Ranking Books - Voting VS Donating

by **Xerographica** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 5:14 pm

How closely do these books match your preferences?

12 Rules For Life: $0
50 Shades of Grey: $26
A Theory of Justice: $0
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: $0
Principia: $0
The Bible: $0
The Cat in the Hat: $0
The Origin Of Species: $0
The Wealth of Nations: $7
War and Peace: $12

In order to participate in the donating poll* you first need to make a donation to NationStates. Reply to this thread and use your donation to communicate the relative size of your love for each book. Please round your donation up (ie $2.99 -> $3) and use whole dollar amounts (ie Principia: $2 The Bible: $1).

Making a donation to NS helps to raise its ranking (relative importance) in the race for resources. The more money that Max Barry receives, the more resources that he can compete away from other uses. Would it be better if ranking by donating was replaced with ranking by voting (ie participatory budgeting)?

As far as I know, there’s never been any formal attempt to compare voting and donating. No real scientist has tried to determine whether a crowd of voters is wiser than a crowd of donors. I’ve e-mailed dozens of scientists asking them to investigate this... but so far no luck.

Perhaps I’ll continue to pester the professionals, but in the meantime, it’s up to us amateur sleuths to try and solve this mystery. This thread is actually the second NS voting vs donating experiment. The results of the first experiment were… debatable. So far 39 people have participated in the voting poll but only one person participated in the donating poll. Galloism argued that this proves that voting is far more informative than donating, but he didn’t argue that voting ranking should replace donating ranking. My interpretation of the results is that many people are happy to share worthless opinions. It’s quite clear that a donating poll is highly effective at separating the wheat from the chaff. Therefore, the dominance of the chaff in social media is caused by the absence of donating polls.

Just remember that when someone touts their number of followers on YouTube (or Twitter, or a blog). Those numbers are mostly meaningless and only tell you that someone has hit a sweet spot in the medium’s artificial algorithm, which inflates noise into a mysterious cultural significance. - PZ Myers, Pewdiepie Is Up To His Old Tricks Again

This noise, which is primarily produced by voting, is the real root of society’s problems. But I could be wrong. In any case we can all agree that voting and donating produced very different results in the first experiment. In order to correctly interpret these results, we need more evidence.

How differently will voting and donating rank these 10 books? Will one ranking be noticeably better than the other? How, exactly, do we define “better”? Are intellectual books inherently better? Here are 12 books that made Taylor Pearson think (sorted by when he read them)...

Compare Pearson’s list to Amazon's list of the Top 20 bestselling books of all time...

There’s absolutely no overlap between the two lists. Is this a problem? How different would Amazon’s Top 20 list be if all its books were ranked by donating instead of buying? What if the books were ranked by voting?

Voting, buying and donating are very different ranking systems. Naturally they aren’t going to create the same hierarchy of books. Each ranking system is going to arrange the books, and their knowledge, very differently, which will create very unequally beneficial social orders. So it’s incredibly important to determine which ranking system is the best. My belief, which might be wrong, is that donating is the best way to rank books. What’s your belief?

To help facilitate book ranking comparisons, here are the preferred rankings that a few members shared in the previous thread....

What’s your preferred ranking? Is it closer to the voting ranking or the donating ranking?

If you are craving additional food for thought and discussion, then here's a feast for your enjoyment…

Over the past few years, there has been a concerted effort among pop culture critics to elevate the voices of the marginalized, both in works of art themselves and among the critical community. - Noah Gittell, The La La Land backlash: why have critics turned on the Oscar favorite?

I pointed out that black struggles and trans struggles, which he tried to rank against one another, are not mutually exclusive, as many trans women are also black women, and they tend to face the worst and most violent forms of discrimination. - Tyler Foster, I Wrote Dave Chappelle a Letter About His Terrible Transgender Jokes. Sadly, He Didn’t Really Listen.

