 01:35:55 PM
Nothing would prevent the side with the most money from making things legal or illegal.  Right now the people who want prostitution to be illegal simply vote for it to be illegal.  They don't have to spend any money to get what they want.  Why would this be beneficial for rules but not for clothes, computers and cars?  Why do we care about the demand for these things but we don't care about the demand for rules?  Why does demand matter for some things but not others? 

There should be a rule that if you're an atheist you don't simply accept assumptions... you challenge and question them.  Right now I'm the only one who is challenging and questioning the assumption that we don't need to know the demand for rules.  That's a problem.

The socialists have a way of dealing with your question ... banning money.  All will be equally poor, and will get according to need (based on the opinion of the local commissar).

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 01:17:20 PM
I can't know exactly how valuable $100 dollars is to you, but I'm pretty sure most people would be pretty happy to find a $100 dollar bill sitting on the sidewalk.  If you donate $100 dollars to help rank atheists then I'd guess you care a decent amount.  What are the chances that my guess is incorrect? 

If we conducted my proposed experiment then ideally we'd all be able to clearly see the shape of the demand.   

You say this, but then you turn around and say that my proposed experiment would be meaningless.  How is that possible?  Do you not understand that you're arguing that the voting rankings will be a lot better than the donating rankings?  Or, perhaps you're assuming that nobody, except for yourself, will be able to realize that the voting rankings are a lot better than the donating rankings? 

If your belief is correct that voting is clearly superior to donating... then how could my experiment not demonstrate that your belief is correct?  Again, are you assuming that nobody but you will recognize that the voting rankings are clearly superior to the donating rankings? 

Sorry guy, but I really don't think you're hearing yourself.  You're saying that the experiment will be meaningless because donating doesn't reliably measure anything.  The experiment wouldn't only show us the donating rankings... it would also show us the voting rankings so that could compare the two rankings.  If you are correct that the donating rankings will be meaningless, while the voting rankings will be meaningful, then how could the experiment itself be meaningless?  Again, are you assuming that you're the only member of this forum who will notice that the voting rankings are clearly superior to the donating rankings? 

Why would you try and "repair" the donating when you obviously want everybody to understand just how broken it is?  With your alterations to donating... we wouldn't be comparing voting and donating... we would be comparing voting and pseudo-donating.  You would say, "Look at how clearly superior voting is to donating!!"  And I would reply, "No, if anything we see how superior voting is to pseudo-donating."  Then we'd have to repeat the experiment and use donating instead of pseudo-donating. 

I think it's better for Bob to protect us from people who oppose reasonable economic experiments.  For somebody who is so certain that voting is clearly superior to donating, you sure oppose an experiment that would allow us to compare for ourselves the voting rankings to the donating rankings.

Your arguments are good, but based on a false premise.  Money is not speech.

Let's say that a vote per voter is expected in a democracy.

Now I have $10 to give to candidate "A" and you have $10 million to give to candidate "B".

Does that make our votes equal?  Of course not.  Your money tips the scales.

When the Constitution was written, even the wealthy were "poor".  I mean they had lands or businesses, but they were always in debt to England.  So the idea of great wealth in politics never really occurred to them.  They had never experienced it.

Modern billionaires were beyond their understanding.

So we need to adjust to that and stop highly-monied people from taking over our politics today.  QED

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 01:17:20 PM
I can't know exactly how valuable $100 dollars is to you,

AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHY YOUR SYSTEM DOESN'T WORK.  I can't make it any clearer than you just made it yourself.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 01:17:20 PM
but I'm pretty sure most people would be pretty happy to find a $100 dollar bill sitting on the sidewalk.  If you donate $100 dollars to help rank atheists then I'd guess you care a decent amount.  What are the chances that my guess is incorrect?

You don't know and your system doesn't have a means to find out.  Why do you even make the assumption that $100 means I care a decent amount?  What's your methodology?  If it's just that $100 sounds like a lot to you, that's not methodology.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 01:17:20 PM
If we conducted my proposed experiment then ideally we'd all be able to clearly see the shape of the demand.

Do you even bother reading?  You yourself admitted that there's a fatal flaw at the very heart of your system:

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 09:04:31 PM
It's true that a billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no personal expense.  A billionaire certainly can donate $10,000 to this forum in order to influence the donating rankings.

That completely destroys its ability to reliably measure actual demand because it can be overridden on the whim of one or two people.  It doesn't matter at all whether it will happen, it's that it can happen that destroys your "experiment".

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 01:17:20 PM
You say this, but then you turn around and say that my proposed experiment would be meaningless.  How is that possible?  Do you not understand that you're arguing that the voting rankings will be a lot better than the donating rankings?  Or, perhaps you're assuming that nobody, except for yourself, will be able to realize that the voting rankings are a lot better than the donating rankings?

I have demonstrated that your experiment shows nothing by showing why it will show nothing.  You need to fix your methodology.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 01:17:20 PM
If your belief is correct that voting is clearly superior to donating... then how could my experiment not demonstrate that your belief is correct?  Again, are you assuming that nobody but you will recognize that the voting rankings are clearly superior to the donating rankings?

Of course I turn around and say that, because I had just demonstrated the fatal flaw at the core of what you're proposing.  You can't refute that with "but run the experiment', you have to fix the experiment first.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 01:17:20 PM
Sorry guy, but I really don't think you're hearing yourself.  You're saying that the experiment will be meaningless because donating doesn't reliably measure anything.  The experiment wouldn't only show us the donating rankings... it would also show us the voting rankings so that could compare the two rankings.  If you are correct that the donating rankings will be meaningless, while the voting rankings will be meaningful, then how could the experiment itself be meaningless?  Again, are you assuming that you're the only member of this forum who will notice that the voting rankings are clearly superior to the donating rankings?

And then you're going to use the vote to measure whether or not your results mean anything, when you're asserting that the vote is inferior to your method?  Are you even looking at the screen when you're typing?

You're asserting A is superior to B.  You're going to run simultaneous trials of A and B.  And then you're going to use B to measure whether A is accurate, when one of your assumptions is that B is less accurate than A.

Do you genuinely not see the flaw here?

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 01:17:20 PM
Why would you try and "repair" the donating when you obviously want everybody to understand just how broken it is?  With your alterations to donating... we wouldn't be comparing voting and donating... we would be comparing voting and pseudo-donating.  You would say, "Look at how clearly superior voting is to donating!!"  And I would reply, "No, if anything we see how superior voting is to pseudo-donating."  Then we'd have to repeat the experiment and use donating instead of pseudo-donating.

I don't have to do anything to repair it.  You do.  It's your assertion, you need to make it work.  I've pointed out why it can't under the circumstances you propose.  It's not my job to fix it for you too, although I have pointed out a couple ways that it might be fixed.

I don't have to take your idea seriously until you give me a good reason to.  You haven't.  You want me to, you need to address the specific problems I've pointed out, not just wail "but run the experiment anyway".

And may I point out, nothing's stopping you from wasting your time and just running it anyway.  Go ahead; I don't have any say over whether you do or not, unless you explicitly want to give me that authority.  As is, I've shown why it's a waste of time and effort, at least so far as measuring anything meaningful goes.  If it works as a fundraiser, great, just don't pretend it's anything more meaningful than that.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 01:17:20 PM
I think it's better for Bob to protect us from people who oppose reasonable economic experiments.  For somebody who is so certain that voting is clearly superior to donating, you sure oppose an experiment that would allow us to compare for ourselves the voting rankings to the donating rankings.

You still haven't demonstrated reasonability.  You haven't demonstrated that it will show anything other than there's money out there that people are willing to spend.  There's no controls for resources, there's no controls for relative value, and there's no way to measure validity without resorting to the system you say yours is superior to: simple voting.


I want to touch on something else here that I had earlier dismissed as being yet another of your non sequiturs, as it seemed to come out of nowhere, but now I see the deeper failure in what you think you're trying to do:

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 09:04:31 PM

Quote
I'm a millionaire, I'm a multi-millionaire. I'm filthy rich. You know why I'm a multi-millionaire? 'Cause multi-millions like what I do. That's pretty good, isn't it? - Michael Moore

I can't stand Michael Moore, but it is really easy for me to understand that decreasing his influence is the same thing as disregarding the preferences of the millions of people who want him to have more influence.  So you just see that Moore is a millionaire... and millionaires are bad.  I see Moore and recognize that his influence is the result of doing things that have benefited millions of people.  I clearly see that he represents, protects and serves their interests.  Arbitrarily reducing his influence is the same thing as reducing all their benefit.

What you're suggesting here is that just because I pay to go see a Michael Moore movie, that somehow empowers him to speak on my behalf in some sense.

That's absolute blithering nonsense.

First of all, at no point did I ever say that millionaires are bad.  You pulled that completely out of your own ass, and I forbid you to put that shit in my mouth.  That's a pure straw man.

Second of all, whether or not his goals are broadly congruent with mine does not in any way allow him to speak for me, short of me explicitly saying, "I agree with him."  Just because I plunked down money to go see one of his movies, or buy one of his DVDs, does in no way abrogate my right to speak for myself.

Third, I don't know where or why you have this idea that purchases must reflect intent.  I bought a bike two years ago.  When I researched the one I wanted, I paid no attention to the political goals of the manufacturer; I was more interested in just a good, relatively inexpensive city bike I could rely on.  I couldn't begin to tell you the political leanings of Giant... and the fact that I bought one of their bikes in no way, shape or form expresses any endorsement of their corporate goals, whether or not I happen to agree with them.

Similarly, I have been renting from the same property management company for the last six years not because I support their causes but because I'm satisfied with their services.  I could probably find a cheaper apartment, but a) I don't think I'll get the same level of service, and b) I hate moving.  I couldn't begin to tell you what my landlord thinks, beyond taking a responsible attitude toward his properties.  And my remaining here reflects nothing more than satisfaction with service received.

The idea that where I spend my money has necessarily to do with who and what I support is utter and complete nonsense.

All this is, is importing all the failures of trickle-down economics into a voting system.

Quote from: trdsf on May 19, 2018, 03:03:59 PMAnd may I point out, nothing's stopping you from wasting your time and just running it anyway.  Go ahead; I don't have any say over whether you do or not, unless you explicitly want to give me that authority.  As is, I've shown why it's a waste of time and effort, at least so far as measuring anything meaningful goes.  If it works as a fundraiser, great, just don't pretend it's anything more meaningful than that.

First off, this isn't my forum.  It's up to the owner to decide whether or not to conduct my experiment.  Secondly, you might be right that the experiment will not provide any insight into the difference between voting and donating.  Then again, you might be wrong. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 19, 2018, 03:03:59 PMSecond of all, whether or not his goals are broadly congruent with mine does not in any way allow him to speak for me, short of me explicitly saying, "I agree with him."  Just because I plunked down money to go see one of his movies, or buy one of his DVDs, does in no way abrogate my right to speak for myself.

It's true that giving your money to Moore doesn't eliminate your right to speak for yourself, but it does, or should, diminish your volume/influence.  You want to increase Moore's influence without sacrificing any of your own.  Well yeah, but no. 

Let's say that, before you give Moore your $20 dollars, you have him sign a contract that stipulates he won't spend any of that money to influence the rankings of skeptics.  Then that's perfectly fine.  Sure it's strange... but if both of you agree to this limitation on his influence... then so be it.  While you're at it though... why not also stipulate that he not be permitted to spend any of your money on hookers and cocaine?  Or perhaps it would be easier if you simply made a list of all the things that you would permit him to spend your money on. 

If the owner of this forum agrees to conduct my proposed experiment... and you end up donating $100... perhaps you could inform the owner that you only allow him to spend your $100 to help maintain and improve this forum.  This way, you really don't have to worry about him donating the $100 dollars to the NRA. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 04:48:49 PM
First off, this isn't my forum.  It's up to the owner to decide whether or not to conduct my experiment.  Secondly, you might be right that the experiment will not provide any insight into the difference between voting and donating.  Then again, you might be wrong. 


It's true that giving your money to Moore doesn't eliminate your right to speak for yourself, but it does, or should, diminish your volume/influence.  You want to increase Moore's influence without sacrificing any of your own.  Well yeah, but no. 

Let's say that, before you give Moore your $20 dollars, you have him sign a contract that stipulates he won't spend any of that money to influence the rankings of skeptics.  Then that's perfectly fine.  Sure it's strange... but if both of you agree to this limitation on his influence... then so be it.  While you're at it though... why not also stipulate that he not be permitted to spend any of your money on hookers and cocaine?  Or perhaps it would be easier if you simply made a list of all the things that you would permit him to spend your money on. 

If the owner of this forum agrees to conduct my proposed experiment... and you end up donating $100... perhaps you could inform the owner that you only allow him to spend your $100 to help maintain and improve this forum.  This way, you really don't have to worry about him donating the $100 dollars to the NRA.

You are proposing an unenforcable contract.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 04:48:49 PM
First off, this isn't my forum.  It's up to the owner to decide whether or not to conduct my experiment.  Secondly, you might be right that the experiment will not provide any insight into the difference between voting and donating.  Then again, you might be wrong.

You have fundamental flaws in methodology, in assumptions, and in goals.  It's not that I might be wrong -- I might well be -- but you need to go back to the drawing board and re-think what you want to accomplish.  You have completely and repeatedly failed to address the flaws I have pointed out.  Shall I assume that you either accept my analyses, or that you cannot refute them and won't admit it?

I have shown you the errors you've made.  Simply asserting that I might be wrong, or just ignoring them, does not fix the flaws in your proposal.  Fixing them is not my job, and you certainly won't get me to agree to them in their current state.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 04:48:49 PM
It's true that giving your money to Moore doesn't eliminate your right to speak for yourself, but it does, or should, diminish your volume/influence.  You want to increase Moore's influence without sacrificing any of your own.  Well yeah, but no. 

Let's say that, before you give Moore your $20 dollars, you have him sign a contract that stipulates he won't spend any of that money to influence the rankings of skeptics.  Then that's perfectly fine.  Sure it's strange... but if both of you agree to this limitation on his influence... then so be it.  While you're at it though... why not also stipulate that he not be permitted to spend any of your money on hookers and cocaine?  Or perhaps it would be easier if you simply made a list of all the things that you would permit him to spend your money on. 

If the owner of this forum agrees to conduct my proposed experiment... and you end up donating $100... perhaps you could inform the owner that you only allow him to spend your $100 to help maintain and improve this forum.  This way, you really don't have to worry about him donating the $100 dollars to the NRA.

This may not be the most delusional thing I've ever heard, but it bids fair for the title.

What you're talking about here would grind all commerce to a screaming halt as every person or organization in business would be forced to negotiate individual contracts with every single individual customer.  This isn't the bleeding edge of extreme economic libertarianism, it leaps blithely over the edge and falls off screaming.

I simply cannot fathom where you get the idea that my decision to spend money necessarily must mean either increasing someone else's influence, or surrendering some of my own.  I am forced to conclude that in your world, money is the only thing, and that reason, logic and evidence all must bow before almighty Mammon.


Lastly, are you ever going to directly address the specific flaws I have pointed out in your proposal, or are you just going to ignore them again and go "but but but run the experiment anyway"?  Because if that's all you have, we're done, I have no more time that I care to waste on someone who can't be bothered to argue their own case with anything more than "but you might be wrong!"  Whether or not I'm right about voting has nothing to do with the flaws that I have pointed out in your position.

Since you've ignored them again, here they are in brief:

Quote from: trdsf on May 19, 2018, 03:03:59 PM

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 01:17:20 PM
I can't know exactly how valuable $100 dollars is to you

AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHY YOUR SYSTEM DOESN'T WORK.  I can't make it any clearer than you just made it yourself.

Quote from: trdsf on May 19, 2018, 03:03:59 PM

Quote from: Xerographica on May 18, 2018, 09:04:31 PM
It's true that a billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no personal expense.  A billionaire certainly can donate $10,000 to this forum in order to influence the donating rankings.

That completely destroys its ability to reliably measure actual demand because it can be overridden on the whim of one or two people.  It doesn't matter at all whether it will happen, it's that it can happen that destroys your "experiment".

Quote from: trdsf on May 19, 2018, 03:03:59 PM
You're asserting A is superior to B.  You're going to run simultaneous trials of A and B.  And then you're going to use B to measure whether A is accurate, when one of your assumptions is that B is less accurate than A.

Do you genuinely not see the flaw here?

Quote from: trdsf on May 18, 2018, 06:57:15 PM
You continue to fail to address the problem of resources.  A billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no meaningful personal expense, while it would be difficult for me to spare $100 -- you keep talking about 'cost' but the costs are absolutely not the same, relative to the donor.  That $100 costs me a lot more than those thousands cost a billionaire, but your system does not account for that.

Quote from: trdsf on May 18, 2018, 06:57:15 PM
You're simply not measuring what you think you're measuring.  The fact that one person with high resources can come in and completely change your results based on nothing more than their own resources negates your entire argument that you're measuring public preferences.

