English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Mitch

8:03 PM

@Cerberus the president only nominates them ad the Congress votes to approve or not.

Cerberus

@Mitch Yes, so parliament has direct power.

Or at least parliament and president together.

That's too much.

It's similar in our constitution.

But only in theory: in practice, parliament and government never, ever deviate from the list of 6 recommendations proposed by the High Council.

Mitch

@Cerberus There are benefits to a 2 party system over multi party (very few), and usually a multiparty system forms coalitions that act a bit like 2 parties. And really, there's nothing in the constitution that says there must be 2 or there must be more than 2 parties. So it just happens (or it could turn to a multi party system, who knows)

but to your point, I feel like there need to be a few more restrictions in constitutional operations to prevent the idiocy going on now in the US

Cerberus

@Mitch The only benefit I can think of is that governments are less likely to fall in a bipartisan system.

Mitch

@Cerberus I think that's the problem now in the US, that actual incompetence (and corruption too to push things) is allowing the executive to not even bother with norms.

Cerberus

If those multi-party systems act like 2 parties, then I would call them bipartisan?

Mitch

8:09 PM

@Cerberus I've mentioned before that voting paradoxes are impossible (or really less likely) with 2 groups.

@Cerberus Don't you think of a coalition of parties like one single voting bloc, and the non majority parties as a single opposing one?

Cerberus

In your system (and usually the British system), it doesn't 'just happens': it's because of the 'winner take all' election systems (probably exacerbated by very large districts). That's why you have only two parties.

@Mitch What kind of paradoxes?

Mitch

(I've never lived/experienced a parliamentary system so I barely know what I read.)

@Cerberus All the famous Arrow's theorem paradoxes. Concdorcet's paradox, um,... the others

Cerberus

@Mitch Perhaps in some countries, there might be two enduring blocks that act like a bipartisan system, as you said and as I confirmed.

Mitch

Condorcet paradox

The Condorcet paradox (also known as voting paradox or the paradox of voting) in social choice theory is a situation noted by the Marquis de Condorcet in the late 18th century, in which collective preferences can be cyclic, even if the preferences of individual voters are not cyclic. This is paradoxical, because it means that majority wishes can be in conflict with each other: Majorities prefer, for example, candidate A over B, B over C, and yet C over A. When this occurs, it is because the conflicting majorities are each made up of different groups of individuals. Thus an expectation that ...

Cerberus

But normally, coalition and opposition aren't permanent blocks: they change as different parties get fewer or more seats, so different coalitions happen.

Mitch

8:12 PM

funny, there's no one 'voting paradoxes' wiki

Cerberus

@Mitch I don't think that's necessarily connected to a parliamentary system.

Mitch

@Cerberus Yeah, I get that

Cerberus

Our current government consistes of four parties, and their majority is only 76 out of 150.

And only one of those parties was part of the previous government.

Oddly, parties are becoming smaller and smaller, these days.

@Mitch So how does this result in an advantage for bipartisan systems?

KannE

@Mitch I just bought Spanish flash cards at Target for $1 (ages 5+)...with phonetic spellings...like 'I'm sorry'--'Loh see-ehn-toh'...or 'ball'--la pay-loh-tah...uh, I'm beginning to see the problem here.

Cerberus

Oh, dear!

That sounds incredibly hard to memorise for an adult!

Mitch

8:38 PM

@Cerberus I can't remember all the intricacies of each paradox, but the one implication that stands out is that with only two things to vote for, there's no way to have preferences (votes) that result in unexpected behavior: with two, the one with the most votes is the one more people like. with three or more candidates (or parties or whatever gets voted on), the one with the most votes may not be the one that every body would prefer over any other...

, or there may be a circular preference (A>B, B>C, but C>A), or other weird anomalies that come out in the counting but just don't seem fair.

Cerberus

But with only two things to vote for, maybe 95% of voters would actually prefer C, which they just cannot vote for at all.

Mitch

@KannE Those sound like people speaking with a terrible American accent.

Cerberus

In winner-take-all districts, a candidate might win who has only, say, 25% of the votes.

In general, representation is much better in non-winner-take-all systems.

Mitch

@Cerberus presumably there are always many options and that multiple choices are made until there is only one pair at the end to choose from (like elimination championships). but yes, that's one of the paradoxes.