Hierarchies have been inverted and whoever can claim membership of the most marginalized group automatically wins every debate. “I’m a queer Latino. I win the internet.” “Not so fast! I’m a black trans woman. Hahahah look upon my works ye mighty and despair! I have so much actual power right now, compared to some chump straight white guy who pens 2500 word hymns to objectivity in New York magazine! It is literally impossible to overstate how many physical resources I control now, and to what degree society is being molded by black trans women like myself!” - Belle Waring, Jonathan Chait: Political Correctness Gone Mad

In the alternative world that began with the true rankings reversed, the least popular song did surprisingly well, and, in fact, held onto its artificially bestowed top ranking. The most popular song rose in the rankings, so fundamental quality did have some effect. But, overall – across all 48 songs – the final ranking from the experiment that began with the reversed popularity ordering bore absolutely no relationship to the final ranking from the experiment that began with the true ordering. This demonstrates that the belief that a song is popular has a profound effect on its popularity, even if it wasn’t truly popular to start with. - David Vandivier, Rock and Roll, Economics, and Rebuilding the Middle Class

The difficulties with applied cost-benefit analysis are well known. Outside of general equilibrium, prices will not accurately reflect the value of resources. Preferences can be aggregated across different consumers only under fairly restrictive conditions (i.e. quasi-homotheticity). Furthermore, the rankings generated by cost-benefit analysis depend upon whether we use ex ante or ex post levels of wealth, and may not be transitive. In short, attempts to apply Paretian theory to actual policy evaluation often leave a significant gap between the rough-and-ready policy analysis and the precisely refined theoretical underpinnings. - Tyler Cowen, What a non-Paretian Welfare Economics Would Have To Look Like

Economists are free from the market forces they study. They're shielded by the tenure system and general lack of "pay for performance" in academia. Worse, when performance is recognized, it's based on publication in journals targeted only at others in their profession... economists inhabit a separate world with its own language, hierarchy, rules, and customs. In their insular environment, bureaucracies, not markets, determine winners and losers. Schools continue to teach theories even after they're proven wrong, and there's nothing to stop them. - Daniel Nevins, Economics for Independent Thinkers

Ugh, never ever cite RateMyProfessors.com. I detest that site, and it’s a very poor way to evaluate teachers. I tend to ignore even the official student evaluations of my classes, because, like Dillon, I’m not running a popularity contest. - PZ Myers, How Not To Teach Genetics

This pre-eminence of one function over the others implies that the organism, in its visible arrangements, obeys a plan. Such a plan ensures the control of the essential functions and brings under that control, though with a greater degree of freedom, the organs that perform less vital functions. As a hierarchical principle, this plan defines the most important functions, arranges the anatomical elements that enable it to operate, and places them in the appropriate parts of the body... - Michel Foucault, The Order of Things

Allocation of talent—assigning the right people to the right jobs—can have a first-order effect on the productivity of a society. The susceptibility of the allocation mechanism to be distorted away from the socially optimal outcome by private expenditures might create significant welfare losses in the presence of high levels of inequality in private resources. The losses are especially magnified if the best and the brightest of a society are not allocated to the professions where their social contributions would be the greatest. This paper aims to quantify the misallocation of talent in the United States due to economic inequality, with particular emphasis on its effects on innovation, and hence the long-run prospects of the country. - Murat Alp Celik, Does the Cream Always Rise to the Top? The Misallocation of Talent in Innovation

The Sorting Hat is one of the cleverest enchanted objects most witches and wizards will ever meet. It literally contains the intelligence of the four founders, can speak (through a rip near its brim) and is skilled at Legilimency, which enables it to look into the wearer’s head and divine his or her capabilities or mood. It can even respond to the thoughts of the wearer. - J.K. Rowling, The Sorting Hat

The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities. - Richard Dawkins

Technorati, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is one of those services that watches activity on the web, and then puts up metrics and ranks and scores, and tries to distill the flux into something simpler and more comprehensible, which often reduces to telling you how many people are trying to find pictures of a naked Paris Hilton. When the mob votes, it always seems to lead to the lowest common denominator. - PZ Myers, WAAGNFNP declares war on Technorati

We are biased toward the democratic/republican side of the spectrum. That’s what we’re used to from civics classes. But the truth is that startups and founders lean toward the dictatorial side because that structure works better for startups. It is more tyrant than mob because it should be. In some sense, startups can’t be democracies because none are. None are because it doesn’t work. If you try to submit everything to voting processes when you’re trying to do something new, you end up with bad, lowest common denominator type results. — Peter Thiel, Girard in Silicon Valley

