A Name For Single Solution Evangelists

[mishalak]

No, no, not the christian sort looking for more people to be saved in Jesus's name by government action, though the impulse is obviously similar. It is that sort of people who have wonderful utterly brilliant ideas that will solve all problems and are so obviously correct that they'll solve all problems if we just trust that it works like they say it will.

Such as the advocates currently trying to convince a few big name fans to support Range Voting. Over on kevin_standlee's journal he wrote about them their efforts to convince him to change the WSFS Constitution. As usual with such advocates they are single minded in their support for their system they have not bothered to understand anything about how the WSFS works or why they do the things the way they do. Instead they just repeat their 'evidence' that Instant Runoff Voting is flawed and their system isn't. Never mind niggling little problems like cost to implement, the need to convince people who actually go to the Worldcon business meetings to vote for this, and that being a volunteer organization it isn't like there is a huge surplus of labor available to work on this.

If they were actually fans, rather than a sort of political consultant, they would ask to be included in a program item at Worldcon or NASFiC, throw some room parties, or whatever. No, they just want to come in tell the leaders how to fix things, fire off a few email messages, and then sit back and watch everything fall into place for them. Just as with business consultants (and other vermin) they're quite eager to tell other people how to do things but only when they don't have to take any of the risks. All he wants is for everyone to agree he is right and do lots of work to implement his system so he can proudly use that as more 'evidence' that his system is best.

Now here is what is wrong with Range Voting. First off it assume the main problem with voting is not having enough choices rather than voters not knowing what the hell they are voting for or against and how their vote works. Any type of voting only works if the people being polled know what the hell they are talking about, if you poll average people you get answers like "McDonalds is the best restaurant in the city". Just look at the internet movie database's top 250 movies sometime to see this sort of system in action in real life. It certainly is a very interesting mix, but it doesn't seem to be good at grouping movies that are objectively of the same quality, just popularity.

Secondly how is the system going to magically come up with the best candidate for a job or the best book if everyone isn't using the system the same way? When judges at sporting events come up with scores they have criteria for judging things, if everyone was using wildly varying criteria how does it work to come up with the consensus answer of the best? I doubt the Hugos would be any more respected/accepted if Range Voting were used instead. Rather than a new voting system some sort of Hugo nomination and voting forum would be better to build actual consensus and maybe (only maybe) a system that requires more of a majority than 50%+1. And when voting for site selection the criteria for selecting the best bid are wildly divergent.

Most importantly is the lack of simplicity and transparency. The reason that his (and I do mean his, the center seems to consist of "Dr" Smith and a few bottle washers, and I use scare quotes because I mock his credentialism) system seems to reduce strategic voting is that no one understands what their vote will do. Indeed for most people it would be probably wise to reduce it to approval voting by giving the highest possible marks to any acceptable candidate and nothing to any others. And it also becomes impossible to tally the votes in any simple way so the people running the election, who are already understaffed and overworked, will have to invest in various electronic systems. I'm no luddite, but I'm reluctant to support moving to a system without any actual real world evidence that it works that will require a much higher level of technical sophistication and support as long as it is in place.

And it is instructive to also look at what this Smith fellow does to promote his system. He slags Instant Runoff Voting, making it sound like the work of the devil, rather than an improvement over plurality voting. And he blatantly makes up scenarios that have NEVER HAPPENED in real life IRV. Not even in close/hotly contested three way races like the Denver/Chicago/Columbus race of last year, much less actual polical elections. There have been years of use of Instant Runoff Voting in lots of different locals, where is the real world evidence of the problem "Dr" Smith? And when will you answer actual question rather than replying with boilerplate rattling off of your same rhetoric?

In short he should no more be trusted than the know it alls coming around to tell you how to better run your business for a case full of cash and who'll won't suffer one whit if anything goes wrong.

Comments

[bovil.livejournal.com]

I just saw the responses to my comments pop up. Pretty dorktacular. sethb already shot his arguments against my concerns down, so I didn't have to.

I said FUD before, and I'll say it again.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

My favorite bit is where he claims that Irish politics are dominated by two parties. Hee! Last time I checked there is one very large party with 48% of the vote and the rest of the Dáil, a majority, is made up of parties with 20% of the vote or less.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

It's even more irrelevant when one realizes that fandom is so fluid we couldn't develop a two-party duopoly if we tried, and that the applications where we use member balloting discourage that in the first place. Show me a city and a non-profit corporation that could run a Worldcon every second year; the alternating years actually make it more difficult.

This year's site selection ballot showed up the failures of strategic voting and bullet voting, not flaws the of IRV. The folks who bullet-voted a site would have max-voted the same site and zero-voted the rest. There may have been a different outcome, but I doubt it.

The only big complaint I've heard about Hugo voting over a range of years was back when Michael Whelan won "Best Professional Artist" over and over. He was, however, the most published and most popular cover artist of the 80's and had high visibility among fans who didn't follow art. Doesn't sound like a systemic problem to me, it sounds like the system measured the fans' preferences well. The victory of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2001 is similar; people complained but it's well-known and popular. None of the current major arguments about Hugo voting have anything to do with technical questions or problems, they all fall back to dissatisfaction of one sort or another about the fan categories.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

...they have not bothered to understand anything about how the WSFS works or why they do the things the way they do..... Never mind niggling little problems like cost to implement, the need to convince people who actually go to the Worldcon board meetings to vote for this,...