Quote from: trdsf on May 18, 2018, 07:35:29 AM
You have not refuted any of the points I have brought up:

• that finance-based preference distorts rather than reveals public intent;
• that making public preference subject to the whims of individual and group resources thwarts public will rather than clarifies it;
• that when money isn't a significant factor, public intent is better revealed; and
• that it is possible to allow weighted preferences without tying it to individual resources.

I will further posit the following:

• Weighting votes to personal resources is explicitly anti-democratic since it allows a small handful of individual with large resources to completely overwhelm the majority;
• No amount of money validates a poorly-reasoned position; and
• No amount of money invalidates reliable evidence.

Trdsf, imagine that you're in a huge store with Michael Moore.  This store has everything.  You give $20 dollars to Moore and tell him that he can spend it on anything he wants, except for the goods marked "voting".  For example, he can spend his money on disaster relief (ie give it to the Red Cross)... but he can't spend his money to try and make prostitution legal.  The legality of prostitution is marked "voting". 

Does this story make sense to you?  It sure doesn't make any sense to me.  It reminds me of the Bible story about the Garden of Eden.  God told Adam that he could eat the fruits from all the trees in the garden... except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  This story never made any sense to me.  Why, exactly, was this particular fruit forbidden?  What, exactly, was the problem with Adam eating it and gaining knowledge of good and evil?  Obviously he got punished for eating it... but I never understood exactly why God didn't want Adam to eat it.  What was God's concern? 

For some reason you think it's beneficial to prevent Moore from spending his money to try and make prostitution legal.  But I have no idea why you think it's beneficial for this particular good.  Why should it be off-limits?  Perhaps you're sure that he'll spend the wrong amount of money on it?  But why would that be the case?  Why aren't you also sure that he'll spend the wrong amount of money on disaster relief?  Why do you trust his judgement when it comes to disaster relief, but distrust his judgement when it comes to the legality of prostitution? 

I said that I can't know how valuable $100 dollars is to you, and you replied that this is exactly why my system doesn't work.  But this really does not at all explain why you trust Moore when it comes to disaster relief but distrust him when it comes to the legality of prostitution. 

You also said that my system doesn't work because the results can be skewed by a few really rich people.  But this is just true for disaster relief as it is for the legalization of prostitution. 

So what's the explanation for your double standard? 

You say that there are fundamental flaws in my proposed experiment.  Yet, you initially opposed my experiment because you said that it was already being conducted.  This experiment that you think is being currently conducted is where you got your evidence that voting is better than donating.  So if, as you said, they are the same experiment... and mine is fundamentally flawed... it means that the current experiment is also fundamentally flawed... which would make your own evidence highly suspect.

Quote from: Cavebear on May 19, 2018, 04:57:39 PM
You are proposing an unenforcable contract.

With blockchain you get an un-deniable contract.  Enforcement is only for those things the government considers important to itself.

Yup, we're done here.  You obviously can't defend your own position, you just try to argue against stuff I never said.  I refuse to have a debate with a dishonest disputant.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 19, 2018, 01:35:55 PM
Nothing would prevent the side with the most money from making things legal or illegal.

Don't you see a problem here?   If I own a coal mine and I use my money to make sure no one else can run a mining operation, then I've effectively secured a monopoly for myself and there's nothing the voting public can do about it.

Quote from: Jason78 on May 20, 2018, 11:45:59 AM
Don't you see a problem here?   If I own a coal mine and I use my money to make sure no one else can run a mining operation, then I've effectively secured a monopoly for myself and there's nothing the voting public can do about it.

Yes, divorce of economics from politics, is a delusion.  You can't have one with out the other.  So non-ideological use of money, is not really disinterested, it is just un-self-aware.

Quote from: Jason78 on May 20, 2018, 11:45:59 AM
Don't you see a problem here?   If I own a coal mine and I use my money to make sure no one else can run a mining operation, then I've effectively secured a monopoly for myself and there's nothing the voting public can do about it.

How did you outspend the entire public?   What's your premise? 

A. The public didn't have enough money to outspend you (you're wealthier than the entire public). 
B. The public did have enough money to outspend you, but preferred to spend it on other things. 

Earlier in this thread I shared the following economics joke.  Two economists are walking along when they happen to end up in front of a Tesla showroom.  One economist points to a shiny new car and says, "I want that!"  The other economist replies, "You're lying." 

The premise is that the economist did have enough money to buy the car, but obviously he preferred to spend it on things that were more important to him. 

People's wants are unlimited.  Society's resources, however, are not.  In the absence of consumer choice, which is the same thing as consumer prioritization, society's limited resources aren't going to be put to their most valuable uses.  The inefficient allocation of society's limited resources doesn't truly benefit anybody.  Nobody really benefits when too much, or too little, money is spent on enforcing antitrust.  But only you can truly know just how important competition is to you. 

Also, when was the last time that you bought something directly from a mining company?  It's mostly companies that buy from mining companies.  Every company wants to be a monopoly, but no company wants to have to buy from a monopoly.  All the money that a company spends trying to become a monopoly is money that it can't spend trying to prevent other companies from becoming monopolies. 

My main point though is that the proof is in the pudding.  We can simply use voting and donating to rank prominent atheists.  If a few wealthy individuals mess up the donating rankings, then we'll have evidence that voting is better than donating.  There's a big problem when there's so much opposition to such a relatively simple and easy experiment that would raise money for this forum that we all use. 

Citizenship is supposed to be democratic-socialist.  Each voter gets a 1-dollar vote per election.  What do you have against democratic-socialism?

Quote from: Baruch on May 20, 2018, 05:53:06 PM
Citizenship is supposed to be democratic-socialist.  Each voter gets a 1-dollar vote per election.  What do you have against democratic-socialism?

There isn't any evidence that voting is better than spending at ranking things.  Imagine if you lived in a society that regularly threw virgins into a volcano.  Would you have anything against this tradition?  If so, then what would you have against it? 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 20, 2018, 10:28:06 PM
There isn't any evidence that voting is better than spending at ranking things.  Imagine if you lived in a society that regularly threw virgins into a volcano.  Would you have anything against this tradition?  If so, then what would you have against it?

We have a tradition of eating and drinking ... have you stopped doing these superstitions?  Actually we regularly throw teenage virgins at each other in the US, both sexes.  No chaperones here ;-)

As far as voting being a ranking, you miss the point of elections.  Elections aren't about epistemology (finding out what the public thinks), they are acquiring the unforced consent of the sheeple to whatever diabolical stuff the owners have in mind (disguising a tax as national health insurance, or negative interest rates).  An illusion of participation is required.  I have been in a few participatory exercises, and they are exhausting and boring (1988 election).  It is no wonder that people kvetch about politics but don't do anything effective about it.  Study ancient Athens or Republican Rome, and you can see what politics is really about.

Quote from: Baruch on May 20, 2018, 10:37:27 PM
We have a tradition of eating and drinking ... have you stopped doing these superstitions?  Actually we regularly throw teenage virgins at each other in the US, both sexes.  No chaperones here ;-)

As far as voting being a ranking, you miss the point of elections.  Elections aren't about epistemology (finding out what the public thinks), they are acquiring the unforced consent of the sheeple to whatever diabolical stuff the owners have in mind (disguising a tax as national health insurance, or negative interest rates).  An illusion of participation is required.  I have been in a few participatory exercises, and they are exhausting and boring (1988 election).  It is no wonder that people kvetch about politics but don't do anything effective about it.  Study ancient Athens or Republican Rome, and you can see what politics is really about.

I hate politics, I really want it to be creatively destroyed by economics.  You haven't shared any thoughts on how differently voting and donating would rank prominent atheists.  Which ranking do you guess that you'd prefer... the voting ranking or the donating ranking? 

What if we used voting and donating to rank beers?  Which ranking do you think you'd prefer?  I'm pretty sure that the voting ranking of beers would simply show us the most popular beers... which might not necessarily be the most valuable beers. The donating ranking, on the other hand, would show us the most valuable beers... which might not necessarily be the most popular beers.  Does this make sense? 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 20, 2018, 04:35:44 PM
How did you outspend the entire public?   What's your premise? 

Because I own the only fricking coal mine in the country.   And with a monopoly secured I can make sure that no one can even approach the amount of money I have.   Even collectively.

Quote from: Jason78 on May 21, 2018, 12:27:50 AM
Because I own the only fricking coal mine in the country.   And with a monopoly secured I can make sure that no one can even approach the amount of money I have.   Even collectively.

The higher the price of coal, the more sparingly it's used and the more incentive there is for entrepreneurs to find and develop alternative forms of energy.  Anyways, have you at all addressed my main point in this thread?  Rather than simply debating voting versus spending, we should conduct our own experiment to see how voting and donating rank prominent atheists.  Do you object to this experiment?

Quote from: Xerographica on May 20, 2018, 10:49:11 PM
I hate politics, I really want it to be creatively destroyed by economics.  You haven't shared any thoughts on how differently voting and donating would rank prominent atheists.  Which ranking do you guess that you'd prefer... the voting ranking or the donating ranking? 

What if we used voting and donating to rank beers?  Which ranking do you think you'd prefer?  I'm pretty sure that the voting ranking of beers would simply show us the most popular beers... which might not necessarily be the most valuable beers. The donating ranking, on the other hand, would show us the most valuable beers... which might not necessarily be the most popular beers.  Does this make sense?

Can the right hand destroy the left hand?  Yes, I have heard of futurists who think technology can solve our political problems (usually Internet voting schemes circa 2000).  The original liberal ideal was don't let the left hand know what the right hand is doing, and vice versa (secret ballots and no aristocracy fixing events).  Make politics and economics independent of each other.  But that policy has been a total failure.  It only works if there is no wealth in society for the wealthy to aggregate.  America temporarily got the aristocracy out of their business (yes Washington was a real estate speculator offended by the restrictions placed on pioneers going West of the Alleghenies).  The owners have rights, and they have a right to enslave their human property, even if there are more jobs to be done now than picking cotton.  People have no f***ing rights to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.  Get past all that powdered wig and wood/ivory dentures stuff.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 21, 2018, 02:26:55 AM
Anyways, have you at all addressed my main point in this thread?

Why?  You can't be bothered to address ours.

Quote from: trdsf on May 21, 2018, 12:37:04 PM
Why?  You can't be bothered to address ours.

I think that any neutral person who read this thread would disagree with you.  I addressed every one of your points.  You didn't agree with any of my responses, but that's a different issue. 

I don't know what you were expecting.  Did you think that my arguments were going to persuade you that spending is better than voting?  I already knew that the chances of this happening were vanishingly small, which is why I primarily wanted to focus on testing and comparing the two systems.   

What I was expecting was that, even though we strongly disagree about whether voting or spending is better, we could strongly agree on the necessity of testing and comparing different ranking systems.  Unfortunately, you kept stating that the results of my proposed experiment would be meaningless. 

We obviously both agree that voting and spending are very different things.  Naturally we should also agree that they would produce very different hierarchies of atheists.  So how could the results of my proposed experiment be meaningless?   All the meaning would be derived from the difference between the two hierarchies. 

1. Spending and voting are very different things
2. The two hierarchies would be very different
3. This difference is the source of meaning
4. The experiment would reveal the difference
5. The experiment would be meaningful

Debating and discussing the actual results would be so much more productive than simply debating and discussing the imagined results. 

It's not too late for us to be friends and collaborators. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 21, 2018, 04:53:24 PM
I think that any neutral person who read this thread would disagree with you.  I addressed every one of your points.  You didn't agree with any of my responses, but that's a different issue.

I gave you a whole list of fundamental problems (http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=12619.msg1217031#msg1217031) that need to be addressed before it's even reasonable to consider your ideaâ€"much less give it a trialâ€"and you have ignored every single one of them.

You have not corrected the flaws that you yourself have admitted in your methodology.

You have not explained the bases of your assumptions.

You have not explained how it is that you want to measure the accuracy result of the donation end of it by the voteâ€"which you insist is less accurate, so even within the flawed terms of your proposal, you explicitly import what you claim is an inaccuracy to measure your accuracy.  This is necessarily either an admission that the vote is the accurate part, or that your final measurement must be inaccurate.  Either way, this is fatal to your proposal, and I don't mean 'oh dear the goldfish is floating upside down' fatal, I mean 'thrown off a 40-story building into busy traffic to be run over by several buses, afterward shoveled into a wood chipper, and running the resulting slurry through a sulfuric acid bath just to be absogoddamnlutely sure' fatal.

And you fail to understand that "oh let's just run the experiment anyway" corrects none of these.  A flawed test gives meaningless results.

So far, the only thing you've demonstrated is that you haven't got the faintest idea how to set up a comparative trial.

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 01:21:59 AM
I gave you a whole list of fundamental problems (http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=12619.msg1217031#msg1217031) that need to be addressed before it's even reasonable to consider your ideaâ€"much less give it a trialâ€"and you have ignored every single one of them.

You have not corrected the flaws that you yourself have admitted in your methodology.

You have not explained the bases of your assumptions.

You have not explained how it is that you want to measure the accuracy result of the donation end of it by the voteâ€"which you insist is less accurate, so even within the flawed terms of your proposal, you explicitly import what you claim is an inaccuracy to measure your accuracy.  This is necessarily either an admission that the vote is the accurate part, or that your final measurement must be inaccurate.  Either way, this is fatal to your proposal, and I don't mean 'oh dear the goldfish is floating upside down' fatal, I mean 'thrown off a 40-story building into busy traffic to be run over by several buses, afterward shoveled into a wood chipper, and running the resulting slurry through a sulfuric acid bath just to be absogoddamnlutely sure' fatal.

And you fail to understand that "oh let's just run the experiment anyway" corrects none of these.  A flawed test gives meaningless results.

So far, the only thing you've demonstrated is that you haven't got the faintest idea how to set up a comparative trial.

The Alt-Right crossed the line from rational conservative debate to furious denial of facts some years ago.  And quite frankly, right now we have an Alt-Right Government.  That can really only be changed in the next few elections.  And the sooner, the better...

Quote from: Xerographica on May 21, 2018, 02:26:55 AM
The higher the price of coal, the more sparingly it's used and the more incentive there is for entrepreneurs to find and develop alternative forms of energy.  Anyways, have you at all addressed my main point in this thread?  Rather than simply debating voting versus spending, we should conduct our own experiment to see how voting and donating rank prominent atheists.  Do you object to this experiment?

I own the only coal mine.   I can lower the price of coal to whatever I want.  Or raise it to whatever the market will bear.   I wouldn't even have to use all my own money, a lot of people will vote my way just to keep prices low. 

What was your point?   People with money are rational?

Trdsf, last year the Libertarian Party (LP) used donating to choose its convention theme...

$6,327.00 â€" I’m That Libertarian!
$5,200.00 â€" Building Bridges, Not Walls
$1,620.00 â€" Pro Choice on Everything
$1,377.77 â€" Empowering the Individual
$395.00 â€" The Power of Principle
$150.00 â€" Future of Freedom
$135.00 â€" Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
$105.00 â€" Rise of the Libertarians
$75.00 â€" Free Lives Matter
$42.00 â€" Be Me, Be Free
$17.76 â€" Make Taxation Theft Again
$15.42 â€" Taxation is Theft
$15.00 â€" Jazzed About Liberty
$15.00 â€" All of Your Freedoms, All of the Time
$5.00 â€" Am I Being Detained!
$5.00 â€" Liberty Here and Now

How differently would the themes have been ranked if voting had been used instead of spending?   For example, would the theme "Taxation is Theft" have been ranked higher or lower?  Personally, I hate this theme.  So if voting had ranked it higher than spending did, then this would have been decent evidence that spending is better than voting.  To be clear... this would have been decent evidence for me.  For somebody who loves the idea that taxation is theft, it would have been decent evidence that voting is better than spending. 

The experiment that I'm proposing for this website is just like the LP's fundraiser... but people would also have the option to vote for their favorite atheists.  Then we would be able to compare how differently voting and donating rank atheists. 

Voters would make the voting pudding.  Donors would make the donating pudding.  We would all taste both puddings and decide for ourselves which one is better.  The proof is in the pudding. 

What matters here is whether the results confirm or contradict our own beliefs regarding the relative effectiveness of voting and spending.  My proposed experiment would give us the incredibly valuable opportunity to compare our beliefs to reality. 

You say that I have ignored a bunch of fundamental problems.  Of course I disagree.  But I'll go through your list and address each of your points...

Xero: I can't know exactly how valuable $100 dollars is to you
Trdsf: AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHY YOUR SYSTEM DOESN'T WORK.  I can't make it any clearer than you just made it yourself.

I don't know how valuable $100 dollars is to all the people who participated in the LP's fundraiser.  This is true.  But how does this prove that voting is better than spending?  How does this prove that the themes would have been ranked better if the libertarians had voted for their favorite themes? 