In the first instance, it is probably true that in general the higher the education and intelligence of individuals becomes, the more their views and tastes are differentiated and the less likely they are to agree on a particular hierarchy of values. It is a corollary of this that if we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and "common" instincts and tastes prevail. This does not mean that the majority of people have low moral standards; it merely means that the largest group of people whose values are very similar are the people with low standards. It is, as it were, the lowest common denominator which unites the largest number of people. If a numerous group is needed, strong enough to impose their views on the values of life on all the rest, it will never be those with highly differentiated and developed tastes it will be those who form the "mass" in the derogatory sense of the term, the least original and independent, who will be able to put the weight of their numbers behind their particular ideals. - Friedrich Hayek, Why the Worst Get on Top

The champions of unpopular doctrines would not put forth their arguments merely in books and periodicals, read only by their own side; the opposing ranks would meet face to face and hand to hand, and there would be a fair comparison of their intellectual strength, in the presence of the country. It would then be found out whether the opinion which prevailed by counting votes, would also prevail if the votes were weighted as well as counted. - J.S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government

The first of those causes or circumstances is the superiority of personal qualifications, of strength, beauty, and agility of body; of wisdom and virtue, of prudence, justice, fortitude, and moderation of mind. The qualifications of the body, unless supported by those of the mind, can give little authority in any period of society. He is a very strong man, who, by mere strength of body, can force two weak ones to obey him. The qualifications of the mind can alone give a very great authority. They are, however, invisible qualities; always disputable, and generally disputed. No society, whether barbarous or civilized, has ever found it convenient to settle the rules of precedency of rank and subordination according to those invisible qualities; but according to something that is more plain and palpable. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

Frank Knight was the intellectual influence during my years at the University of Chicago, and his influence increased over subsequent years, enhanced by the development of a close personal relationship. Knight became my role model, without which I wonder what turns I might have taken. The qualities of mind that Knight exhibited were, and remain, those that I seek to emulate: the willingness to question anything, and anybody, on any subject anytime; the categorical refusal to accept anything as sacred; the genuine openness to all ideas; and, finally, the basic conviction that most ideas peddled about are nonsense or worse when examined critically. - James M. Buchanan, Economics from the Outside in: "Better Than Plowing" and Beyond

Consider four possible acts:

Eating Twinkies
Watching Gilligan’s Island
Fighting cancer
Working for racial justice

Now consider pairwise comparisons of value between these acts. You might say which you prefer, or which matters more, or is more important or admirable.

It seems to me that we don’t mind ranking #1 vs #2. We might think the exercise silly, but we’d still be comfortable expressing an opinion. It also seems to me that we don’t mind puffing up our chest and intoning very seriously that either of #3,4 are more noble and admirable than either of #1,2, and looking sadly down on those who might say otherwise. But if asked to rank #3 vs #4, we are much less comfortable. In this case we could be seen as saying something against an act many find important and admirable. That isn’t the sort of thing we like to be quoted on. We don’t like to speak against the sacred.

Because of this, we end up sharing less info about relative rankings among the acts we most admire. Which, alas, are the acts most valuable to rank. We learn what others think of the relative ranking of silly tv shows and minor foods, but not about our most important choices. Silly humans.

I’m fond of this classic question pair: “What is the most important research question in your discipline?” followed by “Why aren’t you working on it?” - Robin Hanson, Ranking The Sacred

The concept of demonstrated preference is simply this: that actual choice reveals, or demonstrates, a man’s preferences; that is, that his preferences are deducible from what he has chosen in action. Thus, if a man chooses to spend an hour at a concert rather than a movie, we deduce that the former was preferred, or ranked higher on his value scale. Similarly, if a man spends five dollars on a shirt we deduce that he preferred purchasing the shirt to any other uses he could have found for the money. This concept of preference, rooted in real choices, forms the keystone of the logical structure of economic analysis, and particularly of utility and welfare analysis. - Murray Rothbard, Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics

Each person has his own peculiar order for ranking the ends that he pursues. These individual rankings can be known to few, if any, others, and are hardly known fully even by the person himself. The efforts of millions of individuals in different situations, with different possessions and desires, having access to different information about means, knowing little or nothing about one another's particular needs, and aiming at different scales of ends, are coordinated by means of exchange systems. As individuals reciprocally align with one another, an undesigned system of a higher order of complexity comes into being, and a continuous flow of goods and services is created that, for a remarkably high number of the participating individuals, fulfils their guiding expectations and values. - Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism

The consumers by their buying and abstention from buying elect the entrepreneurs in a daily repeated plebiscite as it were. They determine who should own and who not, and how much each owner should own.

