Democracy might be mathematically impossible – here’s why. Head to https://brilliant.org/veritasium to start your free 30-day trial and get 20% off an annual premium subscription.
I'm gonna assume it's about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which is about social game-theory, sort of. There are some weird paradoxes when you get into the mathematics of voting systems. Arrow's Theorem makes a few reasonable assumptions about a ranked-choice voting system, and shows that a third candidate will always spoil the results between the other two. In other words, adding in Jill Stein would change how Kamala and Trump are ranked in relation to each other (in a ranked-choice voting system).
Probably one of the top ten misused bits of math in the world. It relies on some questionable assumptions about voting behavior, several voting systems do not apply, and even if this was 100% true, getting to 99.99% confidence accuracy in your voting system would still be possible. None of that is mentioned in any of the pop science clickbait videos about it however.
bullshit math wizardry are they pulling out of their ass to argue that the exact ranking of each individual candidate
If you're voting in an election with ten candidates, but you only like two of them and equally despise the other eight, the "maths impossibility" arises because you'll have to put a candidate you hate third
Yes, in Australian Senate elections you only need to rank at least 6 parties above the line or at least 12 individual candidates below the line on the long ballot paper
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In practice you might rank all ~100 candidates to try and avoid a couple candidates you hate the most
I mean, you're making a political argument, and one I don't disagree with. But the point of the theorem is about an idealized voting mechanism, absent ideology. There's absolutely arguments to be made about the usefulness of studying things like pure math, and I'm sympathetic to some of them, but even so, I think it's important to know how the system we use to implement democracy actually functions.
I think also the title is just pure clickbait, never take a youtuber at their word.
I'm gonna assume it's about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which is about social game-theory, sort of. There are some weird paradoxes when you get into the mathematics of voting systems. Arrow's Theorem makes a few reasonable assumptions about a ranked-choice voting system, and shows that a third candidate will always spoil the results between the other two. In other words, adding in Jill Stein would change how Kamala and Trump are ranked in relation to each other (in a ranked-choice voting system).
Probably one of the top ten misused bits of math in the world. It relies on some questionable assumptions about voting behavior, several voting systems do not apply, and even if this was 100% true, getting to 99.99% confidence accuracy in your voting system would still be possible. None of that is mentioned in any of the pop science clickbait videos about it however.
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If you're voting in an election with ten candidates, but you only like two of them and equally despise the other eight, the "maths impossibility" arises because you'll have to put a candidate you hate third
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Yes, in Australian Senate elections you only need to rank at least 6 parties above the line or at least 12 individual candidates below the line on the long ballot paper
In practice you might rank all ~100 candidates to try and avoid a couple candidates you hate the most
I usually just go with the party and stop at 6 or the first major party (that kinda acts like a big wall)
I mean, you're making a political argument, and one I don't disagree with. But the point of the theorem is about an idealized voting mechanism, absent ideology. There's absolutely arguments to be made about the usefulness of studying things like pure math, and I'm sympathetic to some of them, but even so, I think it's important to know how the system we use to implement democracy actually functions.
I think also the title is just pure clickbait, never take a youtuber at their word.
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The video mentions this as a solution to the problems presented by Arrow's theorems.
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Good assumption, it is about that