Xero: It's true that a billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no personal expense.  A billionaire certainly can donate $10,000 to this forum in order to influence the donating rankings.
Trdsf: That completely destroys its ability to reliably measure actual demand because it can be overridden on the whim of one or two people.  It doesn't matter at all whether it will happen, it's that it can happen that destroys your "experiment".

Actual demand, in economic terms, has never been about wealth equality.  So it doesn't make any sense to say that wealth inequality prevents actual demand from being reliably measured.  The LP fundraiser shows us the actual demand for each theme.  We can all clearly see that the demand for " Building Bridges, Not Walls" is a lot greater than the demand for "Taxation is Theft".

QuoteYou're asserting A is superior to B.  You're going to run simultaneous trials of A and B.  And then you're going to use B to measure whether A is accurate, when one of your assumptions is that B is less accurate than A.  Do you genuinely not see the flaw here?

My argument is that spending is better than voting... so why would I propose using voting to rank the two puddings?  If anything I'd propose using voting and donating to rank the puddings.  Like I said though... the point is for you to compare your own beliefs to reality.  Right now you believe that voting is better than spending.  The results of my proposed experiment would either confirm or contradict your belief.   

QuoteYou continue to fail to address the problem of resources.  A billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no meaningful personal expense, while it would be difficult for me to spare $100 -- you keep talking about 'cost' but the costs are absolutely not the same, relative to the donor.  That $100 costs me a lot more than those thousands cost a billionaire, but your system does not account for that.

You're correct that markets do not account for the fact that people unequally value money.  But again, this doesn't at all prove that the LP convention themes would have been better ranked by voting.     There's absolutely nothing wrong with a billionaire having more influence than a pauper, if we assume that the pauper is ignorant while the billionaire is informed.  Is this assumption reasonable?  What are the chances that Bill Gates is better informed than the average Joe?  We can certainly debate this, but it would really help if we also simply tested whether voting or donating is better at ranking things. 

QuoteYou're simply not measuring what you think you're measuring.  The fact that one person with high resources can come in and completely change your results based on nothing more than their own resources negates your entire argument that you're measuring public preferences.

When I talk about measuring public preferences, of course I realize that, as far as the market is concerned, my preferences are far less important than the preferences of Bill Gates.  Do you think that I like the fact that my own preferences are relatively inconsequential compared to his?  Do you think I wouldn't prefer to simply spend a million dollars to conduct my proposed experiment rather than spend so much of my limited time trying to persuade all of you to help me conduct it?  I am acutely aware of, and unhappy with, the fact that Bill Gates has so much more market power than I do. 

However, just because I don't like how little market power I have doesn't magically make voting better than spending at ranking things.  The relative effectiveness of voting and spending can only be revealed by experiments that juxtapose their results.   

QuoteYou have not refuted any of the points I have brought up:
- that finance-based preference distorts rather than reveals public intent;
- that making public preference subject to the whims of individual and group resources thwarts public will rather than clarifies it;
- that when money isn't a significant factor, public intent is better revealed; and
- that it is possible to allow weighted preferences without tying it to individual resources.

I will further posit the following:
- Weighting votes to personal resources is explicitly anti-democratic since it allows a small handful of individual with large resources to completely overwhelm the majority;
- No amount of money validates a poorly-reasoned position; and
- No amount of money invalidates reliable evidence.

To be clear, the point of the proposed experiment is to refute your points.  But I'll go through and address them...

Quote- that finance-based preference distorts rather than reveals public intent;

What actually distorts the public intent is voting... not spending.   Can you refute this?  Yes you can.  Just show me that voting is better than spending at ranking atheists. 

Quote- that making public preference subject to the whims of individual and group resources thwarts public will rather than clarifies it;

It doesn't thwart the public will when the most informed individuals have the most influence.  The question is whether voting or spending gives the most influence to the most informed individuals.  My proposed experiment would help answer this question. 

Quote- that when money isn't a significant factor, public intent is better revealed; and

Again, my proposed experiment will demonstrate whether or not money needs to be a significant factor. 

Quote- that it is possible to allow weighted preferences without tying it to individual resources.

I never denied that it is possible.  I simply strongly believe that money is entirely necessary to give the most influence to the most informed. 

Quote- Weighting votes to personal resources is explicitly anti-democratic since it allows a small handful of individual with large resources to completely overwhelm the majority;

When was the last time that we had an openly atheist president?  There's nothing about the majority that makes it inherently right. 

Quote- No amount of money validates a poorly-reasoned position; and

This is true.  But spending is far better than voting at ranking positions.   

Quote- No amount of money invalidates reliable evidence.

This also true.  But spending is far better than voting at ranking evidence. 

Now please stop saying that I've ignored your points.  I've addressed all of them.  It's fine if you don't think that I've adequately addressed them.  It isn't necessary for me to use arguments to persuade you that your position is wrong while my position is right.  All I have to do is show you the evidence.  Are you interested in seeing the evidence?  If so, then you should support my proposed experiment. 

"Building Bridges, Not Walls" ... that is a winner, even without the obvious topical association.  All for alternative parties, vote R or D, enjoy your FEMA camp.

Just saying "no it isn't" isn't addressing.  So no, you really have not addressed any of the flaws in your thesisâ€"what I've pointed out are flaws in your methodology, and whining "but run the experiment" doesn't fix those or demonstrate anything.

As for the few things you did try to say:

Quote from: Xerographica on May 22, 2018, 06:06:19 PM
How differently would the themes have been ranked if voting had been used instead of spending?   For example, would the theme "Taxation is Theft" have been ranked higher or lower?  Personally, I hate this theme.  So if voting had ranked it higher than spending did, then this would have been decent evidence that spending is better than voting.  To be clear... this would have been decent evidence for me.  For somebody who loves the idea that taxation is theft, it would have been decent evidence that voting is better than spending.

Emphasis added.

The fact that it does not produce unambiguous evidence is all you need to know that it's a pointless exercise.  Because here's what's going to happen: if the vote goes against you and the spending doesn't, you're going to say "that proves spending is better" and if the spending goes against you and the voting doesn't, you're going to say "that proves people didn't value my choice as much as I do", and if both go against you, you're going to say "well, that didn't prove anything" and if both go in your favor, you're going to go "hey, we were both right".

If everyone can extract their own personal 'evidence' out of it, then it's not anything even remotely resembling an experimentâ€"it's no different from faith in various gods at that point, if you can take away from it what you feel like taking away from it.  This is religion, not science.  You've pre-decided the result you want, and you're ignoring everything you have to in order to hang on to that.

If two different observers can pull mutually exclusive conclusions out of it (you say 'spending is better' because spending coincided with your choice and voting didn't, and someone else says 'voting is better' because voting coincided with their choice and spending didn't), then you're not getting any results at all.  The results need to stand without any regard whatsoever for what the observers hope the answer will or will not be.

So you're not getting an unambiguous answer, and you can't measure the accuracy of the donations without referencing the voteâ€"which, as I've said repeatedly, means that either the vote is the accurate side of it or that you cannot demonstrate the superior accuracy of donations.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 22, 2018, 06:06:19 PM
I don't know how valuable $100 dollars is to all the people who participated in the LP's fundraiser.  This is true.  But how does this prove that voting is better than spending?  How does this prove that the themes would have been ranked better if the libertarians had voted for their favorite themes?

If you don't know how the $100 is valued by the participants, then you cannot judge demand.  You're not measuring anything more than the arrogance of plutocracy.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 22, 2018, 06:06:19 PM
Actual demand, in economic terms, has never been about wealth equality.  So it doesn't make any sense to say that wealth inequality prevents actual demand from being reliably measured.  The LP fundraiser shows us the actual demand for each theme.  We can all clearly see that the demand for " Building Bridges, Not Walls" is a lot greater than the demand for "Taxation is Theft".

No, it's not.  You don't know what the demand is until you know how many people actually wanted each one; the dollars mean absolutely nothing.  If one person put in $5200 on the first motto, and 162 people put in $10 each on the second, you cannot in any way say that the first motto is the choice of the people.  It's the whim of the one person with more resources than anyone else.  That's personal preference, not public preference.

What you're proposing is the dictatorship of the dollar, plutocracy, financial fascism -- take your pick.  If you want decisions made that way, that's your problem -- what you can't do is call it anything remotely resembling public demand because it has absolutely nothing to do with public demand.

This is explicitly anti-democratic.  Which again means that the vote is by definition a better measure of public will.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 22, 2018, 06:06:19 PM
You're correct that markets do not account for the fact that people unequally value money.  But again, this doesn't at all prove that the LP convention themes would have been better ranked by voting.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with a billionaire having more influence than a pauper, if we assume that the pauper is ignorant while the billionaire is informed.  Is this assumption reasonable?  What are the chances that Bill Gates is better informed than the average Joe?  We can certainly debate this, but it would really help if we also simply tested whether voting or donating is better at ranking things.

You genuinely don't see that the unequal valuation of money completely obviates your proposal?  It's not that difficult -- if you don't know what the value of each dollar is, you cannot make a final valuation when all the money is collected.  All you can do is just add it upâ€"you will learn nothing about the actual value placed by each donor, you only have naked dollar amounts.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 22, 2018, 06:06:19 PM
When I talk about measuring public preferences, of course I realize that, as far as the market is concerned, my preferences are far less important than the preferences of Bill Gates.  Do you think that I like the fact that my own preferences are relatively inconsequential compared to his?  Do you think I wouldn't prefer to simply spend a million dollars to conduct my proposed experiment rather than spend so much of my limited time trying to persuade all of you to help me conduct it?  I am acutely aware of, and unhappy with, the fact that Bill Gates has so much more market power than I do. 

However, just because I don't like how little market power I have doesn't magically make voting better than spending at ranking things.  The relative effectiveness of voting and spending can only be revealed by experiments that juxtapose their results.

I recommend doing your thing and not giving a fuck whether Bill Gates (or Sam Walton, or Jeff Bezos, or anyone else) wants it too.

And if you don't like it, why are you so gung-ho to cede your rights to his money?  That's mad.  It's probably ideologically pure, but it's still mad.

In fact, the vote necessarily is better at ranking things since a) it levels the playing field and b) permits universal access rather than charging to participate.  Further, money does not give someone else the right to drown my vote.  I do not accept the idea that my preferences are less important than hisâ€"I cannot deny that he has the resources to indulge his, but that doesn't mean they're more important or better informed than mine… or vice versa.

Which again means ranking by money is not a measure of public will.  It's only a measure of money.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 22, 2018, 06:06:19 PM
There's nothing about the majority that makes it inherently right.

There's nothing about money that makes it inherently right.  There are, by and large, reasons to think that majority rule tends towards better public policy in the long run since it will tend towards the most good for the most people.  We have already seen that money tends towards the most gains for those who already have the most moneyâ€"look at Republican tax policy over the last 35 years.

The rest of your "responses" were just "no it isn't!" which, as I pointed out above, isn't addressing them, it's just ignoring them.

If you still think that there's a point to your proposal, you simply know nothing about how to measure public will.

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 10:54:25 PM
Just saying "no it isn't" isn't addressing.  So no, you really have not addressed any of the flaws in your thesisâ€"what I've pointed out are flaws in your methodology, and whining "but run the experiment" doesn't fix those or demonstrate anything.

From your view I didn't adequately address your points.  From my view I did. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 10:54:25 PMThe fact that it does not produce unambiguous evidence is all you need to know that it's a pointless exercise.  Because here's what's going to happen: if the vote goes against you and the spending doesn't, you're going to say "that proves spending is better" and if the spending goes against you and the voting doesn't, you're going to say "that proves people didn't value my choice as much as I do", and if both go against you, you're going to say "well, that didn't prove anything" and if both go in your favor, you're going to go "hey, we were both right".

Given that I believe that spending is so much better than voting, if, from my view, there isn't a clear winner, then this evidence would be incredible.  Right now I'm certain that a hare would beat a tortoise in a race.  If there was no clear winner, then this evidence would be incredible. 

And it's not like we'd only conduct this experiment once.  Every month or two we'd conduct it using a different topic.  If there continued to be no clear winner, this would indicate that voting was the winner.  Like I said before, if spending produces an outcome that isn't noticeably better than voting, then there's no point in people making the mental effort to decide how much something is truly worth to them.  We might as well replace all spending with voting. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 10:54:25 PMIf you don't know how the $100 is valued by the participants, then you cannot judge demand.  You're not measuring anything more than the arrogance of plutocracy.

There's nothing in economics that says that demand can only be measured when we know how much $100 dollars is valued by the participants.  Economists talk about measuring demand all the time despite the fact that it's entirely unknown how differently consumers value $100 dollars. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 10:54:25 PMIf one person put in $5200 on the first motto, and 162 people put in $10 each on the second, you cannot in any way say that the first motto is the choice of the people.  It's the whim of the one person with more resources than anyone else.  That's personal preference, not public preference.

Tyranny of the minority is entirely possible with spending.  But my best guess is that, in most cases, the minority tyranny of spending will be better than the majority tyranny of voting.  But do you think this is the kind of thing we can solely resolve with debate?  It really isn't.  We need the evidence that can only be produced by directly comparing the results of voting and spending. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 10:54:25 PMWhat you're proposing is the dictatorship of the dollar, plutocracy, financial fascism -- take your pick.  If you want decisions made that way, that's your problem -- what you can't do is call it anything remotely resembling public demand because it has absolutely nothing to do with public demand.

You're free to characterize spending however you want.  But again, the proof is in the pudding. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 10:54:25 PMThis is explicitly anti-democratic.  Which again means that the vote is by definition a better measure of public will.

Democracy, in my view, is a better measure of public whim than will.  The majority voted for prohibition.  I'm guessing that this was more whim than will.  Maybe it wasn't though.  I think that, before a big chunk of  society's resources was used to enforce prohibition, that there needed to be strong enough evidence that it was truly going to provide a large benefit to the public.  The majority voting for prohibition really wasn't strong enough evidence that the benefit was large.  The only evidence that could possibly have been strong enough would have been adequately large spending on the part of the public.   

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 10:54:25 PMYou genuinely don't see that the unequal valuation of money completely obviates your proposal?  It's not that difficult -- if you don't know what the value of each dollar is, you cannot make a final valuation when all the money is collected.  All you can do is just add it upâ€"you will learn nothing about the actual value placed by each donor, you only have naked dollar amounts.

The only thing that can make me change my mind about spending being better than voting is enough evidence.  Right now I don't have any evidence that spending is not better than voting.  If we conduct my experiments, and spending isn't consistently the clear winner, then I will change my mind about spending being better than voting. 

I'm telling you that there is a real, concrete, tangible, and relatively easy way for me to change my mind about spending being better than voting.  You really shouldn't oppose my suggested experiment.

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 10:54:25 PMAnd if you don't like it, why are you so gung-ho to cede your rights to his money?  That's mad.  It's probably ideologically pure, but it's still mad.

LOL.  Maybe I am mad!  If I am truly crazy, then why should I have the same influence over society's resources as Bill Gates?  There are a few things that the Bible gets right.  One of them is that there's safety in the multitude of counselors.  Instead of a multitude of consumers giving their money to me, they gave it to Gates.  They all used their money to vouch for his sanity.  Far fewer people have used their money to vouch for my sanity. 

Do you think the prominent atheists are equally sane?  It's a fact that they aren't equally anything.  The point of the market is to use our money to draw the public's attention to the most beneficial differences. 

Right now here I am suggesting something different.  I'm suggesting that we directly compare the relative effectiveness of voting and spending.  This has never been done before.  It is something completely different.  You clearly don't think it's a beneficial difference... and you aren't the only one.  So I have to accept the possibility that maybe I am crazy... which means that I can't possibly accept that it would be beneficial for me to have the same exact influence as Bill Gates. 

Everybody is different so everybody naturally does different things with society's limited resources.  We need the best possible system for identifying and reinforcing the best possible differences.  As far as I can tell, this system is the market. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 10:54:25 PMIn fact, the vote necessarily is better at ranking things since a) it levels the playing field and b) permits universal access rather than charging to participate.  Further, money does not give someone else the right to drown my vote.  I do not accept the idea that my preferences are less important than hisâ€"I cannot deny that he has the resources to indulge his, but that doesn't mean they're more important or better informed than mine… or vice versa.

It's not about accepting that your preferences are less important than his.  It's about accepting the possibility that your preferences are less important than his.  It's about striving to minimize the possibility that your preferences are less important than his.  That's exactly what I am currently all about.  If I'm not crazy, and it is incredibly beneficial to compare the relative effectiveness of voting and spending... then you could potentially be the main guy to help make it happen.  Right now you have the opportunity to be the main guy... but it's a fact that guys, and gals, aren't equally good at recognizing the value of opportunities that are right in front of them. 

This really isn't the first place that I've tried to sell this idea... and perhaps it won't be the last.  Maybe I'll eventually find a place where there's some guy who does recognize the incredible value of the opportunity and he will seize it.  He will be instrumental in making it happen.  Then you will simply be one of the many guys who failed to recognize a valuable opportunity that was right in front of you. 