As is the case with all acts of choosing a person — choosing holders of public office, employees, friends, or a consort — the decision of the consumers is made on the ground of experience and thus necessarily always refers to the past. There is no experience of the future. The ballot of the market elevates those who in the immediate past have best served the consumers. However, the choice is not unalterable and can daily be corrected. The elected who disappoints the electorate is speedily reduced to the ranks.

Each ballot of the consumers adds only a little to the elected man's sphere of action. To reach the upper levels of entrepreneurship he needs a great number of votes, repeated again and again over a long period of time, a protracted series of successful strokes. He must stand every day a new trial, must submit anew to reelection as it were.

It is the same with his heirs. They can retain their eminent position only by receiving again and again confirmation on the part of the public. Their office is revocable. If they retain it, it is not on account of the deserts of their predecessor, but on account of their own ability to employ the capital for the best possible satisfaction of the consumers. - Ludwig von Mises, Planning For Freedom

It is commonly the case, contrary to Piketty, and setting aside the cheapening of our goods produced by the investments of their wealth by the rich, that the people with more money got their more by being more ingeniously productive, for the benefit of us all—getting that Ph.D., for example, or being excellent makers of automobiles or excellent writers of horror novels or excellent throwers of touchdown passes or excellent providers of cell phones, such as Carlos Slim of Mexico, the richest man in the world (with a little boost, it may be, from corrupting the Mexican parliament). That Frank Sinatra became richer than most of his fans was not an ethical scandal. The “Wilt Chamberlain” example devised by the philosopher Robert Nozick (Piketty mentions John Rawls, but not Nozick, who was Rawls’s nemesis) says that if we pay voluntarily to get the benefit of clever CEOs or gifted athletes there is no further ethical issue. The unusually high rewards to the Frank Sinatras and Jamie Dimons and Wilt Chamberlains come from the much wider markets of the age of globalization and mechanical reproduction, not from theft. Wage inequality in the rich countries experiencing an enlarging gap of rich vs. poor, few though they are (Piketty’s finding, remember), is mainly, he reports, caused by “the emergence of extremely high remunerations at the summit of the wage hierarchy, particularly among top managers of large firms”. The emergence, note, has nothing to do with r > g. - Deirdre McCloskey, Measured, unmeasured, mismeasured, and unjustified pessimism: a review essay of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the twenty-first century

But between these two regions, so distant from one another, lies a domain which, even though its role is mainly an intermediary one, is nonetheless fundamental: it is more confused, more obscure, and probably less easy to analyse. It is here that a culture, imperceptibly deviating from the empirical orders prescribed for it by its primary codes, instituting an initial separation from them, causes them to lose their original transparency, relinquishes its immediate and invisible powers, frees itself sufficiently to discover that these orders are perhaps not the only possible ones or the best ones; this culture then finds itself faced with the stark fact that there exists, below the level of its spontaneous orders, things that are in themselves capable of being ordered, that belong to a certain unspoken order; the fact, in short, that order exists. As though emancipating itself to some extent from its linguistic, perceptual, and practical grids, the culture superimposed on them another kind of grid which neutralized them, which by this superimposition both revealed and excluded them at the same time, so that the culture, by this very process, came face to face with order in its primary state. It is on the basis of this newly perceived order that the codes of language, perception, and practice are criticized and rendered partially invalid. It is on the basis of this order, taken as a firm foundation, that general theories as to the ordering of things, and the interpretation that such an ordering involves, will be constructed. - Michel Foucault, The Order of Things

It is not God's will that all He has created for the benefit of man and has given him as his own should remain hidden. . . . And even if He did conceal some things, He left nothing unmarked, but provided all things with outward, visible marks, with special traits— just as a man who has buried a treasure marks the spot in order that he may find it again. - Paracelsus

[The donation poll last updated to include American test's input]
*Rules
1. Previous donations cannot be applied to current donating polls
2. Screenshots aren't acceptable proof of donations

by **Vectrova** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 6:45 pm

your fetishistic fixation with conflating money with opinion continues, as always, to be utterly incompatible with reality at large and function about as well as a paper airplane trying to fly through acid. you have never, at any point, demonstrated money conveys information the way you believe it to and, in fact, your "first experiment" proved how utterly irrelevant and inapplicable this inane conflation is... but you don't want to see it that way. You've arrived at a conclusion and are now desperately grasping for anything to support it. This is the exact opposite of science and I'm personally appalled you would consider this in any way an experiment, even colloquially.

