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Dianne Feinstein has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#281

Post by xtiansimon »

iambateman wrote: post #218
pxx wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ranked choice voting (the brand name for Instant Runoff or Hare voting) neither theoretically [0] nor empirically [1] has the outcomes for third parties that you think it does. This combined with its other flaws makes it worse than plurality. Not only that, it doesn't allow for distributed counts [2], it can wreck the secret ballot [3], and it is not monotonic [4]. Arrow gives us an impossibility result for elections…

The real problem with RCV is that it doesn't intuitively make sense to an average person. I wrote a web app for RCV and spent months trying to build a user experience that would help people understand the concept and it just doesn't work. People come to the question of voting assuming it's easy to understand...We've never had to deal with complexity around the concept so we expect it to be simple. Introducing an algo…

> “The real problem with RCV is that it doesn't intuitively make sense to an average person.”

And yet it’s happening in NYC:

_“The first Ranked Choice Voting election was on February 2nd, 2021 in a special election for NYC Council District 24 (Queens).”_

If you can make it in NYC, you can make it anywhere.

https://www.nyc.gov/site/civicengagement/voting/ranked-choic...

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#282

Post by justrealist »

eropple wrote: post #280
justrealist wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republicans can't block anything unless the democrats agree to allow it. Like yes there are a lot of self-imposed rules in the Senaate, but it's fundamentally on the Democrats that they can't pull together 51 votes to tweak the rules.

(edit: ignore, I misread the vacancies list)

That's not true, there are 50 functionally-democrat senators. There were 51 with Feinstein.

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#283

Post by therealdrag0 »

brigadier132 wrote: post #56
throwme_123 wrote: post #40

So sad to lose such a great stock trader! - https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/as-feinstein... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_congressional_insider_tra... - https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/14/dianne-feinstein-hu... etc.

All these senators that manage to make tens of millions of dollars on their $250k salary should really release personal finance books.

Has that ever actually happened? Who is worth millions (at a rate faster than index fund) who isn’t married to a wealthy spouse or have wealthy inheritance or have lucrative book deals etc?

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#284

Post by happytoexplain »

tristor wrote: post #125

I know it’s rude to say negative things about a person who has just passed, but I can’t help feeling happy that such an influential Senate seat will finally go to someone that’s not over 70 (hopefully). There should be age limits for public office and it should match whatever we consider the retirement age to be. We have too many dusty old codgers running things and ruining things, clawing at power and money while de…

Your concern about being rude is endearing considering that your comment is downright reverential by comparison to other sibling comments.

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#285

Post by eropple »

justrealist wrote: post #282
eropple wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(edit: ignore, I misread the vacancies list)

That's not true, there are 50 functionally-democrat senators. There were 51 with Feinstein.

Whoops - I was reading a list of vacancies/recent resignations and thought a House one was a Senate one as they were commingled. You're right, there are 47 Democrats and 3 Independents.

Doesn't change that they won't do anything, of course. :|

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#286

Post by steviedotboston »

coldpie wrote: post #237
steviedotboston wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is just an unfortunate reality of the situation we're living in today. People think she was on some sort of ego trip by remaining in the senate or something, when really it was just the best option for making sure Biden is able to appoint judges. She was able to get a bunch of them approved recently, we should be thankful for that. People saying stuff like "thank God she's finally gone" are so ignorant. New…

The argument we're making is she should have retired twenty years ago, when she was "just" 70 years old.

why should a 70 year old retire if her constituents continue to support her?

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#287

Post by happytoexplain »

A lot of "burn in hell" and "good riddance to a Jew" in the comments (some of it quite un-downvoted even after hours!) - more than usual, especially for HN. Does anybody feel that they have (or can link) an unbiased summary of why she is particularly more hated than other politicians? I don't know anything about her.

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#288

Post by coldpie »

steviedotboston wrote: post #286
coldpie wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument we're making is she should have retired twenty years ago, when she was "just" 70 years old.

why should a 70 year old retire if her constituents continue to support her?

To avoid the whole "walking dead" thing that keeps happening to elderly politicians. I think it is self-evidently bad when the people running the country cannot remember what happened yesterday.

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#289

Post by 2devnull »

She really was pretty moderate in many ways, especially when it came to defense/ir. I doubt her replacement will be as moderate, but hopefully she will be younger and more cognitively fit. (We have a competency crisis in our highest ranks, perhaps it’s a feature for certain factions, but it’s a big problem. Generational variation in narcissistic behavior doesn’t explain it all. How many of our current leaders would we invest in if they were the ceo of even a small, easy to run and profitable organization.)

Re: Dianne Feinstein has died

#290

Post by panax »

yboris wrote: post #228
jliptzin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is how it’s supposed to work. She was 85 when she got elected the last time. If voters don’t want 90 year olds in office, maybe they shouldn’t vote 85 year olds in for a 6 year term. If she can’t be beat in a primary, then we need something like ranked choice voting so people can safely vote for an alternative third party without risking spoiling the election for a candidate they definitely don’t want.

Putting it on your radar: Approval Voting Has many advantages over RCV / IRV (Ranked Choice Voting / Instant Runoff Voting). For one - no need to change ballots; educating the public is a single sentence rather than a more-complicated explanation. https://electionscience.org/library/approval-voting/

Another system similar to this but with more information is STAR voting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting

They all have different strengths and weaknesses. We should be trying to move to more optimal systems.

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