Right now Jordan Peterson is earning around $50,000 per month on Patreon.  Why?  Simply because a lot of people voted for the Youtube video of him criticizing trans pronouns.  If spending is truly better than voting, then our experiment would prove it... and if you were the main guy... then you would be earning a lot more than $50,000/month... while Peterson would be earning a lot less. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 10:54:25 PMThere's nothing about money that makes it inherently right.  There are, by and large, reasons to think that majority rule tends towards better public policy in the long run since it will tend towards the most good for the most people.  We have already seen that money tends towards the most gains for those who already have the most moneyâ€"look at Republican tax policy over the last 35 years.

I don't deny the possibility that voting is better than spending.  If this is truly the case, then it would be revealed by comparing the relative effectiveness of voting and spending. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 10:54:25 PMThe rest of your "responses" were just "no it isn't!" which, as I pointed out above, isn't addressing them, it's just ignoring them.

We have different definitions of "ignoring"... and different definitions of "demand". 

Quote from: trdsf on May 22, 2018, 10:54:25 PMIf you still think that there's a point to your proposal, you simply know nothing about how to measure public will.

Maybe I don't know how to measure public will.  But if you're truly correct that voting is better than spending, then it would behoove you to figure out how to prove this to reasonable people.  All I know is that my experiment can potentially prove to me that voting is better than spending.  I'm not sure how you could possibly improve on this.  I'm not sure why you would even try to.  What more could you want than a believer in spending becoming a believer in voting? 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 03:05:32 AM
From your view I didn't adequately address your points.  From my view I did. 

Wow.  It's like you think that your view is the only one that matters.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 03:05:32 AM
There's nothing in economics that says that demand can only be measured when we know how much $100 dollars is valued by the participants.  Economists talk about measuring demand all the time despite the fact that it's entirely unknown how differently consumers value $100 dollars.

Then you're not measuring anything other than who's got money to spend, which as has repeatedly been pointed out has nothing to do with public will.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 03:05:32 AM
Tyranny of the minority is entirely possible with spending.  But my best guess is that, in most cases, the minority tyranny of spending will be better than the majority tyranny of voting.  But do you think this is the kind of thing we can solely resolve with debate?  It really isn't.  We need the evidence that can only be produced by directly comparing the results of voting and spending.

This is why libertarianism doesn't work, and it's for the exact same reasons that Marxism doesn't work: they both make unrealistic assumptions about human behavior and enlightened self interest.

Every single piece of evidence we have is that the 'minority tyranny of spending' will do what it can to concentrate more wealth in their hands at the expense of the rest of the public, and that they will not make decisions that are in the best interest of all.  If your "best guess" is that they will make the best decisions for society as a whole, I have to ask what planet you've been living on for the last forty years.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 03:05:32 AM
Democracy, in my view, is a better measure of public whim than will.  The majority voted for prohibition.  I'm guessing that this was more whim than will.  Maybe it wasn't though.  I think that, before a big chunk of  society's resources was used to enforce prohibition, that there needed to be strong enough evidence that it was truly going to provide a large benefit to the public.  The majority voting for prohibition really wasn't strong enough evidence that the benefit was large.  The only evidence that could possibly have been strong enough would have been adequately large spending on the part of the public.

There's no difference between public whim and public will.  The public is not always right in the long run, and neither is the market.  Had Prohibition been brought about by public spending that still wouldn't have made it a smart decision, only an even more expensive one than it turned out to be.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 03:05:32 AM
The only thing that can make me change my mind about spending being better than voting is enough evidence.  Right now I don't have any evidence that spending is not better than voting.  If we conduct my experiments, and spending isn't consistently the clear winner, then I will change my mind about spending being better than voting.

No, the evidence is both clear and unequivocal that spending is not better than voting, you just refuse to accept it.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 03:05:32 AM
I'm telling you that there is a real, concrete, tangible, and relatively easy way for me to change my mind about spending being better than voting.  You really shouldn't oppose my suggested experiment.

And I've shown how your proposal doesn't measure what you claim it measures.  Run it, for all I care, but don't claim it means anything, because your methodology is broken.  Fix it, and if it would then make meaningful measurements I'll be happy to support it.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 03:05:32 AM
LOL.  Maybe I am mad!  If I am truly crazy, then why should I have the same influence over society's resources as Bill Gates?  There are a few things that the Bible gets right.  One of them is that there's safety in the multitude of counselors.  Instead of a multitude of consumers giving their money to me, they gave it to Gates.  They all used their money to vouch for his sanity.  Far fewer people have used their money to vouch for my sanity.

I don't buy Windows because I have faith in Bill Gates' judgment.  I buy Windows because I have no fucking choice in the matter if I want to play certain games.  If I could get them to run under Linux, I'd be in a pure OpenSuSE environment in a heartbeat.  And the reason these games aren't available under Linux has nothing to do with the superiority of the Windows system, it has to do with the effective monopoly Microsoft has on the desktop computer market and with their monopolistic practices designed not to improve the computer software market in general but to maintain or enhance their own control over it.  I recommend looking up the history of Microsoft with regard to DR-DOS, WordPerfect and Novell.  Happily, this situation is slowly changing, but only slowly.

Which leads me to ask the (potentially derailing) question: do you think there is such a thing as an illegal monopolistic business practice?  Current law, of course, is that it's perfectly legal to have a monopoly, but that it is illegal to use that market control to prevent competition.  Do you agree?  Or do you take the position that once a monopoly is attained, the holder can do anything that's not otherwise illegal (no killing the opposing CEO, for instance) in order to maintain their monopoly?  Or something else?

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 03:05:32 AM
Right now here I am suggesting something different.  I'm suggesting that we directly compare the relative effectiveness of voting and spending.  This has never been done before.  It is something completely different.  You clearly don't think it's a beneficial difference... and you aren't the only one.  So I have to accept the possibility that maybe I am crazy... which means that I can't possibly accept that it would be beneficial for me to have the same exact influence as Bill Gates.

You're proposing exactly the same broken system we Americans in particular are living under, not anything new or different.   The consequences of a de facto market-driven political system vast parts of which are controlled by a small group of oligarchs isn't working out terribly well for the public in general.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 03:05:32 AM
This really isn't the first place that I've tried to sell this idea... and perhaps it won't be the last.  Maybe I'll eventually find a place where there's some guy who does recognize the incredible value of the opportunity and he will seize it.  He will be instrumental in making it happen.  Then you will simply be one of the many guys who failed to recognize a valuable opportunity that was right in front of you.

No, I'm not at all worried about missing this opportunity, as the evidence is quite strong that it's not valuable.  And maybe the fact that you haven't got anyone else to buy into this should signal you to rethink your premises.  I mean, maybe they did laugh at Einstein, but they definitely also laugh at creationists and flat-earthers.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 03:05:32 AM
Maybe I don't know how to measure public will.  But if you're truly correct that voting is better than spending, then it would behoove you to figure out how to prove this to reasonable people.  All I know is that my experiment can potentially prove to me that voting is better than spending.  I'm not sure how you could possibly improve on this.  I'm not sure why you would even try to.  What more could you want than a believer in spending becoming a believer in voting?

I have provided evidence that your proposal is not a better reflection of public will than a vote, because a) the "experiment" you propose is already effectively being done in the realm of American politics and falsifies your thesis (such that it is), and b) your proposal cannot measure actual public will because it puts a price tag on participation and therefore prevents full public participation, and c) you cannot differentiate between many participants expressing their will and one high-resource individual expressing theirs in a manner that overwhelms the many.

Quote from: Jason78 on May 23, 2018, 01:04:43 PM
Wow.  It's like you think that your view is the only one that matters.

Yeah, it feels an awful lot like trying to have a debate with a creationist: no evidence counts unless it already backs up his position, everything else can be ignored without explanation why.

"they both make unrealistic assumptions about human behavior and enlightened self interest." ... political-economy gold!  Eggheads of the underworld, unite!

Quote from: trdsf on May 23, 2018, 01:13:49 PMI don't buy Windows because I have faith in Bill Gates' judgment.  I buy Windows because I have no fucking choice in the matter if I want to play certain games.  If I could get them to run under Linux, I'd be in a pure OpenSuSE environment in a heartbeat.  And the reason these games aren't available under Linux has nothing to do with the superiority of the Windows system, it has to do with the effective monopoly Microsoft has on the desktop computer market and with their monopolistic practices designed not to improve the computer software market in general but to maintain or enhance their own control over it.  I recommend looking up the history of Microsoft with regard to DR-DOS, WordPerfect and Novell.  Happily, this situation is slowly changing, but only slowly.

Which leads me to ask the (potentially derailing) question: do you think there is such a thing as an illegal monopolistic business practice?  Current law, of course, is that it's perfectly legal to have a monopoly, but that it is illegal to use that market control to prevent competition.  Do you agree?  Or do you take the position that once a monopoly is attained, the holder can do anything that's not otherwise illegal (no killing the opposing CEO, for instance) in order to maintain their monopoly?  Or something else?

From my very limited perspective, which naturally might be wrong, there's a huge disparity between your view and the economic view.  Is this disparity beneficial or detrimental?  I think it's very detrimental so I'll try and eliminate it by sharing some of the most relevant economics.  Like I said earlier in this thread, this strategy isn't usually very effective, but it's not like sharing the info is as hard as climbing Mt. Everest.

Here's Adam Smith's Invisible Hand...

QuoteIt is thus that the private interests and passions of individuals naturally dispose them to turn their stocks towards the employments which in ordinary cases are most advantageous to the society. But if from this natural preference they should turn too much of it towards those employments, the fall of profit in them and the rise of it in all others immediately dispose them to alter this faulty distribution. Without any intervention of law, therefore, the private interests and passions of men naturally lead them to divide and distribute the stock of every society among all the different employments carried on in it as nearly as possible in the proportion which is most agreeable to the interest of the whole society.  â€" Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

Contrary to popular belief, it's not about self-interest, it's about people using their money to communicate what their interests are.  The supply is regulated by the spending signals of countless consumers. 

In Friedrich Hayek's 1945 Nobel essay he reinforced the idea that markets are all about communication...

QuoteWe must look at the price system as such a mechanism for communicating information if we want to understand its real function â€" a function which, of course, it fulfils less perfectly as prices grow more rigid. (Even when quoted prices have become quite rigid, however, the forces which would operate through changes in price still operate to a considerable extent through changes in the other terms of the contract.) The most significant fact about this system is the economy of knowledge with which it operates, or how little the individual participants need to know in order to be able to take the right action. In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on and passed on only to those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement. â€" Friedrich Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society

Hayek argued that command economies fail because, in the absence of prices, they are unable to utilize all the relevant and necessary knowledge that is dispersed among all the consumers and producers.

In 1954 the Nobel economist Paul Samuelson, who was a liberal, critiqued Hayek's essay by pointing out that, because of the free-rider problem, prices don't work so well for public goods...

QuoteBut, and this is the point sensed by Wicksell but perhaps not fully appreciated by Lindahl, now it is in the selfish interest of each person to give false signals, to pretend to have less interest in a given collective consumption activity than he really has, etc. â€"  Paul Samuelson, The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure

Samuelson's basic assumption was that the optimal supply of all goods is entirely dependent on honest signals.  The problem with a good like Linux is that you can benefit from it without having to pay for it.  Let's say that your true valuation of Linux is $40 bucks.  If you only donate $20 dollars to it, you still can fully benefit from it, but you can take the $20 bucks that you saved and use it to buy a nice steak.  The amount you spent on Linux would be a false signal because it would be less than your true valuation of it.  Your false signal on its own isn't so much of a problem... after all... you only cheated Linux out of $20 bucks.  The issue is when everybody else does the same thing.  When everybody's contribution to Linux is a lot less than their true valuation of it, then naturally it's going to be a lot lower quality than everybody truly wants it to be.  Also, there's going to be far fewer freely available alternatives to Linux than everybody truly wants. 

To be clear, the only reason that consumers have the incentive to be dishonest about their true valuation of Linux (a public good) is because they have the option to spend their money on steak (a private good) instead.  If this option was eliminated, then so too would be the incentive to be dishonest.  This was the point that the Nobel economist James Buchanan made in 1963...

QuoteUnder most real-world taxing institutions, the tax price per unit at which collective goods are made available to the individual will depend, at least to some degree, on his own behavior. This element is not, however, important under the major tax institutions such as the personal income tax, the general sales tax, or the real property tax. With such structures, the individual may, by changing his private behavior, modify the tax base (and thus the tax price per unit of collective goods he utilizes), but he need not have any incentive to conceal his "true" preferences for public goods. - James M. Buchanan, The Economics of Earmarked Taxes

Let me hedge my bets by sharing how other people have explained the idea of individual earmarking...

QuoteOne strand of this approach-initiated in Buchanan’s (1963) seminal paper-argues that the voter who might have approved a tax increase if it were earmarked for, say, environmental protection would oppose it under general fund financing because he or she may expect the increment to be allocated to an unfavored expenditure such as defense. Earmarked taxation then permits a more satisfactory expression of individual preferences. â€" Ranjit S. Teja, The Case for Earmarked Taxes

QuoteIndividuals who have particularly negative feelings concerning a publicly provided good (e.g. Quakers on military expenditures, Prolifers on publicly funded abortions) have also at times suggested that they should be allowed to dissent by earmarking their taxes toward other public uses. â€" Marc Bilodeau, Tax-earmarking and separate school financing

Imagine if Netflix gave subscribers the opportunity to use their monthly fees to help rank the content.  Would subscribers have any incentive to be dishonest? Nope. This is simply because they would not have the option to spend their fees on things like food or clothes. Subscribers would not have the option to spend their fees outside of Netflix. Therefore, how subscribers earmarked their fees would honestly communicate their true valuations of the content.  The result would be the optimal supply of content. 

The expert economic discussion looks basically like this...

Adam Smith (1776): Consumers should have the freedom to spend their money to help rank goods.
Friedrich Hayek (1945): It's true, the market is the only way to utilize all the dispersed knowledge.
Paul Samuelson (1954): While the market does work for private goods, it fails for public goods.
James Buchanan (1963): Actually, earmarking would allow the market to also work for public goods.

This is economics in a nutshell. We all should have learned this in school. Why didn't we? Well, schools aren't markets. So of course there's a big disparity between what students learn, and what they should learn.

Now what? Obviously these highly regarded experts didn't bring up your concern that people unequally value $100 dollars.  Their main focus was on communication.  So the real economic issue is whether your payment honestly communicates your true valuation.  Does the amount of money that you've donated to this forum honestly communicate your true valuation of it?  If so, then you must be the exception rather than the rule.  Because if you were the rule, then taxation should be voluntary rather than compulsory. 

My proposed experiment will not eliminate the free-rider problem.  But it would give members of this forum more incentive to make a donation.  This is simply because they would be given the perk of elevating/promoting/advertising their favorite people and things. 

Your concern is that using donations to rank things would essentially silence the poorer members.  But it's a basic fact that no members, whether poor or rich, would benefit if this forum went under for lack of financial support.  So I think it's entirely reasonable and desirable to give the most weight to the preferences of the people who are most responsible for keeping this forum afloat.  Plus, everybody would still be able to vote, which would allow us to compare the relative effectiveness of voting and spending. 

Regarding your criticism of my proposed experiment... it doesn't make a lick of sense.  On the one hand, you argue that voting is clearly better than spending.  But then on the other hand you argue that my experiment won't reveal that voting is clearly better than spending. 

My proposed experiment would allow us to directly compare voting and spending.  If, as you strongly believe, voting is clearly better than spending, how in the world could my experiment not reveal this? 

Here's how you should respond... "Yes, I do strongly believe that voting is clearly better than spending, but your experiment will not reveal this because __________________________ "   Please fill in the blank. 

Hopefully it's very clear that there's a big disparity between what you say about economics, and what the experts have said about it.  Either you are wrong or they are.  I'm pretty sure that they aren't wrong.  The optimal supply does depend on honest signals.  In order for your signal to be honest, your payment must equal your valuation. 

Sorry, quoting any economist, including Adam Smith pretty much destroyed your argument.  Or quoting any politician.  Might as well quote Al Capone on law enforcement.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 04:05:54 PM
Here's how you should respond... "Yes, I do strongly believe that voting is clearly better than spending, but your experiment will not reveal this because __________________________ "   Please fill in the blank. 

I have filled in that blank multiple times this thread, and you know I have.  You just refuse to address the issues I have raised and for you to pull this stunt now simply confirms that you're a dishonest debater.  You don't see what you don't want to see, which is what makes this exercise exactly like debating a creationist.

I have been perfectly clear what my objections to your thesis, assumptions and methodology are.

Quote from: Baruch on May 23, 2018, 04:08:59 PM
Sorry, quoting any economist, including Adam Smith pretty much destroyed your argument.  Or quoting any politician.  Might as well quote Al Capone on law enforcement.

What about Karl Popper?  Is it safe to quote him?  If so...

