Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

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The entire showerthought must be in the title
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- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
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Trying to build viable third parties by voting for them in presidential elections is like trying to build a third door in your house by repeatedly walking into the wall where you want the door to be. (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world

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[–] chaogomu@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Changing the voting system so that third parties are actually possible.

You need a cardinal voting system, otherwise you'll fall prey to Durverger's Law and Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.

I favor STAR, it's the best system designed to date.

[+] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip -8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The problem is that these systems are way more complex and have edge cases where someone unpopular gets elected. Making major changes to a system that has worked for 248 years seems like a recipe for disaster.

[–] chaogomu@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Edge cases like you describe are a key part of Ordinal voting systems, Cardinal voting systems are immune to that sort of thing.

Also, Cardinal voting systems can be super easy. Take Approval.

Simply take a list of names, and mark next to each candidate you approve of. If you feel like you need to have a moral conundrum over what you feel like approval means, then go ahead, but just mark the next to any or all of the names on the list that you like.

After that, the counting is simple as well. You add up the approval of each candidate, independent of what any other candidate gets, and then the winner is the one with the most approval.

It is literally impossible to elect an unpopular candidate via Approval, unless only unpopular candidates run.

STAR is slightly more complex, in that you rate each candidate on a scale of 0-5. Again, no one actually cares about your personal journey in rating someone a 4 or whatnot, just do it and move on.

Then when counting, you again add up the numbers, take the highest two, and see where they rate on each individual ballot. If one is rated higher than the other, they get the vote from that ballot.