Find something new to talk about.

by **MERIZoC** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:01 pm

I donated 30 dollars and will take 30 bibles, please

by **Nanatsu no Tsuki** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:04 pm

If I donate $1, would you stop making these threads? I pity you and my eyes. Really. I’ll give you a buck just so that you stop torturing us.

by **Senkaku** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:13 pm

Hi Xero please find something else to do with your time, even if we're all just visionless myopic monkeys who can't see what a cosmically transcendent good idea you've come up w I think it's clear that you're not gonna sell us on your stuff so find an audience somewhere that's receptive maybe

by **Uiiop** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:15 pm

Which Principia are we talking here?

by **Dogmeat** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:17 pm

Is there anything that stops me from just saying that I donated 500,000 dollars to The Cat in the Hat?

by **Xerographica** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:18 pm

Uiiop wrote:Which Principia are we talking here?

Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.

by **Xerographica** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:20 pm

Dogmeat wrote:Is there anything that stops me from just saying that I donated 500,000 dollars to The Cat in the Hat?

Nothing stops you from saying that, but in order for me to update the donating poll I'd need to see some proof.

by **Dogmeat** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:24 pm

Xerographica wrote:Perhaps I’ll continue to pester the professionals, but in the meantime, it’s up to us amateur sleuths to try and solve this mystery. This thread is actually the second NS voting vs donating experiment. The results of the first experiment were… debatable. So far 39 people have participated in the voting poll but only one person participated in the donating poll. Galloism argued that this proves that voting is far more informative than donating, but he didn’t argue that voting ranking should replace donating ranking. My interpretation of the results is that many people are happy to share worthless opinions. It’s quite clear that a donating poll is highly effective at separating the wheat from the chaff. Therefore, the dominance of the chaff in social media is caused by the absence of donating polls.

So you're saying that even though exactly the thing you said would falsify your beliefs happened, you're going to come up with an excuse not to change your mind?

I'm shocked.

by **Dogmeat** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:24 pm

Xerographica wrote:
Dogmeat wrote:Is there anything that stops me from just saying that I donated 500,000 dollars to The Cat in the Hat?

Nothing stops you from saying that, but in order for me to update the donating poll I'd need to see some proof.

Oh, well you didn't say that in your OP, so I didn't take a screenshot.

Put down $500,000 for the cat book please.

by **Galloism** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:28 pm

In your previous thread, you specified such an experiment would need an end date/time. So what's the end date/time for this um... what I will extremely generously call your experiment.

by **Xerographica** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:29 pm

Dogmeat wrote:
Xerographica wrote:Nothing stops you from saying that, but in order for me to update the donating poll I'd need to see some proof.

Oh, well you didn't say that in your OP, so I didn't take a screenshot.

Put down $500,000 for the cat book please.

I'm sure that, in the News section, Max Barry will publicly acknowledge your generous contribution. When he does so, then I'll update the donating poll.

by **Xerographica** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:30 pm

Galloism wrote:In your previous thread, you specified such an experiment would need an end date/time. So what's the end date/time for this um... what I will extremely generously call your experiment.

Maybe a month? What do you think is a reasonable amount of time?

by **Galloism** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:31 pm

Xerographica wrote:
Galloism wrote:In your previous thread, you specified such an experiment would need an end date/time. So what's the end date/time for this um... what I will extremely generously call your experiment.

Maybe a month? What do you think is a reasonable amount of time?

I was thinking a week, but it needs a specific date and time, and you'll need to specify time zone.

Also, you can make your thread poll sunset at the same time, or if you can't figure that out, you can come on and put the final poll results in a post and in your OP at the specified time.

EDIT: Oh, and you need to announce it beforehand, so you can't hand pick the end time when it hits the result you want.

by **Dogmeat** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:32 pm

Xerographica wrote:
Dogmeat wrote:Oh, well you didn't say that in your OP, so I didn't take a screenshot.

Put down $500,000 for the cat book please.

I'm sure that, in the News section, Max Barry will publicly acknowledge your generous contribution. When he does so, then I'll update the donating poll.