QuoteIf I am standing quietly, without making any movement, then (according to the physiologists) my muscles are constantly at work, contracting and relaxing in an almost random fashion, but controlled, without my being aware of it, by error-elimination so that every little deviation from my posture is almost at once corrected. So I am kept standing, quietly, by more or less the same method by which an automatic pilot keeps an aircraft steadily on its course. â€" Karl Popper, Of Clouds and Clocks

Is there a problem with this quote?  If not, then please compare and contrast it with this one...

QuoteIt is thus that the private interests and passions of individuals naturally dispose them to turn their stocks towards the employments which in ordinary cases are most advantageous to the society. But if from this natural preference they should turn too much of it towards those employments, the fall of profit in them and the rise of it in all others immediately dispose them to alter this faulty distribution. Without any intervention of law, therefore, the private interests and passions of men naturally lead them to divide and distribute the stock of every society among all the different employments carried on in it as nearly as possible in the proportion which is most agreeable to the interest of the whole society.  â€" Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

Quote from: trdsf on May 23, 2018, 04:34:42 PM
I have filled in that blank multiple times this thread, and you know I have.  You just refuse to address the issues I have raised and for you to pull this stunt now simply confirms that you're a dishonest debater.  You don't see what you don't want to see, which is what makes this exercise exactly like debating a creationist.

I have been perfectly clear what my objections to your thesis, assumptions and methodology are.

Over and over I've said that my experiment can potentially falsify my belief in spending.  Not once have you said that my experiment, or any experiment, can potentially falsify your belief in voting.  Yet you think that I am the one who is like a creationist? 

From the beginning I wanted to be friends and collaborate on conducting an experiment that would test our respective beliefs.  But instead of being down for a really good cause, you've been the primary obstacle.  And I honestly don't understand your objections to my proposed experiment. 

Voting is really straightforward.  There's nothing at all difficult to understand about members of this forum using voting to rank prominent atheists. 

Donating is also really straightforward.  There's nothing at all difficult to understand about members of this forum using donating to rank prominent atheists. 

Voting would create one ranking of prominent atheists while donating would create another ranking.  We would all be able to compare the two rankings and decide for ourselves which one is better.   

You don't like this experiment?  Fine.  You don't like any experiment that would compare voting and donating?  Then you've got an issue.  If you do, however, happen to prefer some other experiment to test voting and donating, then please start a thread and propose it. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 05:11:18 PM
You don't like this experiment?  Fine.  You don't like any experiment that would compare voting and donating?  Then you've got an issue.  If you do, however, happen to prefer some other experiment to test voting and donating, then please start a thread and propose it.

I explicitly stated that if you fixed your methodology and the errors in design, I would have no objection.  To assert that I object to all testing is strawmanning at the best, if not a deliberate lie.

This is what I mean about not reading, not paying attention, not understanding.  Go back and re-read what I've written, since it's crystal clear you haven't yet.

Quote from: trdsf on May 23, 2018, 05:30:14 PM
I explicitly stated that if you fixed your methodology and the errors in design, I would have no objection.  To assert that I object to all testing is strawmanning at the best, if not a deliberate lie.

This is what I mean about not reading, not paying attention, not understanding.  Go back and re-read what I've written, since it's crystal clear you haven't yet.

Remember the time when I said that there are a few things that the Bible gets really right?  I said that one thing is that there's safety in the multitude of counselors.  Here's another thing that the Bible gets really right... don't hide your light under a bushel.  If you genuinely believe that your proposed improvements to my proposed experiment are truly valuable... then don't make myself, or anybody else, dig through 7 pages of this thread in order to try and find them.  Start a thread dedicated to your suggestions.  If it's not worth it for you to do so, then you must not highly value your suggestions... and neither should I. 

Karl Popper is a philosopher of science.  Name dropping random names doesn't help your argument.  Economics, politics, philosophy (including voting philosophy (a very active sub area)) are not sciences.  They are pissing contests by people with big words or big armies.  Economics specializes in the abuse of arithmetic ... which is used by politicians to abuse people.  Philosophers just abuse your ears and eyes.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 05:44:50 PM
Remember the time when I said that there are a few things that the Bible gets really right?  I said that one thing is that there's safety in the multitude of counselors.  Here's another thing that the Bible gets really right... don't hide your light under a bushel.  If you genuinely believe that your proposed improvements to my proposed experiment are truly valuable... then don't make myself, or anybody else, dig through 7 pages of this thread in order to try and find them.  Start a thread dedicated to your suggestions.  If it's not worth it for you to do so, then you must not highly value your suggestions... and neither should I.

It's not my job to fix your so-called experiment.  You're the one who thinks there's a point to be made, it's your job to correct it.  I have no interest in attempting to prove your point for you, nor any responsibility to do so.  All you're accomplishing here, at least as far as I'm concerned, is adding the category 'intellectually lazy' to 'dishonest debater'.

If you didn't want to hear what people honestly thought about your idea, why did you start a thread?

Quote from: trdsf on May 23, 2018, 06:56:27 PM
It's not my job to fix your so-called experiment.  You're the one who thinks there's a point to be made, it's your job to correct it.  I have no interest in attempting to prove your point for you, nor any responsibility to do so.  All you're accomplishing here, at least as far as I'm concerned, is adding the category 'intellectually lazy' to 'dishonest debater'.

If you didn't want to hear what people honestly thought about your idea, why did you start a thread?

He is working out the kinks, but he isn't kinky enough ;-)

Quote from: Baruch on May 23, 2018, 06:47:12 PM
Karl Popper is a philosopher of science.  Name dropping random names doesn't help your argument.  Economics, politics, philosophy (including voting philosophy (a very active sub area)) are not sciences.  They are pissing contests by people with big words or big armies.  Economics specializes in the abuse of arithmetic ... which is used by politicians to abuse people.  Philosophers just abuse your ears and eyes.

It's random for me to mention Karl Popper?  Why do you think that?  According to Popper, the potential for something to be falsifiable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability) is what determines whether or not it's a science.  Yet, here you are saying that economics is not a science. 

My economic theory is that spending is better than voting.  As I've endeavored to explain in this thread, this theory can potentially be falsified. 

Quote from: trdsf on May 23, 2018, 06:56:27 PM
It's not my job to fix your so-called experiment.  You're the one who thinks there's a point to be made, it's your job to correct it.  I have no interest in attempting to prove your point for you, nor any responsibility to do so.  All you're accomplishing here, at least as far as I'm concerned, is adding the category 'intellectually lazy' to 'dishonest debater'.

If you didn't want to hear what people honestly thought about your idea, why did you start a thread?

Like I said, I honestly don't understand your objections to my proposed experiment.  If you shared your objections in a thread that you started, then other people could offer their honest thoughts on your objections.  I'd read their thoughts and this would hopefully help me better understand your objections.   

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 07:21:51 PM
Like I said, I honestly don't understand your objections to my proposed experiment.  If you shared your objections in a thread that you started, then other people could offer their honest thoughts on your objections.  I'd read their thoughts and this would hopefully help me better understand your objections.

How difficult is it to understand that when you can't (as you have already admitted) differentiate between the spending of several hundred low/middle resource individuals and one high-resource individual, your methodology is completely useless?  You're utterly incapable of relating donations to public will, without resorting to a vote.

That explicitly means the vote is more important for measuring public will than money is.  QED.

Quote from: trdsf on May 23, 2018, 07:59:34 PM
How difficult is it to understand that when you can't (as you have already admitted) differentiate between the spending of several hundred low/middle resource individuals and one high-resource individual, your methodology is completely useless?  You're utterly incapable of relating donations to public will, without resorting to a vote.

That explicitly means the vote is more important for measuring public will than money is.  QED.

The only way that my methodology could be useless is if it made it impossible for my belief in spending to be falsified.  Consider, yet again, the results from the LP's fundraiser...

$6,327.00 â€" I’m That Libertarian!
$5,200.00 â€" Building Bridges, Not Walls
$1,620.00 â€" Pro Choice on Everything
$1,377.77 â€" Empowering the Individual
$395.00 â€" The Power of Principle
$150.00 â€" Future of Freedom
$135.00 â€" Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
$105.00 â€" Rise of the Libertarians
$75.00 â€" Free Lives Matter
$42.00 â€" Be Me, Be Free
$17.76 â€" Make Taxation Theft Again
$15.42 â€" Taxation is Theft
$15.00 â€" Jazzed About Liberty
$15.00 â€" All of Your Freedoms, All of the Time
$5.00 â€" Am I Being Detained!
$5.00 â€" Liberty Here and Now

What do I need to see in order for my belief in spending to be falsified?  Do I need to see how many people donated how much money to each theme?  No.  Do I need to see each donor's tax returns?  No.  All I need to see is that voting would have ranked "Taxation Is Theft" around the same, or lower, than donating did.  This is all I need to see in order for my belief in spending to be falsified.   

Like myself, I'm sure that you agree that "Taxation Is Theft" is a stupid theme.  So the higher it was ranked by voting, the stronger your belief in voting would be falsified. 

Does this make sense?  The entire goal of the experiment is to potentially falsify our beliefs.  This is the basis by which the methodology should be judged.   

So if you want to criticize the methodology, then you have to do so in terms of falsifiability. 

Right now I'm telling you this methodology has the potential to falsify my belief in spending.  This means that you can't say the methodology is useless.  You can certainly say that it's useless for you, but then you'd have to explain why your belief in voting is harder to falsify than my belief in spending. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 08:34:23 PM
What do I need to see in order for my belief in spending to be falsified?  Do I need to see how many people donated how much money to each theme?  No.  Do I need to see each donor's tax returns?  No.  All I need to see is that voting would have ranked "Taxation Is Theft" around the same, or lower, than donating did.  This is all I need to see in order for my belief in spending to be falsified.   

It already IS falsified because you can't differentiate between 100 donors donating $10 each, or one donor donating $1000.  It's just that simple, and you refuse to see it.  Money is a religion to you.

Quote from: trdsf on May 23, 2018, 08:41:08 PM
It already IS falsified because you can't differentiate between 100 donors donating $10 each, or one donor donating $1000.  It's just that simple, and you refuse to see it.  Money is a religion to you.

My belief is that voting elevates trash (ie "Taxation Is Theft") while spending elevates treasure (ie "Building Bridges, Not Walls").  How can this belief already be falsified if I don't actually see how voting ranks the convention themes? 

I'm saying that a corvette is faster than a pinto and a race would prove this.  You're arguing that a race wouldn't prove this because it wouldn't reveal what's under the corvette's hood.  Why do I need to see what's under the corvette's hood?  If what's under its hood is crap, then obviously it's not going to win the race. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 08:59:06 PM
My belief is that voting elevates trash (ie "Taxation Is Theft") while spending elevates treasure (ie "Building Bridges, Not Walls").  How can this belief already be falsified if I don't actually see how voting ranks the convention themes?

Then you're asserting the purest sort of elitism, where those with the money make the rules, and fuck everyone else.  Again, that's explicitly and entirely opposed to the notion of 'public will'.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 23, 2018, 08:59:06 PM
I'm saying that a corvette is faster than a pinto and a race would prove this.  You're arguing that a race wouldn't prove this because it wouldn't reveal what's under the corvette's hood.  Why do I need to see what's under the corvette's hood?  If what's under its hood is crap, then obviously it's not going to win the race.

No, what you're saying is that a new $50,000 Mercedes or 50 used $1000 Yugos are better than a $30,000 Cadillac for no reason more than that it costs more, and that under your system you'd have to judge the one Mercedes and the 50 Yugos as identical.

You're measuring nothing that has anything to do with public will.

Quote from: trdsf on May 24, 2018, 07:07:18 AM
Then you're asserting the purest sort of elitism, where those with the money make the rules, and fuck everyone else.  Again, that's explicitly and entirely opposed to the notion of 'public will'.

No, what you're saying is that a new $50,000 Mercedes or 50 used $1000 Yugos are better than a $30,000 Cadillac for no reason more than that it costs more, and that under your system you'd have to judge the one Mercedes and the 50 Yugos as identical.

You're measuring nothing that has anything to do with public will.

A millionaire is worth a million times as much as a street urchin ;-(

Quote from: trdsf on May 24, 2018, 07:07:18 AM
Then you're asserting the purest sort of elitism, where those with the money make the rules, and fuck everyone else.  Again, that's explicitly and entirely opposed to the notion of 'public will'.

You're assuming that, if we conduct my proposed experiment, enough people will recognize that the spending ranking is better than the voting ranking.  It's rather bizarre for you to assume this, given how much time and energy you've allocated to arguing that voting is clearly better than spending. 

Regarding elitism... this isn't what I am asserting.  But even if it was, what I care about are results.  Deng Xiaoping is my hero.  He went around saying that it doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.  If albinos or AIs or aliens come up with the best rankings then so be it.  Right now I am not really happy with the current rankings.  I'm sure that you've heard of the Kardashians... I'm not at all sure that you've heard of John Quiggin or Andrew Gelman or Cait Lamberton or Joseph Henrich or or or or... it's a long list. 

Society's limited and valuable attention is being severely misallocated, and I'm pretty sure it's primarily because of voting on Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Reddit, Google and and and and... it's a long list.  Given how many different things are ranked by voting... I figure it's a really good idea to conduct an experiment to directly compare voting and spending. 

I assume no such thing.  I have given evidence why your proposed system cannot work, and you have yet to provide the slightest shred of contradictory evidence other than to bleat "but but but I don't think so!"

Funnyâ€"but predictableâ€"how you completely ignore this:

Quote from: trdsf on May 24, 2018, 07:07:18 AM
No, what you're saying is that a new $50,000 Mercedes or 50 used $1000 Yugos are better than a $30,000 Cadillac for no reason more than that it costs more, and that under your system you'd have to judge the one Mercedes and the 50 Yugos as identical.

You're measuring nothing that has anything to do with public will.

The fact that you would be forced to value one Mercedes and fifty Yugos identically under your system demonstrates that it doesn't measure anything.

Quote from: trdsf on May 24, 2018, 01:24:58 PM
I assume no such thing.  I have given evidence why your proposed system cannot work, and you have yet to provide the slightest shred of contradictory evidence other than to bleat "but but but I don't think so!"

The picture you paint doesn't strike me as a very accurate depiction of our exchange.  I've shared the relevant thoughts of three Nobel economists and numerous other highly respected thinkers.  Can you name even one prominent thinker that you have shared in our discussion?  Do you think I'm simply supposed to take your word over theirs? 

I've done my homework, which is how it's really easy for me to tell that you have not.  Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, this has turned into a pissing contest.  Right now we are in adversarial mode rather than in collaborative and cooperative mode. 

Speaking of collaboration and cooperation... Vitalik Buterin and Glen Weyl recently joined forces (https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/liberation-through-radical-decentralization-22fc4bedc2ac) to use Ethereum to test Quadratic Voting (QV).  QV is a hybrid between voting and spending.   Basically, you can buy as many votes as you want, but the more you buy, the more expensive they become.

QuoteOne particular example of a possible area for collaboration, and which illustrates some of the challenges involved, is the use of QV to address the substantial governance problems blockchain-based communities have faced. There have been many attempts to use votes to gauge community sentiment when deciding on potentially controversial protocol changes, but so far they have been criticized either for being too vulnerable to manipulation by sockpuppets (fake accounts) and malicious voting by non-community-members or for being too skewed toward reflecting the views of a small group of wealthy coin holders. Some form of QV could present a moderate alternative, as participants’ differing strength of views and stake in the community are taken account, but because the cost of buying many votes quickly becomes prohibitive (1000 votes would cost 1,000,000 credits) the ability for a small elite to disproportionately affect outcomes is limited. - Vitalik Buterin and Glen Weyl, Liberation Through Radical Decentralization (https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/liberation-through-radical-decentralization-22fc4bedc2ac)

This is perfectly relevant to our discussion.  So why didn't you share it?  Obviously you weren't aware of it.

The reason why it's so easy to overlook important things is because all our perspectives are very limited.  However, our perspectives aren't equally limited, which is why it's so beneficial to know the group's perspective.  The question is whether the group's perspective is more effectively revealed by voting or spending.  I'm guessing that spending is far more effective than voting... but I could be wrong. 

If I'm wrong, then my proposed experiment would help prove this.  It would demonstrate that voting is more effective than spending. 

Vitalik Buterin and Glen Weyl are working together to test an alternative to voting and spending.  Personally, I think QV is better than voting and worse than spending... but I could be wrong.  What matters though is that those two guys are collaborating to actually test a ranking system. 

You and I theoretically could set our differences aside and help test whether voting or spending is better.  Or, we could simply continue with our pissing contest.  Personally I prefer collaboration and cooperation.   

Bull.  You attack things I haven't said, and dodge direct statements that point out fatal flaws in your proposal.  Like this very simple one:

Quote from: trdsf on May 24, 2018, 01:24:58 PM
Funnyâ€"but predictableâ€"how you completely ignore this:

Quote from: trdsf on May 24, 2018, 07:07:18 AM
No, what you're saying is that a new $50,000 Mercedes or 50 used $1000 Yugos are better than a $30,000 Cadillac for no reason more than that it costs more, and that under your system you'd have to judge the one Mercedes and the 50 Yugos as identical.

