CompassRed

@CompassRed@discuss.tchncs.de

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CompassRed ,

It's funny you say the philosophy is simple when strategic voting requires multiple layers of analysis and voting for bubblegum ice cream just amounts to what feels good. You can't bring yourself to accept the reality of the situation, so you pretend like the problem is easy to solve if you just ignore it. That's truly simple minded. Pathetic projection on your part.

CompassRed ,

You're reducing things to a single issue and have the gall to say my political world is narrow. You're unreal.

CompassRed ,

Vote splitting is not a myth. It's just math. Let me explain with an example:

1000 people at a conference are deciding where to order catering and hold a vote:

  • 490 people want Mexican and do not want Asian
  • 510 people want Asian:
    • 480 people want Vietnamese, would be satisfied with Thai, and do not want Mexican
    • 30 people want Thai, would be satisfied with Vietnamese, and do not want Mexican

The restaurants on the ballot are:

  1. A Mexican restaurant,
  2. A Vietnamese restaurant, and
  3. A Thai restaurant.

If the people who want Asian recognize the strength of their combined numbers, then they can tip the scales by all voting for the favorite between Vietnamese and Thai. In this situation, we get 490 votes Mexican, 510 votes Vietnamese, and 0 votes Thai. This time Vietnamese wins and the majority of people, the 510 who prefer Asian, are either happy or satisfied with the result while only 490 are disappointed.

If everyone votes for their favorite, then we get 490 votes Mexican, 480 votes Vietnamese, and 30 votes Thai. In this case, Mexican wins and the majority of people, the 510 who prefer Asian, are left disappointed while only 490 people are happy with the result. The vote has been split and the result is that the entire conference is worse off for it.

By the way, the ratio of 480 Vietnamese to 30 Thai is irrelevant as long as neither value is 0. That ratio can be fixed to any positive value and a situation can be described in which vote splitting occurs with that specific ratio of Vietnamese supporters to Thai supporters. That's why vote splitting isn't too uncommon - any number of people voting Thai has the potential to split the vote. The one caveat is if literally every Vietnamese supporter decides to vote Thai as well; in that scenario, no vote splitting can occur. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen in practice because it's easier to convert the Thai supporters who are smaller in number than it is to convert the Vietnamese supporters who have greater numbers.

If you want examples from history, there are plenty. Our electoral college amplifies the effect since it breaks one federal election down into a large number of state elections, any of which can exhibit vote splitting. Other people have linked to them in this discussion and you can find more elsewhere online.

CompassRed , (edited )

Nobody is arguing that a grocery stocker requires less skill and training than brain surgery. Literally nobody. And yet you people repeat this idea over and over.

We know you aren't arguing that every job requires the exact same degree of skill. All that we want to do is say that there are jobs whose required skills are quick to acquire and are therefore easily replaceable. Meanwhile, there are other jobs whose skills take a long time to acquire and are not easily replaceable. We use the term "unskilled labor" to refer to the former group and "skilled labor" to refer to the latter group as a point of convention. When people claim that unskilled labor doesn't exist, they imply that every single job requires skills that are slow to obtain and therefore every worker is difficult to replace, which is clearly false.

I mean this not as an attack on you but a chance to expand your worldview. Cognitive dissonance hurts, and it’s important to recognize when it’s happening so you can ask further questions.

Where is the cognitive dissonance? Where is the contradiction in distinguishing between jobs that require trained applicants and jobs that don't require trained applicants?

There is no such thing as an “unskilled worker” because all jobs require skill. It’s called human skill, and it’s what enables us to build societies greater than the sum of its citizens.

If you decide to use "skilled worker" to mean a worker who has a skill, then you are correct that "unskilled workers" do not exist. Unfortunately, that's not what the phrase "skilled worker" means. If that's how you use the term, then you're talking about something different to everyone else.

The logical conclusion you are suggesting is that because some humans are less capable, they don’t deserve basic needs such as a home, reliable transportation, internet, food, utilities, etc.

The logical conclusion of "unskilled labor exists" is simply that unskilled labor exists. You cannot jump from the observation that "unskilled labor exists" to the claim that "some people don't deserve their basic needs." It's a non sequitur, and it's not a position anyone in this thread would support.

And if your basic premise starts with the notion that society should not be meeting the basic needs of its people, then there’s only one thing that would convince you anyway.

This is a straw man. No one here has expressed the position that society shouldn't meet the basic needs of its people. The position you are arguing against is the position that some jobs require training before hiring and others don't. Again, that's just what people mean when they refer to skilled labor and unskilled labor.

CompassRed ,

It's only controversial because the way the therapy has been implemented in the past (and unfortunately in some places still today) is similar to what you describe. However, modern practices don't try to train their clients to act like "normal people" and any serious technician or analyst will only use punishment (or threats of punishments) as a last resort in programs written to target the most imperative behaviors (like running into traffic). Instead, they focus on the use of reinforcement to teach their clients skills that help them to become self sufficient. Following your metaphor, it would be like offering a depressed person $10 for every chore they complete that day rather than holding a gun to their head. The goal is to establish a foundation for life outside of therapy, not to reduce the presentation of autism.

CompassRed ,

https://twitter.com/latifnasser/status/1750952860131729544

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