Klye @khird@qoto.org
Mod
Joined Sep 2018
@freemo other: user override for admin-imposed blocks/suspends/mutes/silences
@freemo I don't think I missed that - it's what I meant by "marginal utility" of a vote in the last full paragraph. But it's highly dependent on your jurisdiction - if your state doesn't have a mechanism where you qualify for easier ballot access in future, or some other direct benefit, then it's basically just bragging rights: "I got six hundred seventy-*three* votes, not six hundred seventy-*two*!" And what's that worth to the candidate - moreover, what's that worth to you as the guy voting for him?
If enough minor-party candidates get enough votes, maybe it eventually contributes to the decline of the two-party system - but that takes hundreds of thousands of votes across many races, so you're back to the problem of your one vote having negligible impact, just like the guy who voted for a major-party candidate.
Alternatively, instead of taking two hours off to stand in line and vote, go home with two more hours' worth of wages in your pocket. Which is the better expected value?
@freemo Just reflected on this a bit, open to feedback.
Strictly speaking, it's the chance of casting a decisive vote, not the chance of them winning, that is relevant.
The expected value of voting for a candidate is D*ΔU-C, where D is the chance your vote is decisive, ΔU is the difference in utility (how much better off you'd be under one candidate than another), and C is what it cost you to vote.
D for state and federal races is generally small if you live in a swing state, and infinitesimal otherwise. D for local races may be higher.
Party-line voting is a C-minimising strategy, because it means you hardly need to spend any time researching your choices. Ironically, because D is so low in most cases, this might actually be the "smartest" way to vote (which is kind of depressing, at least to me). Refusing to vote takes this to the extreme and drives C and D both to zero, which is the optimal strategy if you think D*ΔU is less even than the cost of going to vote or mailing a ballot.
Voting third-party maximises ΔU at the expense of D, whereas voting for a major-party candidate maximises D, possibly* at the expense of ΔU. Saying you vote for "the lesser of two evils" is just pointing out that it is the difference in utility ΔU, and not the absolute utility of candidate X U(X), that is used in the formula, which is true. Saying you don't because they're "equally terrible" is equivalent to saying ΔU of the major-party candidates is negligible, which may also be true.
If you live in a state which has a political mechanism for rewarding candidates for votes garnered irrespective of whether they win, or you want to represent intangible benefits like being taken more seriously next election, the easiest way to incorporate this is to reduce C by the marginal utility (to you, not the candidate!) of one vote. Then C is the net cost of casting the vote.
*Some people will just straight-up prefer the major-party candidate to all the third-party options, so their choice maximises both D and ΔU.
> you can have a projection where distances between pair of point are correct
I don't think this is right, in general. You can have a projection where the distance from a fixed point, to any other arbitrary point, is correct. But in general, you can't have a projection where you pick two arbitrary points and expect the distance between them to be correct.
Take for instance the area bounded by the Greenwich Meridian, the Equator, and 90W. This is a "triangle" in that it's bounded by three "straight" (i.e. geodesic) lines, which intersect in pairs at three distinct points (0N0W, 0N90W, and the North Pole). But all three intersections are at right angles, which isn't possible for a planar triangle. So how could you end up with a projection where this is the "correct shape"?
@arteteco How does this arrive at the "correct" shapes at the end? It's still a projection of a portion of a sphere's surface onto a plane, so distortion is inevitable.
Equal-area projections are a thing, so you can get correct sizes - but AFAIK it's not possible to get a projection where distances between all pairs of points are correct.
@freemo long-toot collapsing ignores quoted toots :(
That was it. By default, the option was unset. Explicitly setting it to "none" fixes the problem.
I have the same issue on both the dark theme and the default theme with the instance tickers.
Bulleted lists also show up as asterisks, which was an issue for him too IIRC.
@freemo Well I guess moderating who can post to the group is better than no control. I see your point about federation too - but the flip side is that the group server is vulnerable to fediblocks, crashes, etc. which give it more failure modes than hashtags. I'm interested to see how it gets used!
@freemo True -- I think a sufficiently smart group bot could respond appropriately to the original message being deleted, but yeah you'd have to trust the infrastructure you're using, and that includes the groups server.
Okay, so as things stand now, let's say I want to have a "group discussion" with some other people, who may not all mutually follow one another. What's the advantage to having everyone follow @beekeeping@groups.qoto.org and mention it in messages, versus having everyone subscribe to #BeekeepingGroupQOTO and use that tag? I'm just struggling to see the use case for this service.
@freemo Yeah in retrospect I think it didn't take - the interface to edit a circle is a little wonky and I thought I had both you and him as members, but now it's just you showing up.
Ideally I ought to be able to direct message the group account, and it gets boosted followers-only (with a managed group allowing the group owner to approve followers), right? Otherwise we might as well not have groups and just use hashtags and hashtag-subscriptions to accomplish the same thing without the need for an extra server.
@freemo Just did.[3] Even if that works it's kind of useless because all my followers are going to see it anyway, right? Following someone pulls unlisted posts into the home timeline.
@QOTO this is my third test message
@freemo I gave it a couple tries.[1][2] It doesn't seem to have come through on either a circle or a direct message. Is this the intended behaviour? It seems to kind of defeat the purpose if I can't message a group without also messaging all my followers.
1: https://qoto.org/@khird/105115795597140176
2: https://qoto.org/@khird/105115810100143758
@freemo @hansw Thanks! Now if only we could get an "inherit audience" option for replies, which retrieves the audience of the parent comment and bakes *that* in as the audience for the reply ;)
Right now followers-only is kind of crappy because if you make a followers-only post, by default my reply will be followers-only. So people who follow you but not me, or me but not you, get a fragmented conversation view.
Pale Moon 28.14.0 Linux 64-bit
Rendering is broken for me since the update. Here's what that looks like on my end.
🇳🇱