You're measuring nothing that has anything to do with public will.

The fact that you would be forced to value one Mercedes and fifty Yugos identically under your system demonstrates that it doesn't measure anything.

And of course, you went right back to whining "but but but just run it anyway!"

Well, I don't run this site, so I don't decide that, but *if* asked my advice, I would say this is one of the sloppiest, most poorly thought out, least supported models I have seen in a very long time, and I wouldn't support running it if you paid me.  It needs considerable revision to the model, the methodology, and the underlying explanation.

Your fundamental premise, that spending represents public will better than actual public will represents public will, is falsified prima facie.

You are incapable of responding to direct statements without resorting to either non sequiturs, straw men, or just variations on "Nuh-uh!"

It would be a greater waste of my time to try to fix as completely broken an idea as you present here than it would be to continue what you call a 'pissing contest'.  It could have been a conversation if you didn't have this near-religious obsession with dollars über alles.  Do what you will; since you refuse to even countenance the idea that maybe, just maybe you could take a second look at what you're doing, I have better things to do than waste my time with bad theories, broken models, and just plain bullshit.

Quote from: trdsf on May 23, 2018, 04:34:42 PM
I have filled in that blank multiple times this thread, and you know I have.  You just refuse to address the issues I have raised and for you to pull this stunt now simply confirms that you're a dishonest debater.  You don't see what you don't want to see, which is what makes this exercise exactly like debating a creationist.

I have been perfectly clear what my objections to your thesis, assumptions and methodology are.

The problem with debating dishonest debaters is that they will stay dishonest regardless of any facts presented to them.  Not that I won't also throw facts at them.  But I think it is important to realize that your target audience is not the dishonest debaters but the people who read the posts.  They may agree with you, and that is all that really matters.   

Quote from: Cavebear on May 25, 2018, 12:15:39 AM
The problem with debating dishonest debaters is that they will stay dishonest regardless of any facts presented to them.  Not that I won't also throw facts at them.  But I think it is important to realize that your target audience is not the dishonest debaters but the people who read the posts.  They may agree with you, and that is all that really matters.

Totally disagree with you ;-)  Having people agree with you is great if you are running for office ... or are a manager of sheeple.

Also don't presume that Xero is dishonest ... he seems obsessive-compulsive to me.  If we were speaking to him, I would say he is mostly deaf, but we are texting, so maybe mostly blind?

There are no honest debates.  One shows up to a knife fight with a gun, and the guy with a gun wins!  It is about power, not about truth.  You can't handle the truth, no monkey can.

Trdsf, have you ever tried Modelo Negra?  The other day my neighbor gave me one and it was the first time that I tried it.  It was pretty good.  My neighbors, friends and family as a group have collectively tried a much greater variety of beers than I have tried.  The same is true of the members of this forum. 

Imagine if we all used voting and donating to rank beers.  Would the voting ranking and the donating ranking be the same?  Probably not.  They would probably be pretty different so naturally most of us are going to prefer one of the rankings more than the other.  If you prefer the voting ranking then this will confirm your belief that voting is better than spending.  If, on the other hand, you prefer the spending ranking then this will contradict your belief that voting is better than spending. 

This experiment would simply facilitate a direct comparison of voting and spending.  That's really all it needs to do in order for each one of us to decide for ourselves whether voting or spending is better. 

Yesterday, like many days, I allocated my attention to the Crooked Timber blog, where I found this blog entry (http://crookedtimber.org/2018/05/24/kate-manne-on-12-rules-for-life/), which directed my attention to this article...

QuoteJordan B. Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life: An antidote to chaos was born as an answer to a question posed on the internet discussion forum Quora: “What are the most valuable things everyone should know?” Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, proposed a list of maxims, which became popular with Quora users. As Peterson tells us in his book’s introduction (“Overture”), the list received 120,000 views and 2,300 “upvotes”. “My procrastination-induced musings hit a nerve. I had written a 99.9 percentile answer.” “You win Quora. We can just close the site now”, read one comment, as recounted by Peterson. - Kate Manne, Reconsider the lobster (https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/jordan-peterson-12-rules-kate-manne-review/)

What difference would it have made if Quora used spending instead of voting to rank/prioritize answers? Would Peterson's answer still have been so highly ranked? Would he still have written his book? Would Kate Manne still have allocated her attention to reading and reviewing it? Would I still have directed your attention to Crooked Timber's blog entry and Manne's review?

You have this belief that voting is better than spending at allocating everybody's valuable attention.  I believe that the opposite is true.  My proposed experiment would test our beliefs.  Clearly you don't think that my experiment would do a good job of testing your belief.  But what experiment would do a good job of testing your belief?  If you don't test your belief then how can you be sure that it isn't bullshit? 

From my perspective, all I need for my belief to be tested is to see a direct comparison of voting and spending.  If the voting ranking is better than the spending ranking, then this would falsify my belief that spending is better than voting. 

What, if anything, would falsify your belief that voting is better than spending? 

Quote from: Baruch on May 25, 2018, 07:29:04 AM
Totally disagree with you ;-)  Having people agree with you is great if you are running for office ... or are a manager of sheeple.

Also don't presume that Xero is dishonest ... he seems obsessive-compulsive to me.  If we were speaking to him, I would say he is mostly deaf, but we are texting, so maybe mostly blind?

There are no honest debates.  One shows up to a knife fight with a gun, and the guy with a gun wins!  It is about power, not about truth.  You can't handle the truth, no monkey can.

Naturally I don't personally perceive that I am a dishonest debater.  I honestly and genuinely don't understand trdsf's strenuous objection to my proposed experiment.  Why in the world does he so strongly oppose a direct comparison of voting and spending? 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 25, 2018, 09:25:39 AM
Naturally I don't personally perceive that I am a dishonest debater.  I honestly and genuinely don't understand trdsf's strenuous objection to my proposed experiment.  Why in the world does he so strongly oppose a direct comparison of voting and spending?

You implicitly challenge his politics.  I don't presume to take you as a political opponent.  There are actual philosophers who do full time research on voting/preference systems.  And there is "Experimental Philosophy".  You might be both of those, who knows?

I don't take your hobby as of great interest, but don't take that personally.  People would be bored with mine too.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 25, 2018, 09:18:45 AM

What difference would it have made if Quora used spending instead of voting to rank/prioritize answers? Would Peterson's answer still have been so highly ranked? Would he still have written his book? Would Kate Manne still have allocated her attention to reading and reviewing it? Would I still have directed your attention to Crooked Timber's blog entry and Manne's review?

You have this belief that voting is better than spending at allocating everybody's valuable attention.  I believe that the opposite is true.  My proposed experiment would test our beliefs.  Clearly you don't think that my experiment would do a good job of testing your belief.  But what experiment would do a good job of testing your belief?  If you don't test your belief then how can you be sure that it isn't bullshit? 

From my perspective, all I need for my belief to be tested is to see a direct comparison of voting and spending.  If the voting ranking is better than the spending ranking, then this would falsify my belief that spending is better than voting. 

What, if anything, would falsify your belief that voting is better than spending?

Spending is defined as wealth.  Voting is defined as "one person, one vote", not "one dollar one vote". 

Your obvious assumption is that wealthy peoples' votes SHOULD could more than "one person, one vote".  Congratulations on joining TrumpWorld...

Quote from: Cavebear on May 25, 2018, 12:15:39 AM
The problem with debating dishonest debaters is that they will stay dishonest regardless of any facts presented to them.  Not that I won't also throw facts at them.  But I think it is important to realize that your target audience is not the dishonest debaters but the people who read the posts.  They may agree with you, and that is all that really matters.

Like I said before, it's like trying to have a debate with a creationist; I think we've found the Ken Ham of plutocracy.  Many of his 'arguments' (such that they were) were just as faith-based.

But there's only so long one can bash one's head against a brick wall before it starts getting pointless, and his diversion, distraction, doubletalk and dishonesty have reached the stage where it's just not worth the energy input anymore.  For any readers that I may have, anything further would be needless repetition of the same thing, in the desperate and forlorn hope that one byte of data just might slip past his fingers and into his ears.

Besides, if he can't grasp that his system can't differentiate between 10,000 people giving $1 each and one person giving $10,000 (nor can it differentiate between 10,000 people wanting to participate but being unable to because of resources, and 10,000 people just not giving a rat's ass) and that means he can never know what exactly he's measuring other than raw dollars... well, I don't have enough Bondo to fix that big a dent.  I'll just call it totaled and move on to more fruitful pursuits.

Quote from: trdsf on May 25, 2018, 11:28:26 AM
Like I said before, it's like trying to have a debate with a creationist; I think we've found the Ken Ham of plutocracy.  Many of his 'arguments' (such that they were) were just as faith-based.

But there's only so long one can bash one's head against a brick wall before it starts getting pointless, and his diversion, distraction, doubletalk and dishonesty have reached the stage where it's just not worth the energy input anymore.  For any readers that I may have, anything further would be needless repetition of the same thing, in the desperate and forlorn hope that one byte of data just might slip past his fingers and into his ears.

Besides, if he can't grasp that his system can't differentiate between 10,000 people giving $1 each and one person giving $10,000 (nor can it differentiate between 10,000 people wanting to participate but being unable to because of resources, and 10,000 people just not giving a rat's ass) and that means he can never know what exactly he's measuring other than raw dollars... well, I don't have enough Bondo to fix that big a dent.  I'll just call it totaled and move on to more fruitful pursuits.

Remember that your target audience is not Xerographica, but the unseen ones who read these posts.  I do have to remind myself of that sometimes too.

Quote from: Cavebear on May 25, 2018, 10:30:45 AM
Spending is defined as wealth.  Voting is defined as "one person, one vote", not "one dollar one vote". 

Your obvious assumption is that wealthy peoples' votes SHOULD could more than "one person, one vote".  Congratulations on joining TrumpWorld...

My hypothesis is that voting elevates trash while spending elevates treasure.  Let's say that this forum used voting and donating to rank beers.  Which ranking would you prefer? 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 25, 2018, 12:55:03 PM
My hypothesis is that voting elevates trash while spending elevates treasure.  Let's say that this forum used voting and donating to rank beers.  Which ranking would you prefer?

You are obsessed with that analogy.  Was it used on Fox TV?

But even if all your thoughts are your own, your thinking condemns you to an elitism of the worst kind.  Your "more dollars" mean you are somehow more important than I am. 

BTW, how rich are you?  How many $1 votes do you command?  Fess up...

Quote from: Cavebear on May 25, 2018, 12:20:08 PM
Remember that your target audience is not Xerographica, but the unseen ones who read these posts.  I do have to remind myself of that sometimes too.

But it should be him too, and it's frustrating when the wall of faith goes up and the fingers go in the ears and the eyes close and all the response you get may as well be a loop of tape.  I mean, he's saying to you exactly the same thing he said to me, as if changing prominent atheists or cars to beer without actually changing the argument makes the argument valid.  I know you have more patience than I doâ€"but I will say good luck anyway.

And I'll admit, I don't have a lot of time or respect for libertarianism, which is a fine philosophy to have if you're a college professor/student or think-tank member or some other person who doesn't have to interact much with the real world if they don't want to.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 25, 2018, 12:55:03 PM
My hypothesis is that voting elevates trash while spending elevates treasure. 

But that's objectively not true.  People happily spend their money on trash all the time.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 25, 2018, 12:55:03 PM
Let's say that this forum used voting and donating to rank beers.  Which ranking would you prefer? 

Neither system would find the best beer.   Have you ever been to a beer festival?  The only real way you could rank those beers is by testing each of them.

Quote from: trdsf on May 25, 2018, 01:18:23 PM
But it should be him too, and it's frustrating when the wall of faith goes up and the fingers go in the ears and the eyes close and all the response you get may as well be a loop of tape.  I mean, he's saying to you exactly the same thing he said to me, as if changing prominent atheists or cars to beer without actually changing the argument makes the argument valid.  I know you have more patience than I doâ€"but I will say good luck anyway.

And I'll admit, I don't have a lot of time or respect for libertarianism, which is a fine philosophy to have if you're a college professor/student or think-tank member or some other person who doesn't have to interact much with the real world if they don't want to.

I have learned that facts do not change the minds of those who will not change their minds.  And amazingly, some studies show that facts actively push some people into denying them.  You and I don't think like that, but some people do. 

I read an article (in Scientific American I think) that described some experiments that proved this odd mental ill-health.  Basicaiclly, the experiments suggested 2 approaches.

One was to ask indirect questions about outcomes (like "what would reduce planetary temperature increases?") No mention of "Global warming" that triggers some people.  The other suggestion was along the lines of "What would it take to change your mind on Topic X.  In other words, let the other person describe what really bothers the,. 

On climate change, that might be "Only God can change the climate"  or "We need the fuel" or "Its a natural event of the sun warming". 

THEN you have some idea how to discuss the matter further. 

Quote from: Cavebear on May 25, 2018, 01:15:29 PM
You are obsessed with that analogy.  Was it used on Fox TV?

But even if all your thoughts are your own, your thinking condemns you to an elitism of the worst kind.  Your "more dollars" mean you are somehow more important than I am. 

BTW, how rich are you?  How many $1 votes do you command?  Fess up...

I'm talking about a potential experiment to test our beliefs.  Are you interested in discussing this experiment? 

And no, I'm not rich.  If I was rich then why wouldn't I simply pay some college professor to conduct this experiment? 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 25, 2018, 01:43:39 PM
I'm talking about a potential experiment to test our beliefs.  Are you interested in discussing this experiment? 

And no, I'm not rich.  If I was rich then why wouldn't I simply pay some college professor to conduct this experiment?

You expressed political views suggesting money was votes.

But OK. hit me with your beer experiment and lets see how I react.  And trust me, I will be honest even if I see through it.  If someone wants an experimebt, I a fair subject.

Quote from: Jason78 on May 25, 2018, 01:32:28 PM
But that's objectively not true.  People happily spend their money on trash all the time.

I'm not arguing that spending always elevates treasure.  Spending is just far more likely to elevate treasure than voting is. 

Quote from: Jason78 on May 25, 2018, 01:32:28 PMNeither system would find the best beer.   Have you ever been to a beer festival?  The only real way you could rank those beers is by testing each of them.

The beers would be ranked differently by voting and donating.  Do you agree?  If so, then isn't it likely that you would prefer one ranking more than the other? 

I have not been to a beer festival or a dog show.  But I have been to many plant shows.  I'm far more informed about plants than I am about beer and dogs.  Therefore, I'd be willing to spend more money ranking plants than beers and dogs. 

Are you more informed about beers or plants?  Would you be willing to spend more money to rank beers or plants? 

Quote from: Cavebear on May 25, 2018, 01:49:09 PM
You expressed political views suggesting money was votes.

But OK. hit me with your beer experiment and lets see how I react.  And trust me, I will be honest even if I see through it.  If someone wants an experimebt, I a fair subject.

Members of this forum would use voting and donating to rank beers.  We'd all compare the two rankings and decide for ourselves which one is better.  Which ranking do you think you'll prefer? 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 25, 2018, 01:52:22 PM
I'm not arguing that spending always elevates treasure.  Spending is just far more likely to elevate treasure than voting is. 

The beers would be ranked differently by voting and donating.  Do you agree?  If so, then isn't it likely that you would prefer one ranking more than the other? 

I have not been to a beer festival or a dog show.  But I have been to many plant shows.  I'm far more informed about plants than I am about beer and dogs.  Therefore, I'd be willing to spend more money ranking plants than beers and dogs. 

Are you more informed about beers or plants?  Would you be willing to spend more money to rank beers or plants?

Actually I like both.  Chose or use both.

"Spending is just far more likely to elevate treasure than voting is." - Xerographics

Well that pretty much says you despise voters.  I do too, but I have a different theory ... humans are stupid.  With or without money.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 25, 2018, 01:52:22 PM
The beers would be ranked differently by voting and donating.  Do you agree?  If so, then isn't it likely that you would prefer one ranking more than the other? 

I quite agree that the two methods would have different outcomes. 

And as I've said, I'd prefer neither because they would both fail to find the best beer.   

Quote from: Xerographica on May 25, 2018, 01:52:22 PM
I have not been to a beer festival or a dog show.  But I have been to many plant shows.  I'm far more informed about plants than I am about beer and dogs.  Therefore, I'd be willing to spend more money ranking plants than beers and dogs. 

Are you more informed about beers or plants?  Would you be willing to spend more money to rank beers or plants? 

I have a limited amount of resources but I have spent money so that I can rank beers.   I didn't pay for each beer though, I paid for the opportunity to go in and sample as much beer as I wanted.   Everyone paid the same, whether they sampled 1 beer or 100.

