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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • i believe the general attitude on the threadiverse is that down votes are not a great option: they should represent low quality or untruth rather than simply dislike. given this preference, and downvote to hide might overload the downvote function: no longer is it a last resort, but it’s a normal part of browsing your feed. i’ve seen nothing but staunch opposition to overusing h the down vote feature in this manner











  • change has nothing to do with people until it does… change is just change. change when it comes to people and social systems is effective only when it effects the majority of people that are touched by an issue. voting 3rd party after not for some time is change of a kind, but i wouldn’t call it social change

    social change comes when a large number of people decide something should be different, and the mathematics and sociology behind first past the post means that it’d take something so close to impossible that it’s not worth classing in the realms of possibility for a 3rd party to have any effect on the political system

    the reality of the system is that the US is a 2 party system… the statistics of FPTP, and the game theory that leads to defensive voting, spoiler effect, and any number of other bad outcomes ensures that

    within such a system, you just can’t hope to have an outcome other than 1 of the 2 parties having any real impact, thus you have to change 1 of the parties to be the way you want it to be, or you must change the system

    you could argue that voting 3rd party forces the parties to change their positions, but historically that hasn’t really happened so i personally wouldn’t hold my breath

    vote defensively, and work to change the system… because changing the system is incremental, achievable, and less subject to the whims of a few


  • well, as far as the EC goes the democrats have a vested interested in removing it… the republicans would fight tooth and nail to keep it because there’s no way they’d win honestly, but that’d be the single biggest help the democrats could hope for

    and as far as voting systems go, that’s why yoh start locally… afaik there are some places that use alternative voting systems to vote in the federal election… a big change is, you’re right, basically impossible… but small changes? who knows!


  • i’m not talking about doing nothing, but point your effort where it can make change… voting 3rd party is a hopelessly ineffective way of making change… it’s a dream, and that’s it. it makes you feel good, and that’s it, but it’ll never EVER change anything… that is just the mathematics and sociology of how the voting system works

    work towards changing from first past the post and removing the electoral college (there are effects to do both of these things that ARE making progress! some of them are even close!)

    only THEN can you vote 3rd party and not have it a complete waste

    but in the meantime, i beg you, vote for the party that isn’t actively campaigning to persecute minorities, who gave you at least a half way form of socialised healthcare, who’s at least trying with green energy, whose policies and positions are at least internally consistent for the most part

    and most importantly, vote for the party that isn’t trying to make it harder to vote for anyone else, because you can be sure that gerrymandering, fucking with the supreme court, playing bullshit political games with voter ID all makes it harder to vote in a 3rd party candidate too


  • okay, well if the republicans had their way i’d be tortured forever in conversion therapy, there’d be no movement at all on green energy, the solution to homelessness would probably boil down to if you’re going through a rough patch it’s execution time, christianity would be mandatory

    both sides are NOT the same… 1 side is mostly inept, and the other side is actively trying to persecute people, to which i’d say

    First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a socialist.

    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a trade unionist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a Jew.

    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.



  • okay, but now you’re fighting game theory and maths

    that’s just not going to work out well

    it’s irrelevant what you want at the end of the day… voting for some “best” option is only useful if it’s even remotely likely to happen… don’t get me wrong, if it’s a slim chance of a great outcome that’s one thing but the odds of everyone deciding to do the same thing at the same time are basically 0

    sure, vote how you like, but you’re more likely to win the lottery than to have a 3rd party candidate elected and i think we can all agree you don’t buy lottery tickets because you think you might win




  • okay but a vote doesn’t actually benefit anyone, and neither does being able to say you “acted like a person”

    a vote is worthless on its own. a vote is only worthwhile when it has a chance of producing an outcome, and a vote for 3rd party has no chance of producing any outcome

    you get to take some moral high ground, which is great that you can do that and risk very little… meanwhile, people’s lives are actually at risk

    its a shit situation: nobody is denying that at all (well i’m sure some people are, but i sure ain’t!)… but realistically, the only way to make any difference is (as someone further up thread put it) to tug the tug of war rope on the direction you prefer, while working to change the game