The mods specifically told you not to rely on Max Barry or themselves to verify donations.

by **Xerographica** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:35 pm

Dogmeat wrote:
Xerographica wrote:I'm sure that, in the News section, Max Barry will publicly acknowledge your generous contribution. When he does so, then I'll update the donating poll.

The mods specifically told you not to rely on Max Barry or themselves to verify donations.

The mods specifically did not say that Max Barry was not going to publicly acknowledge generous donations.

by **Dogmeat** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:41 pm

Xerographica wrote:
Dogmeat wrote:The mods specifically told you not to rely on Max Barry or themselves to verify donations.

The mods specifically did not say that Max Barry was not going to publicly acknowledge generous donations.

Touche, although I think the evidence gathering method of "let's hope somebody else publishes my data so I can report it" is perhaps a little unscientific.

Not that I would ever accuse you of not being rigorous.

by **Galloism** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:42 pm

Dogmeat wrote:Not that I would ever accuse you of not being rigorous.

Perish the thought.

by **Xerographica** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:45 pm

Galloism wrote:
Xerographica wrote:Maybe a month? What do you think is a reasonable amount of time?

I was thinking a week, but it needs a specific date and time, and you'll need to specify time zone.

Also, you can make your thread poll sunset at the same time, or if you can't figure that out, you can come on and put the final poll results in a post and in your OP at the specified time.

EDIT: Oh, and you need to announce it beforehand, so you can't hand pick the end time when it hits the result you want.

How about two weeks from when the thread was created (Jun 04, 2018 5:14 pm)?

by **The Two Jerseys** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:48 pm

Xerographica wrote:
Dogmeat wrote:The mods specifically told you not to rely on Max Barry or themselves to verify donations.

The mods specifically did not say that Max Barry was not going to publicly acknowledge generous donations.

So your entire experiment hinges on an angel descending from Heaven carrying the evidence written on golden tablets?

Jesus fucking wept...

by **Xerographica** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:49 pm

Dogmeat wrote:
Xerographica wrote:The mods specifically did not say that Max Barry was not going to publicly acknowledge generous donations.

Touche, although I think the evidence gathering method of "let's hope somebody else publishes my data so I can report it" is perhaps a little unscientific.

Not that I would ever accuse you of not being rigorous.

My preference is for every donation that a member makes to be publicly displayed on their nation page. For some reason your nation page doesn't even show the supporter trophy...

by **Galloism** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:49 pm

Xerographica wrote:
Galloism wrote:I was thinking a week, but it needs a specific date and time, and you'll need to specify time zone.

Also, you can make your thread poll sunset at the same time, or if you can't figure that out, you can come on and put the final poll results in a post and in your OP at the specified time.

EDIT: Oh, and you need to announce it beforehand, so you can't hand pick the end time when it hits the result you want.

How about two weeks from when the thread was created (Jun 04, 2018 5:14 pm)?

Ok, so end time is -

June 18, 2018, 4:14 PM Pacific Daylight Time
June 18, 2018, 5:14 PM Mountain Daylight Time
June 18, 2018, 6:14 PM Central Daylight Time
June 18, 2018, 7:14 PM Eastern Daylight Time

For our friends across the sea, that's -

June 18, 2018, 11:14 PM - Coordinated Universal Time

Recommend you add it to your OP so people know without having to read the entire first page.

by **Bombadil** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:50 pm

God knows..

Simply put, if donors have the ability to influence the types of people elected to office, the direction of this influence is likely towards the ideological extremes.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/ ... ded_R2.pdf

Not only do donors unduly influence legislators over their electorate but they're motivated by more extreme positions. This is the issue we've all been pointing out when your theory hits reality - more money sways the results to the few. In addition it sways to more extreme positions given they've greater means and greater incentive to protect themselves against the will of the many.

Reality.. that thing that slaps theory in the face.

(..and I said I would;dn't post in these threads again.. this is it..)

by **Kubra** » Mon Jun 04, 2018 7:54 pm

>My interpretation of the results is that many people are happy to share worthless opinions. It’s quite clear that a donating poll is highly effective at separating the wheat from the chaff.
what an unbiased view of experimental data

Here's what makes these experiments funny: half the data provided will only be so as to spite Xero, while his interpretation will always be "voting by paying is better".

Ranking Books - Voting VS Donating

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Ranking Books - Voting VS Donating

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