Quote from: Jason78 on May 26, 2018, 06:21:32 AM
I quite agree that the two methods would have different outcomes. 

And as I've said, I'd prefer neither because they would both fail to find the best beer.   

I have a limited amount of resources but I have spent money so that I can rank beers.   I didn't pay for each beer though, I paid for the opportunity to go in and sample as much beer as I wanted.   Everyone paid the same, whether they sampled 1 beer or 100.

Right now you have a favorite beer.  This is the best beer that you know of.  With my proposed experiment let's say that you donate $10 to this forum to help promote your best beer.  I personally would only donate maybe like $5 dollars to promote my best beer.  Let's say that a total of 10 members would donate to promote their best beers.  Your beer ends up being the most highly ranked beer on the donating list.

All 100 or so members of this forum who haven't tried your best beer go out and try it.  Doing so naturally improves our own definition of "best".  Then, when we try new beers, we naturally judge them according to our improved definition of "best".  If I happen to find a better beer, then I make a donation to promote it, which further improves our definition of "best". 

Essentially, we all train each other and are trained by each other.  We all become more and more useful to each other. 

A while back I was visiting my friend Michelle.  We were standing in her front yard when I noticed a street tree with something yellow on the trunk.  I realized it was a chicken of the woods mushroom.  My friend didn't know that it's delicious.  She grabbed a knife and a bag so that I could harvest it.  I offered her some but she was too scared.  Some time afterwards she found another chicken of the woods and she harvested it and brought it over to my place.  I cooked it for us and this time she decided to try it.  She loved it. 

Really this is the only mushroom that I feel confident enough identifying.  Well, I think morel mushrooms are also pretty distinct... but I'm not 100% sure that there aren't similar looking mushrooms that are poisonous.   

Hunter gatherers were constantly improving each others' definitions of "useful".  It was important to learn the difference between a useful and a useless mushroom.   But this is where trade came into play.  The usefulness of a mushroom was defined by how many obsidian arrowheads you could get for it. 

All the members of this forum are essentially a tribe... but we don't use our money to improve each other's definitions of "useful".  As a result, we are all far less useful to each other than we could and should be. 

The $10 dollars that you donate would go into the owner's pocket.  However you would also have the opportunity to educate the rest of us about what you consider to be the most useful beer.  But it's not like your motive would be purely altruistic.  You would actually be training us to help you find an even better beer for you.  We would be your Igors searching for better beers instead of better brains.  We would be your beer minions swarming bars searching for better beers. 

It's rather mind-boggling that life remained unicellular for several billion years.  Then somehow multicellular organisms evolved and voila... here I am... more than a billion years later... making the case for us to become a multi-body organism.  Well, a more cohesive, coherent, communicative and cooperative multi-body organism.  Trying to persuade you all is hard work.  I wonder if this is why it took so long for multicellular organisms to develop. 

And then some guy comes in and puts $10,000 on Bud Lite.  Hey, look, Bud Lite is the best beer!  We don't need  any taste trials, any discussion, any facts, one guy with a lot of money likes it so it must be the best.

Insert heartfelt eyeroll here.

Quote from: trdsf on May 26, 2018, 04:21:27 PM
And then some guy comes in and puts $10,000 on Bud Lite.  Hey, look, Bud Lite is the best beer!  We don't need  any taste trials, any discussion, any facts, one guy with a lot of money likes it so it must be the best.

If this happens then you win and I lose.  This result would prove, at least from my perspective, that spending does not elevate treasure.  My belief in the superiority of spending would be effectively falsified. 

What's tricky though is that the owner of the website would be a big winner.  Naturally the very next week he'd announce a fundraiser to rank wine.  The week after it would be cheese.  Word would pretty quickly spread and then all the forum owners would be trying to get in on the action.  Eventually the biggest websites would provide this feature to all their members.  On the Epiphyte Society Facebook page, which I manage, I could create a fundraiser to rank epiphytes.  Boom!  $10,000 dollars on... on... mistletoe?  I was struggling to think of a trashy epiphyte.  Mistletoe isn't an epiphyte... it's a parasite.  Actually, I suppose the ubiquitous phalaenopsis orchid is the closest epiphyte equivalent to Bud Lite. 

What's fascinating is that over 100 years ago super rich guys would pay over $10,000 for even a very boring phalaenopsis.  They were super rare back then.  But, because some rich guys were willing to pay such stupid high prices for these orchids... production greatly increased.... innovative propagation techniques were discovered... and now you can find much higher quality phalaenopsis orchids at Trader Joes for less than $10 dollars.  After they finish blooming many people simply throw them away!  The phalaenopsis went from really rare to really abundant. 

But I certainly wouldn't spend any money to promote phalaenopsis.  Why would I spend my money to promote something that everybody already knows about?  If I was going to spend my money to promote an orchid maybe I'd choose Encyclia. 

Anyways, I'd be certainly surprised if somebody did decide to spend $10,000 to promote Bud Lite. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 26, 2018, 07:23:33 PM
If this happens then you win and I lose.  This result would prove, at least from my perspective, that spending does not elevate treasure.  My belief in the superiority of spending would be effectively falsified.

The fact that this is a perfectly possible outcome in your system means that it is falsified.  You can never know what you're measuring under your system.  If you can't differentiate between one person putting $10,000 on Bud Lite and 10,000 putting $1 each, you can't in any way, shape or form claim you're measuring public will.  And you can't even tell if that's what's happening without counting votes, one per person.

That means the vote is necessarily the accurate part, not the money.

You can not gloss over that with "but I still think my way works".  It is demonstrated that your proposal is incorrect.  That's not just disagreement, that's evidence that indicates your basic assumption is incorrect.

What part of "fatal fundamental flaw" is so difficult to grasp?

Trdsf, for some reason you think the measurement is more important to me than the outcome.   It really isn't.  With voting the outcome of Socrates' trial was his execution.   I'm supposed to support/endorse/condone/accept this outcome simply because it was supported by a majority of the jurors?  No way. 

We already know that voters murdered Socrates.  We already know that voters elected Hitler.  We already know that voters chose prohibition.  We already know that voters are idiots.  What I want to know is whether the outcome is any smarter/wiser/better when it's determined by spenders. 

What I'm proposing is a very simple and straightforward contest between voters and spenders.   You strongly oppose this contest because you consider the voters to already be the technical winners.  The fact is that voters are not the winners, technical or otherwise, until I see that the outcome is just as dumb when it's determined by spenders. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 26, 2018, 10:07:36 PM
Trdsf, for some reason you think the measurement is more important to me than the outcome.   It really isn't.  With voting the outcome of Socrates' trial was his execution.   I'm supposed to support/endorse/condone/accept this outcome simply because it was supported by a majority of the jurors?  No way. 

We already know that voters murdered Socrates.  We already know that voters elected Hitler.  We already know that voters chose prohibition.  We already know that voters are idiots.  What I want to know is whether the outcome is any smarter/wiser/better when it's determined by spenders. 

What I'm proposing is a very simple and straightforward contest between voters and spenders.   You strongly oppose this contest because you consider the voters to already be the technical winners.  The fact is that voters are not the winners, technical or otherwise, until I see that the outcome is just as dumb when it's determined by spenders.

Some people can't get past the politics of 2016 CE, you can't get past the politics of 399 BCE.  A good study of Socrates is The Hemlock Cup, by Bettany Hughes.  Not unlike Cato the Younger, Socrates was in fact ... a pain in the ass with disastrous political associations (Pericles and Alcibiades and The Thirty).

Quote from: Xerographica on May 26, 2018, 07:23:33 PM
If this happens then you win and I lose.  This result would prove, at least from my perspective, that spending does not elevate treasure.  My belief in the superiority of spending would be effectively falsified. 

This is what happens in real life.   And there's no way your meagre money pot could compete with the lobbying fund of a major corporation.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 26, 2018, 10:07:36 PM
Trdsf, for some reason you think the measurement is more important to me than the outcome.   It really isn't.  With voting the outcome of Socrates' trial was his execution.   I'm supposed to support/endorse/condone/accept this outcome simply because it was supported by a majority of the jurors?  No way.

And spending gave us Donald fucking Trump, because the people with the resources knew what they would get out of it: a(nother) massive and undeserved tax cut, so they could control even more resources.  So they got right back a lot (if not all) of what they put in.  For them it wasn't spending, it was a freebie, and fuck the rest of the country.

I assume you're familiar with the Electoral College.  It was put into place to allow the political and financial elites a chance to overrule a popular vote they didn't like, not to validate the popular voteâ€"the original intent was for the electors to meet and deliberate and make a decision for the public, not in representation of.  It is absolutely the "spending" result over the "voting" result.  It has overturned the popular vote four times, and every single one of those four times has been (or is currently) a below-average leader at best.

There's your "outcome".

Here's what you're really saying: voting doesn't always go the way YOU want, therefore you want something else that might.  Well, I'm afraid I have some shocking news for you: you don't decide what the correct outcome is, and you don't get away with cherry-picking a couple bad ones and pretending those are representative of the entire history of democracy.

Quote from: Jason78 on May 27, 2018, 05:05:07 AM
This is what happens in real life.   And there's no way your meagre money pot could compete with the lobbying fund of a major corporation.

In real life you spend your own money purely to promote your favorite beers?  If so, how much money, which beers and where? 

Think about the members of this forum.  The majority drinks the common beers while the minority drinks the uncommon beers.  Well yeah, this isn't a beer forum.  We aren't all going to be beer nuts. 

So do the math.  With voting of course the uncommon beers are going to lose by a mile.  But with spending, even if the uncommon beers still lose, it won't be by a mile.  The margin will be a lot smaller... the race will be a lot closer. 

Naturally we will all want to try the most highly ranked beer that we haven't already tried.  Will we love it?  If so, then we can help improve its ranking by making another donation. 

Let's see if this system works for us.  If it doesn't, then there won't be any point in debating whether it will work for the rest of the world. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 27, 2018, 05:07:07 PM
With voting of course the uncommon beers are going to lose by a mile.  But with spending, even if the uncommon beers still lose, it won't be by a mile.  The margin will be a lot smaller... the race will be a lot closer. 

You don't know that.  That's your unsupported assertion.  And never say "do the math" and then provided NO NUMBERS TO DO THE MATH WITH.

So help me, I will get you you to understand basic statistics if it kills me...

Quote from: trdsf on May 27, 2018, 02:42:31 PMHere's what you're really saying: voting doesn't always go the way YOU want, therefore you want something else that might.  Well, I'm afraid I have some shocking news for you: you don't decide what the correct outcome is, and you don't get away with cherry-picking a couple bad ones and pretending those are representative of the entire history of democracy.

QuoteSpeaking of Brexit: the difference between the UK liberal media’s treatment of the massive vote for abortion rights in Ireland and the massive vote for Brexit in Britain (17.4m votes, the most for anything in British history, as if you needed reminding) is staggering, if also depressingly unsurprising. In their flighty view, Brexit was the work of plebs brainwashed by a bus, while the the repeal of the Eighth was the work of an enlightened people. Brexit is scary and dangerous and therefore we should call it off; the repeal of the Eighth is brilliant and wonderful and therefore we should see it through. Brexit confirmed democracy is a terrible idea; the repeal of the Eighth shows it is a great idea. And on it goes, hypocrisy upon hypocrisy, anti-democratic wailing one minute, pro-democracy weeping the next. They support democracy, not in principle, but only if it gives them what they want. - Brendan O'Neill, Ireland’s referendum shows that some people only like democracy when it gives them what they want (https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/irelands-referendum-shows-that-some-people-only-like-democracy-when-it-gives-them-what-they-want/)

QuoteWhy do bees take a vote to begin with, though? In 2013, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, the London School of Economics, and the University of Sussex used game theory to show that animals’ willingness to behave democratically redounds to their benefit. Compared with decisions handed down by tyrant leaders, democratic decisions are less likely to be flawed. Moreover, when animals have a chance to register their opinion, the gap between the average individual’s preferred outcome and the actual outcome tends to be smaller than it would be if the decision were made by fiat. In this way, animal democracy is stabilizing; few get their way, but most are relatively content. - William Brennan, How to Sway a Baboon Despot (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/how-to-sway-a-baboon-despot/556892/)

A crowd of voters and a crowd of donors aren't going to be equally wise.  It behooves us to figure out, sooner rather than later, which crowd is wiser. 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 27, 2018, 07:55:06 PM
A crowd of voters and a crowd of donors aren't going to be equally wise.  It behooves us to figure out, sooner rather than later, which crowd is wiser.

ASSERTION!  What's your EVIDENCE for thinking that, other than that there are election results you don't like?

Here it is in pill concentrate form: whether or not voting is the best possible way to measure public will is not relevant.  What is relevant is that I am pretty sure I have demonstrated that it's better than what you propose.

You give no data, no evidence, not anything other than your unsupported assertion that money is a better measure than voting, and even admit up front that your idea doesn't even measure what you claim it measures.

"Just run the experiment anyway" is NOT evidence.  "Well, I think it might work" is NOT evidence.  You need to SHOW WHY THERE'S A REASON for your assertion, not just assert it over and over and over like some magic incantation.

Trdsf, how many different things are currently ranked by spending?  Food, computers, houses and numerous other things are currently ranked by spending.  Are you arguing that there's no evidence that spending is better than voting at ranking these things?  If so, is this the first time that you've argued this? 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 27, 2018, 11:29:38 PM
Trdsf, how many different things are currently ranked by spending?  Food, computers, houses and numerous other things are currently ranked by spending.  Are you arguing that there's no evidence that spending is better than voting at ranking these things?  If so, is this the first time that you've argued this?

If we actually paid attention to money in elections and between elections ... there is a correlation between price and vote  (of your representative not you).

Mathematics if social psychology ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEdBgRWkF-I

If it isn't based on psychology and sociology, then it is statistical nonsense ... voting (beauty contest) or purchase (greed).

Quote from: Xerographica on May 27, 2018, 11:29:38 PM
Trdsf, how many different things are currently ranked by spending?  Food, computers, houses and numerous other things are currently ranked by spending.  Are you arguing that there's no evidence that spending is better than voting at ranking these things?  If so, is this the first time that you've argued this?

Wrong again.  What you're talking about is having people express preference by the amount they choose to spend, which is permitted to be both variable and personal.  That is not in any way, shape or form the same as purchasing commodities.

I can't go up to the counter at the grocery and say, "You know, this steak is only worth $3 a pound to me" and have them agree that based on my preferences, that's all I should pay.  No one is going to go to a car dealer and say "I love this BMW so much I'm going to give you $100,000 for it instead of the $50,000 you're asking!"

Now, you were asked for evidence to back up your premise, not another irrelevant digression with an attempted ad hominem.  I'm going to emphasize it for you since apparently you can't be bothered to read:

Quote from: trdsf on May 27, 2018, 10:05:31 PM
Here it is in pill concentrate form: whether or not voting is the best possible way to measure public will is not relevant.  What is relevant is that I am pretty sure I have demonstrated that it's better than what you propose.

You give no data, no evidence, not anything other than your unsupported assertion that money is a better measure than voting, and even admit up front that your idea doesn't even measure what you claim it measures.

"Just run the experiment anyway" is NOT evidence.  "Well, I think it might work" is NOT evidence.  You need to SHOW WHY THERE'S A REASON for your assertion, not just assert it over and over and over like some magic incantation.

Quote from: trdsf on May 27, 2018, 09:01:57 PM

Quote from: Xerographica on May 27, 2018, 07:55:06 PM
A crowd of voters and a crowd of donors aren't going to be equally wise.  It behooves us to figure out, sooner rather than later, which crowd is wiser. 

ASSERTION!  What's your EVIDENCE for thinking that, other than that there are election results you don't like?

Quote from: trdsf on May 27, 2018, 07:42:53 PM

Quote from: Xerographica on May 27, 2018, 05:07:07 PM
With voting of course the uncommon beers are going to lose by a mile.  But with spending, even if the uncommon beers still lose, it won't be by a mile.  The margin will be a lot smaller... the race will be a lot closer. 

You don't know that.  That's your unsupported assertion.  And never say "do the math" and then provided NO NUMBERS TO DO THE MATH WITH.

So help me, I will get you you to understand basic statistics if it kills me...

Quote from: Baruch on May 25, 2018, 05:53:11 PM
"Spending is just far more likely to elevate treasure than voting is." - Xerographics

Well that pretty much says you despise voters.  I do too, but I have a different theory ... humans are stupid.  With or without money.

We agree that humans are stupid.  The difference is that we disagree WHICH humans are stupid...

Quote from: Xerographica on May 27, 2018, 05:07:07 PM
In real life you spend your own money purely to promote your favorite beers?  If so, how much money, which beers and where? 

Think about the members of this forum.  The majority drinks the common beers while the minority drinks the uncommon beers.  Well yeah, this isn't a beer forum.  We aren't all going to be beer nuts. 

So do the math.  With voting of course the uncommon beers are going to lose by a mile.  But with spending, even if the uncommon beers still lose, it won't be by a mile.  The margin will be a lot smaller... the race will be a lot closer. 