Yes. Remember that WSFS doesn't even have a "Board Meeting" to attend. There's no Board of Directors, no representatives, no councils, no congress. It's the Town Meeting: every Fan for Him/Herself.

Mind you, of the 5,000 or so people eligible to attend that Town Meeting and make him/herself heard, usually between 100-200 actually bother to do so. I know that taking 2-3 hours/day out of the middle three days of a Worldcon is a considerable hardship for some. I don't mean to make fun of them. Besides, if you don't care about the issues the meeting will discuss, why should one bother to attend (unless you're there for the entertainment value, which is present, really!).

I have from time to time contemplated how I would possibly preside over a Business Meeting where a significantly larger than usual percentage of the members attended. I think the largest was around 7% at ConAdian. If we had, say, 1,000 people wanting to attend, we'd drive Programming bats as we would have to commandeer their largest programming space on short notice. And if you think I'm strict about the debate rules now, you ain't seen nothing yet!

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I meant business meeting. I truly did. There was a disconnect between my brain and fingers or something of that nature.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yup, they seem to feel that they've discovered The One True Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Glancing (_very_ briefly) though the discussion at Kevin's site, I was amused to note that they've Converted the/some Libertarians (who also tend, in my observation, towards OTA-ism), and that the promoter of the idea seems to think that we want the most _popular_ candidate to win. Granted, that's what we tend to get, but what many of us actually want is for the _best_ candidate to win. *sigh* I suppose "Range-Voting" would produce somewhat different results from the system we currently use, but I don't see any reason to think that they'd be significantly better, and I'm generally in favor of giving the people who Do All The Work a hefty role in deciding what The Rules are going to be.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

We need to remind ourselves that the Hugos really are a popularity contest. That's not a strike against them, it's measuring the popularity of a candidate in a community that we hope is a discerning population. Some voters will vote based on their personal standards of quality, some will vote based on their level of enjoyment.

It's all subjective, though. I voted Doctor Who over Battlestar Galactica because, although I acknowledge that Galactica is perhaps the closest televised science fiction has come to art and the dramatic promises The Twilight Zone offered back in the day, I never got into it. I really enjoyed Who.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I totally agree that they are a popularity contest. Really they shouldn't be compared to the Oscars. They're more like the People's Choice Awards with the twist that fans tend to get more into their entertainment than the average person.

I've contemplated different systems for picking the Hugos, but long before that happens I think the Hugos need a standing website and forum. Of course then that runs up against the whole no standing year to year organization for the WSFS and Worldcon. And the fact that I don't have any technical expertise to get it done.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Really they shouldn't be compared to the Oscars. They're more like the People's Choice Awards....

That's true; however, you'd have to extend the analogy until the People's Choice Awards were more prestigious than the Oscars. I'm not saying the Nebulas are insignificant; just that the Hugo Awards are the only SF-related awards that seem to cover a wide swath of the field and have prestige, grumbling of would-be "trufen" notwithstanding. (There are lots of wide-focus awards with little prestige. There are some narrow-focus awards with prestige. Only the Hugo Awards have both.)

I think the closest "people's choice" competitor to Hugo Awards with the added element that you need not pay anything or be a member of any organization to vote (and that has some element of legitimacy and prestige -- anyone can throw up a web site and declare awards open to anyone) are the Locus Awards, but even they don't cover the same categories as the Hugo Awards.

I think the Hugos need a standing website and forum.

You're not the only one. Watch for the report of the HASH ("Higher and Stronger Hugo") Committee later this year.

Of course then that runs up against the whole no standing year to year organization for the WSFS and Worldcon.

You're absolutely right. There are plenty of people who are always listening for the cry of "WSFS Inc! To the barricades, comrades!"

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I'll be watching for the report with interest.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I probably wouldn't be terribly opposed to range voting for the Hugos if it wasn't this idiotic procrustean effort from outside fandom. But I think there are other more pressing things that need to be fixed and the instant runoff voting system isn't broken. Number one being an online forum (or other plan) for talking about the Hugos aimed at getting fans part of local clubs who do not go to Worldcon to participate in the selection of the Hugos. Though probably not online voting as of yet. Too many fans have technical expertise and personalities that might make Hugo voting a target.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

...procrustean effort...

Excellent characterization of the advocates' position!

[thebrokenladder.livejournal.com]

Why do you hate rationalism?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Ah, and now we get comments of the sort that resemble those of anti-abortion idiots. I'm going to leave this prize of intellectualism and delete the rest of his drivel, then ban him.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

For someone who said he was leaving the discussion, he sure hangs around like the stench of decaying fish.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Well for almost everyone I've seen online, "I'm leaving," never means actually leaving. It just means, "I'm trying to cut off debate so I can feel like I've won by having the last word." I'm sure I've did so when I was younger and much more of a firebrand. (Younger me would hate older me, and vs.vs.)