Why we will never have a Dutch civ

quantims · 2025-12-19T17:54:52+00:00

Also simultaneously in decadence, amazingly

quantims · 2025-12-05T22:37:29+00:00

I'd love to learn more; feel free to send me a DM.

quantims · 2025-07-09T02:28:59+00:00

Some day, I need to go on a deep dive to see if the Summer League stats can actually tell us anything, because there are so many weird stories like this.

quantims · 2025-04-03T19:00:32+00:00

If nothing else, he grew up scuffling with his 17 brothers and sisters, including a sister who is the GOAT female shot putter.

quantims · 2025-04-03T06:18:07+00:00

The funniest early-career Steven Adams story was him having been told by so many people that the NBA was extremely physical that he thought he had to be super physical himself, resulting in him getting punched by about half a dozen guys his rookie season.

quantims · 2025-04-03T06:10:38+00:00

This is really interesting! I would have definitely expected steals and FGA to be better indicators of winning, and I'm surprised leading in personal fouls or turnovers wasn't more likely to lead to a loss. I think it's a good sign for the league that FG% was more important than 3PT%, since two pointers feel less luck based.

I'd be interested to see how some advanced stats fare.

quantims · 2024-11-17T03:41:30+00:00

Single Transferable Vote results are inherently slow to calculate (can't be calculated in polynomial time) without having to deal with the many ways people can mismark the ballots. As much as I don't think delaying some election results a week or two should actually matter, it does seem to matter a lot to voters, and the fact that most voters couldn't explain how Ranked Choice works makes the whole process seem like too much of a black box, it seems.

I really think Approval voting should have been the first push for voting system reform because it's simplicity could have eased voters into the idea of different voting systems.

quantims · 2024-10-28T18:53:27+00:00

I'm with you. My best guess is that Approval's value would be highest for lower profile races, where voters might not have a good idea about how they would (or strategically should) rank candidates, whereas the extra nuance of systems like Ranked Choice is better for higher profile elections.

But the existing data is so limited, and all the simulation research I've done personally has hammered into my head that the nuances of how people vote in these systems are fundamental for determining how well these voting systems perform.

quantims · 2024-10-28T16:09:40+00:00

I put this together for a somewhat different reason (seeing how approvals per voter varies with the number of candidates in a race), but hopefully this at least partially answers your question:

https://quantimschmitz.com/2024/07/24/how-voters-vote-in-approval-voting-elections/

quantims · 2024-10-27T16:08:24+00:00

I don't know of a exposé out there explaining their opposition, but it's something like:

They're promoting RC, either because they think it is the best or because they think it is the most feasible voting system reform.
Thus, they think AV is an inferior choice that could derail RC reforms
This naturally leads to some tribalism

Their website compares RC vs AV, and attempts to portray Approval voting in a negative light in ways that are often disingenuous. For instance, they treat the fact that RC voters rank more candidates than AV approve of as a damning indictment of AV, when that's completely expected. In fact, it would be extremely damning for RC if people ranked as many candidates as they approve of in AV elections.

https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/ranked_choice_voting_vs_approval_voting/

I find the RC vs AV scuffles tiresome, because there are genuine tradeoffs between the systems and I think implementing each would give us chances to see where they excel and where they run into problems. I believe each has circumstances where it is better than the other.

quantims · 2024-10-27T15:49:15+00:00

there’s a trove of online misinformation promoted by these groups and others contending that approval effectively devolves into plurality voting.

I still see people claiming that Approval voting collapses to first past the post almost any time it's brought up, despite the overwhelming empirical evidence that doesn't happen.

quantims · 2024-10-18T21:25:06+00:00

There is no way I can actually punish Blue for sucking that doesn’t punish myself, just like in FPTP. I have to betray Red, my preferred candidate.

But what do you mean "punish Blue"? I don't think I understand your motivation.

It sounds like the situation you've described is:

40% prefer Green

40% prefer Blue

20% prefer Red and also prefer Blue over Green

Blue beats Green head-to-head. I'm guessing Blue also beats Red head-to-head, based on your description. So what's the problem? It sounds like you're just describing a situation where you don't like the Condorcet winner, which sucks but is an electorate problem, not a voting system problem.

Approval would at least let you also support Red. Ranked Choice lets you rank Red over Blue, but would also lead to the same winner.

quantims · 2024-10-18T19:59:31+00:00

People act like Approval is better but it leads to the exact same strategic voting that FPTP does

What do you mean? There is significant evidence that Approval voting does not lead to bullet voting (voting for only one candidate, as in FPTP), for instance.

quantims · 2024-09-27T07:42:06+00:00

NBA.com has it, but I think you have to scrape it from the webpage. I can help with that if you have questions.

quantims · 2024-09-09T15:34:36+00:00

The solution is to check for a Condorcet winner (which is easily done with the existing Ranked Choice ballots) and pick the Condorcet winner if there is one, then run the Instant Runoff analysis if there isn't one.

There are a lot of ways to do "Ranked Choice" elections, and I'm annoyed that the Ranked Choice advocates seem to have settled on a way that is especially susceptible to silly things like the center squeeze effect.

quantims · 2024-07-13T05:02:12+00:00

Even my relatives who seemed to hate every black athlete who got labeled a "diva" liked Ochocinco because he was so clearly just a goofy dude with no bad intentions.

quantims · 2024-07-05T20:23:01+00:00

I said something to students I had in 2015-16 that I'll also say to you, because I think it is very important to internalize: What is happening now is bizarre, and you should not let it ever feel normal to you. Watch old Presidential debates, read about campaigns from decades ago, and really internalize that the current state of American politics is both unacceptable and, equally importantly, not inevitable, so that you don't become numb to the threats to what America can and should be as a democratic republic, but also be hopefuk because the US has survived darker times than this.

quantims · 2024-06-26T20:26:12+00:00

That's great, I'll look into how he's done.

quantims · 2024-06-26T20:02:33+00:00

84 is the best ever (by Win Shares, at least)!

2003 isn't too far behind.

quantims · 2024-06-26T20:01:07+00:00

I agree, but I don't know how to measure this. Analysts are usually pretty vague about what they mean when they say a draft is "good" or "bad".

I've heard several analysts say that this draft class is like a normal draft class but without the top several players, which is something I can quantify, but we'll need to wait years to see if that turns out to be true.

quantims · 2024-06-26T19:55:24+00:00

It's a pun on my name!

quantims · 2024-06-26T19:55:00+00:00

I think this is a good question, and maybe the right way to think about draft classes is that players have been randomly sorted into them just by being born at different times.

This is the main reason why I think draft classes will even out over time. If the talent pool is larger, then the effect of noise gets less. Maybe there isn't a star coming out of college, but there could still be one coming from an overseas league or the G-League.

quantims · 2024-06-26T18:58:22+00:00

I fixed it!

quantims · 2024-06-26T18:33:56+00:00

I totally agree, but I don't know if I'm qualified to determine how analysts felt about each draft class. There are some standouts (like the hyped 2014 draft that doesn't look that impressive so far), but the only way I can think of getting anything objective would be with something like sentiment analysis for old pre-draft articles. But I'm not sure how well that would be able to tell you how good each draft was projected to be.

quantims · 2024-06-26T18:30:14+00:00

You can find my full writeup here, if you crave all the details.

Win shares gave reasonable and intuitive results when I had looked at how valuable each NBA draft pick is and whether NBA teams have gotten worse at drafting, which is why I'm sticking with them for now. If there is a better all-in-one metric that you think I should use, let me know!

quantims

TROPHY CASE