Cerberus

Also because third or fourth or eight etc. parties won't even get a chance to develop if two parties get all the seats unless a third party should become really big.

@Mitch Oh, in that way.

Mitch

8:42 PM

The idea of a spoiler is when two people who are close in ideology split the vote and the plurality goes to the unliked candidate.

Cerberus

@Mitch Yes, but that only applies to representation within a single district.

Mitch

@Cerberus Oh, totally, there should be more parties in a more proportional way order to make sure all issues are available. I'm just telling you there are some few situations where only having 2 is better.

Cerberus

I got your point.

Although I'm not sure whether it matters in practice, outside representation within a single district.

Because, in practice, you will get two candidates from the same (admittedly centrist) party from two districts in your system, whereas, with a more proportional system, where the districts are merged into one district with two representatives, you will get two people from different parties, so more opinions will be represented in parliament.

Feeds

9:00 PM

0

Q: Word for "no longer dry"

In response to someone elsewhere eggcoining the phrase "whet one's whistle," I just found myself wanting to write that An appetite is whetted until it is sharp; but a whistle is wetted until it is ____. I feel like the word-to-go-in-the-blank is right on the tip of my tongue, but I can't qu...

single-word-requests

Feeds

9:16 PM

0

Q: What to call the approach of one who creates a lot of new words/phrases when translating?

So this guy has his own approach in translation. He creates a lot of new words and phrases when translating a text because there is simply not enough or right words in the language he is translating to. Thus, in a sense he is creating a new language, which vastly differs from the language he is t...

single-word-requests phrase-requests translation

Mitch

OK. Now that we've solved world government, what do we do about global warming?

Whether it is human-caused or no (it obviously is), we still need to deal with it, either by addressing the causes or by addressing the effects.

And addressing the causes (like reducing emissions and using renewables (or rather non-carbon burning sources)) supposedly won't turn things around too much in quick amount enough time to reverse the effects.

So...

Do we use terraforming technologies (like humungo scale atmospheric carbon scrubbers) (which don't even exist yet)...

or do we just start predicting where shorelines will be and start moving people beyond them?

Of can we just Netherlandize all the coastlines?

Cerberus

10:02 PM

@Mitch Well, why not?

Maybe we can keep the temperature from rising over two degrees.

The carbon scrubbers seem unrealistic.

Yes, we can build dikes if we invest a lot of money in poor countries, at least until 2100 or so?

But, if all of Antarctica melts, that would be 30 metres, which I doubt whether we can deal with.

MetaEd

10:15 PM

@Mitch Majorities are stupid.

Mitch

@Cerberus all of Bangladesh needs one

@Cerberus actually I've heard it's too late to stop there

@MetaEd depends on which majority

Cerberus

@Mitch Which includes either dikes along each little branch in the delta, or a rerouting of the Ganges, which should involve the building of many dikes and sluices to regulate the water level such that crops get enough water but not too much.

MetaEd

10:53 PM

@Mitch Not really

RegDwigнt

11:55 PM

There's some real weird questions out there. And Feeds is not doing his one job.

0

Q: Is there a list of misleading technology words like "Cookie"

Most of us probably know what a "Cookie" is technically. But a novice user may not know what it means. So when a website (to paraphrase) says: "I'd like to store a Cookie on your computer", a novice my subconsciously think "Oh I love cookies, I'll take one". So I would call this technological t...

lists

-1

Q: The word (A-DOT-SEE-A-SHON)

I heard this sentence many years ago when I was a preteen, It behooves me to inform you that the (a-dot-see-a-tion) of this situation is prevailing. I said it to a much older and pompous family member. Any idea what that word in parenthesis is? Note: I may have mispronounced and/or remebe...

meaning

On the plus side, I really don't need to watch the news anymore, I can just get them all from ELU:

1

Q: Defending champions Germany have been eliminated from the World Cup at the group stage following

Defending champions Germany have been eliminated from the World Cup at the group stage following defeat by South Korea, in one of the biggest shocks in the competition's history. From BBC.com I would lile to know how to understand this sentence correctly? Which is the shock and why to use a...

meaning sentence-meaning

I didn't even know there was a World Cup.

Someone please post a question asking for a list of current presidents.

And someone else please answer it.

Kthxbai.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…