Naturally we will all want to try the most highly ranked beer that we haven't already tried.  Will we love it?  If so, then we can help improve its ranking by making another donation. 

Let's see if this system works for us.  If it doesn't, then there won't be any point in debating whether it will work for the rest of the world.

Where did this obsession with brand of beer and politics come from?

Quote from: trdsf on May 28, 2018, 08:51:51 PM
Wrong again.  What you're talking about is having people express preference by the amount they choose to spend, which is permitted to be both variable and personal.  That is not in any way, shape or form the same as purchasing commodities.

I can't go up to the counter at the grocery and say, "You know, this steak is only worth $3 a pound to me" and have them agree that based on my preferences, that's all I should pay.  No one is going to go to a car dealer and say "I love this BMW so much I'm going to give you $100,000 for it instead of the $50,000 you're asking!"

So the only reason you oppose replacing voting with donating is because the amount of money can be variable?  You oppose donating in general?  Have you ever previously argued against donating? 

Possibly because the Constitution arranges for voting (by court decisions), and not buying votes (by court decisions).  The decisions previously have been "one person, one vote".  The idea of money as a voting power is rather new and should be eliminated.

Quote from: Cavebear on May 29, 2018, 02:30:25 AM
Possibly because the Constitution arranges for voting (by court decisions), and not buying votes (by court decisions).  The decisions previously have been "one person, one vote".  The idea of money as a voting power is rather new and should be eliminated.

What's the difference between using money to rank producers and using money to rank politicians?  Spending either is, or isn't, better than voting at ranking people.   

Quote from: Xerographica on May 29, 2018, 04:59:43 AM
What's the difference between using money to rank producers and using money to rank politicians?  Spending either is, or isn't, better than voting at ranking people.

You are conflating "one person, one vote" with auctions.  In the former, there is no bargaining.  In the latter, only the one who spends the most money wins.

Let's try this another way.  You want to post.  But it goes to a secret site where you have to bid to post it.  And I have a lot more money than you do.  So you never get to post.  I keep stopping you (and you don't get the money from the bid because it just sort of disappears and even worse, you can't prove I actually spent any money)?

How would you feel about THAT?

Quote from: Xerographica on May 29, 2018, 02:18:33 AM
So the only reason you oppose replacing voting with donating is because the amount of money can be variable?  You oppose donating in general?  Have you ever previously argued against donating?

I have been perfectly clear that donating over voting is not a reliable way to measure public will, not that donating is a bad thing (and I quote myself: "If what you're after is a fundraiser, just run a fucking fundraiser…. (http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=12619.msg1216899#msg1216899)").

Either to point to any place where I said donations are bad, or admit you're a liar.

And another straw man.  And you ignored every single point I raised.

Obviously, your position is indefensible.

Quote from: trdsf on May 29, 2018, 10:38:04 AM
I have been perfectly clear that donating over voting is not a reliable way to measure public will, not that donating is a bad thing (and I quote myself: "If what you're after is a fundraiser, just run a fucking fundraiser…. (http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=12619.msg1216899#msg1216899)").

Either to point to any place where I said donations are bad, or admit you're a liar.

And another straw man.  And you ignored every single point I raised.

Obviously, your position is indefensible.

Well said.  Xerographica ignores all replies to his/her posts.  The steadfastness of the arguments allows no variation or change.

Quote from: Cavebear on May 29, 2018, 12:55:41 PM
Well said.  Xerographica ignores all replies to his/her posts.  The steadfastness of the arguments allows no variation or change.

Proof that AI exists, but is of an inferior kind ;-)

Quote from: Baruch on May 29, 2018, 01:31:13 PM
Proof that AI exists, but is of an inferior kind ;-)

Your claim that Xerographica is a bot is intriguing.  Any evidience?

Quote from: Cavebear on May 29, 2018, 01:34:21 PM
Your claim that Xerographica is a bot is intriguing.  Any evidience?

You provide it.  Do you read your own posts?  Invariable postings ... lack of variation.

Quote from: Baruch on May 29, 2018, 01:37:13 PM
You provide it.  Do you read your own posts?  Invariable postings ... lack of variation.

Which of course avoids my point, as you like to do to everyone's posts.

Quote from: trdsf on May 29, 2018, 10:38:04 AM
I have been perfectly clear that donating over voting is not a reliable way to measure public will, not that donating is a bad thing (and I quote myself: "If what you're after is a fundraiser, just run a fucking fundraiser…. (http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=12619.msg1216899#msg1216899)").

Either to point to any place where I said donations are bad, or admit you're a liar.

And another straw man.  And you ignored every single point I raised.

Obviously, your position is indefensible.

Donating and voting are two different ways to rank things.  My argument is that donating is always better than voting at ranking things.  Are you arguing that donating is sometimes better than voting at ranking things? 

Quote from: Cavebear on May 29, 2018, 05:09:04 AM
You are conflating "one person, one vote" with auctions.  In the former, there is no bargaining.  In the latter, only the one who spends the most money wins.

Let's try this another way.  You want to post.  But it goes to a secret site where you have to bid to post it.  And I have a lot more money than you do.  So you never get to post.  I keep stopping you (and you don't get the money from the bid because it just sort of disappears and even worse, you can't prove I actually spent any money)?

How would you feel about THAT?

Your analogy doesn't work.  If we applied what I'm proposing to posts, then everybody would be free to post, but we'd use donating to rank the posts. 

Does it matter how beneficial your behavior is to others?  If so, then how are you supposed to gain this knowledge?  Mind-reading? 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 29, 2018, 03:57:50 PM
Your analogy doesn't work.  If we applied what I'm proposing to posts, then everybody would be free to post, but we'd use donating to rank the posts. 

Does it matter how beneficial your behavior is to others?  If so, then how are you supposed to gain this knowledge?  Mind-reading?

Um, yes, exactly.  You want "pay to play".  We understand each other by discussion,

Are you a bot?  Can you lie about whether you are?

Quote from: Cavebear on May 29, 2018, 04:22:11 PM
Um, yes, exactly.  You want "pay to play".  We understand each other by discussion,

Are you a bot?  Can you lie about whether you are?

I'm not a bot.  I'm guessing that you aren't either.  You didn't answer my questions...

Does it matter how beneficial your behavior is to others?  If so, then how are you supposed to gain this knowledge?  Mind-reading?

Quote from: Xerographica on May 29, 2018, 04:45:12 PM
I'm not a bot.  I'm guessing that you aren't either.  You didn't answer my questions...

Does it matter how beneficial your behavior is to others?  If so, then how are you supposed to gain this knowledge?  Mind-reading?

Looking back, I see I DIDN'T answer your questions. 

"Does it matter how beneficial your behavior is to others?"  No, but I think it is.

"how are you supposed to gain this knowledge?  Mind-reading? "  Studying, reading, reading and studying.  I read EVERYTHING.  There is damn little I am not competent about. 

In regard to that, I once sat next to someone in an office waiting room.  He mentioned an explosives discussion.  We talked about it for a while.  Finally, a meeting manager announced the explosives meeting was to start.  My discussion friend said, well, let's go.  When I told him I wasn't an explosives expert he was completely surprised.

And I once discussed human migration to North America for an hour at a dinner with the guy next to me.  He finally asked where I got my Anthro degree.  When I told him I only had a poly-sci BS, he was shocked.  Turned out he was the Anthro chair at Washington State Univ.  He spent 3 days with my sister and BIL trying to get them to admit I was just kidding him.  Nope.

Want anything else?

Quote from: Cavebear on May 29, 2018, 01:40:18 PM
Which of course avoids my point, as you like to do to everyone's posts.

As is your lack of self awareness.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 29, 2018, 03:46:26 PM
Donating and voting are two different ways to rank things.  My argument is that donating is always better than voting at ranking things.  Are you arguing that donating is sometimes better than voting at ranking things?

Fine, you admit you're a liar, then.

You were asked for very specific things and instead you make up bullshit that I never said so you can ignore direct challenges and pretend you have a viable position.

We're done.  I'd ask you to let me know when you resolve your rectocranial inversion so we could have a serious, adult conversation, but in the first place, I don't believe you're capable of either, and in the second, I really don't care.

Quote from: Xerographica on May 27, 2018, 05:07:07 PM
Naturally we will all want to try the most highly ranked beer that we haven't already tried.  Will we love it?  If so, then we can help improve its ranking by making another donation. 

Let's see if this system works for us.  If it doesn't, then there won't be any point in debating whether it will work for the rest of the world. 

It's not worked so far has it?  Or lobbying would be a winning system.

Quote from: Jason78 on May 30, 2018, 02:57:41 AM
It's not worked so far has it?  Or lobbying would be a winning system.

You blame the outcome on lobbying, I blame it on voting.  Voters and lobbyists both make government pudding.  You and I both agree that government pudding tastes like crap, but you blame lobbyists while I blame voters.  Here I am suggesting that we conduct an experiment.  Voters and spenders will each make their own atheist pudding.  Then we will see whose pudding tastes like crap.  But here you are saying that this experiment isn't useful because we already know that spending pudding tastes like crap. 

If we already know that spending pudding tastes like crap... then why do we use spending to rank food, computers and houses?  Why don't we use voting to rank these things? 

Quote from: Xerographica on May 30, 2018, 06:55:12 PM
You blame the outcome on lobbying, I blame it on voting.  Voters and lobbyists both make government pudding.  You and I both agree that government pudding tastes like crap, but you blame lobbyists while I blame voters.  Here I am suggesting that we conduct an experiment.  Voters and spenders will each make their own atheist pudding.  Then we will see whose pudding tastes like crap.  But here you are saying that this experiment isn't useful because we already know that spending pudding tastes like crap. 

If we already know that spending pudding tastes like crap... then why do we use spending to rank food, computers and houses?  Why don't we use voting to rank these things?

That is what socialism does, two wolves and a sheep, deciding on what is for dinner.  Majority rule, can be simple majoritarian tyranny.  On the other hand, Money rule, can be simple plutocratic tyranny.  A poor workman blames his tools, or his Electoral College.  He never blames himself.

Quote from: Baruch on May 29, 2018, 07:08:42 PM
As is your lack of self awareness.

That is an interesting statement.  In what way do I lack self-awareness?  I ask that because I am well aware of my limitations, but also aware of what I do know.  What brought you to your claim?

Quote from: Cavebear on May 31, 2018, 11:44:30 PM
That is an interesting statement.  In what way do I lack self-awareness?  I ask that because I am well aware of my limitations, but also aware of what I do know.  What brought you to your claim?

Topical, not universal.  Sometimes you don't read your own posts, or show a broader inconsistency between them.  Greater breadth and depth of self awareness is hard, we all have difficulty there.  And that doesn't even bring into this, other-awareness ... to what extent, over time, do I really get what you are about?  And given rhetoric is that even possible?

Quote from: Xerographica on May 30, 2018, 06:55:12 PM
You blame the outcome on lobbying, I blame it on voting.  Voters and lobbyists both make government pudding.  You and I both agree that government pudding tastes like crap, but you blame lobbyists while I blame voters.  Here I am suggesting that we conduct an experiment.  Voters and spenders will each make their own atheist pudding.  Then we will see whose pudding tastes like crap.  But here you are saying that this experiment isn't useful because we already know that spending pudding tastes like crap. 

If we already know that spending pudding tastes like crap... then why do we use spending to rank food, computers and houses?  Why don't we use voting to rank these things? 

Maybe because the view is that the former are fiscal concerns while the latter is political power.

I'm well aware there's an overlap, thanks to lobbying (it should be illegal, IMO) - but that doesn't mean that ol' Joe shouldn't be able to cast a vote in a ballot to have a voice in a democratic setting.

What you're advocating would simply make it more transparent who the plutocrats are, if I understand you correctly.

Quote from: Sal1981 on June 01, 2018, 04:51:21 AM
Maybe because the view is that the former are fiscal concerns while the latter is political power.

I'm well aware there's an overlap, thanks to lobbying (it should be illegal, IMO) - but that doesn't mean that ol' Joe shouldn't be able to cast a vote in a ballot to have a voice in a democratic setting.

What you're advocating would simply make it more transparent who the plutocrats are, if I understand you correctly.

Nicely said Sal...

Quote from: Sal1981 on June 01, 2018, 04:51:21 AM
Maybe because the view is that the former are fiscal concerns while the latter is political power.

I'm well aware there's an overlap, thanks to lobbying (it should be illegal, IMO) - but that doesn't mean that ol' Joe shouldn't be able to cast a vote in a ballot to have a voice in a democratic setting.

What you're advocating would simply make it more transparent who the plutocrats are, if I understand you correctly.

What I'm advocating is that we compare how differently things are ranked by voting and donating.  This will supply the information that you need to have a truly informed opinion.   So basically what I'm advocating is science. 

Let's use this forum to help determine how differently beers, books, and blogs (and other things that don't start with "b") are ranked by donating and voting.  We will firmly establish which ranking system is superior and, in the process of doing so, support this forum. 

You don't need a truly informed opinion to drop a stack of cash on something you want to happen.    Thanks to people like Rupert Murdoch, we have evidence of the negative effects of that.

Quote from: Jason78 on June 01, 2018, 01:33:28 PM
You don't need a truly informed opinion to drop a stack of cash on something you want to happen.    Thanks to people like Rupert Murdoch, we have evidence of the negative effects of that.

You seem pretty opposed to simply testing the difference between voting and donating.  Why?  Are you concerned that the results would contradict your belief?   

Quote from: Xerographica on June 01, 2018, 04:37:06 PM
You seem pretty opposed to simply testing the difference between voting and donating.  Why?  Are you concerned that the results would contradict your belief?   

No, they doubt that a fair test can distinguish between success and failure, given the lack of definition.  You have to have an independent criteria, separate from voting or spending, to judge it.  Shall we have the Pope judge it?

Quote from: Baruch on June 01, 2018, 07:26:26 PM
No, they doubt that a fair test can distinguish between success and failure, given the lack of definition.  You have to have an independent criteria, separate from voting or spending, to judge it.  Shall we have the Pope judge it?

Do we need an independent criteria to judge whether poison oak is better than artichokes?  What about whether Einstein was better than Hitler? 

Quote from: Xerographica on June 01, 2018, 08:43:20 PM
Do we need an independent criteria to judge whether poison oak is better than artichokes?  What about whether Einstein was better than Hitler?

Yes, given persistent human bias.  Otherwise you are just comparing biases.  Certainly there are people today would would judge Hitler better than Einstein.  And to a horticulturalist looking for new medicines, poison plants are a useful pharmacopeia.

Quote from: Xerographica on June 01, 2018, 04:37:06 PM
You seem pretty opposed to simply testing the difference between voting and donating.  Why?  Are you concerned that the results would contradict your belief?   

I believe what you're proposing will be a kleptocracy.   Interests would be dictated by the whims of the rich.

Quote from: Xerographica on June 01, 2018, 08:43:20 PM
Do we need an independent criteria to judge whether poison oak is better than artichokes?  What about whether Einstein was better than Hitler? 

Better at what?   General Relativity or building up the german economy?

Quote from: Jason78 on June 02, 2018, 07:33:57 AM
Better at what?   General Relativity or building up the german economy?

The German economy was built up, but not a peace economy, but a war economy.

Quote from: Jason78 on June 02, 2018, 07:31:38 AM
I believe what you're proposing will be a kleptocracy.   Interests would be dictated by the whims of the rich.

What I'm proposing is that we, the members of this forum, conduct an experiment to see how differently prominent atheists are ranked by voting and donating.  Do you oppose this experiment?  If so, then why?

What exactly would peoples money be buying here?   Why would anyone spend any money on this?

Xero - in the political compass thread, I added an idea where we could test your idea, but we use fake money (1-10) or (1-100) to buy a result, and also do the one person, one vote.

Quote from: Jason78 on June 03, 2018, 04:00:10 AM
What exactly would peoples money be buying here?   Why would anyone spend any money on this?

Participating in the donating poll would be a perk of donating to this forum.

Quote from: Xerographica on June 01, 2018, 08:43:20 PM
Do we need an independent criteria to judge whether poison oak is better than artichokes?  What about whether Einstein was better than Hitler?

Those are not subjects voted on or determined by money in campaigns.  If you must make an analogy, try to make a sensible one.  Though I suspect if Trump supported poison ivy after Fox and Friends talked it up as "good", Republicans in the House and Senate would proclaim Poison Ivy our National Plant.

Quote from: Cavebear on June 05, 2018, 03:57:56 AM
Those are not subjects voted on or determined by money in campaigns.  If you must make an analogy, try to make a sensible one.  Though I suspect if Trump supported poison ivy after Fox and Friends talked it up as "good", Republicans in the House and Senate would proclaim Poison Ivy our National Plant.

The Republicans have no internal opposition.  The RNC doesn't exist.  This string isn't about politics, it is about electoral experimentation on less weighty matters, like beer.