• blackbelt352@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    At this point, we get to make a lengthy explanation about First Past the Post always leading to a 2 party system because of the spoiler effect, we get to a lengthy history explanation about how the (at the time) progressive republican party won the election with Abraham Lincoln because the (at the time) conservative Democrat party split into Dixiecrats in favor of slavery and northern Democrats who didn’t care either way and the Whig party just up and died in 1850 and that’s the only way a 3rd party becomes viable in FPTP. And then we just argue back and forth of “well if people just spontaneously saw things the way I do they would vote third party too!” to “That’s not how reality works.”

    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      “That’s not how reality works.”

      People know how reality works. That’s why 10,000,000 fewer people voted this election.

      • blackbelt352@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Correction, that’s not how reality works in terms of voting systems, you’d be surprised just how few people actually understand how voting systems work and why different voting systems break down in various ways and the greatest mathematicians for the last 150+ years have not devised a perfect voting system.

        But at this point, you took my conclusion about how the reality of voting systems break down and strawmanned it implying people already know government is corrupt.

        • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          That’s not a straw man. You left your response open-ended for someone else to draw conclusions and inferences from. In no way was that response out of context or a mischaracterization of the initial idea you layed out. stop trying to straw man the concept of a straw man.

          • blackbelt352@lemmy.world
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            27 days ago

            “Refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction” is exactly what the other poster did. My “that’s not how reality works” was the next step after “if people spontaneously see how I see voting they’d vote third party too” my argument referring to how people don’t just spontaneously change their mind and vote third party en masse.

            Instead they retorted with some vague nebulous “people know how reality works” implying that people know The System™ is corrupt and flawed, which sure they get the instinct it is but don’t actually know why or how it is corrupt and flawed. Which is not what I was talking about. It doesn’t actually refute my point or the description of the exact conversation I’ve had dozens of times. It pretty much always goes the same way, as I described it.

            First Past the Post always leads to 2 dominant parties, the last time in us history there was a 3rd party that won one party died and another party split itself in 2. Those conditions are what is most likely to get a third party in the US, and any amount of wishful thinking about the populace suddenly wishing up and just voting 3rd party is delusional magical thinking at best.

            There isn’t much more textbook of an example of a strawman you can get in the wild.

            • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
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              27 days ago

              Democrats who didn’t care either way and the Whig party just up and died in 1850 and that’s the only way a 3rd party becomes viable in FPTP. And then we just argue back and forth of “well if people just spontaneously saw things the way I do they would vote third party too!” to “That’s not how reality works.”

              Your talking point scores your underlying view on the discussion. When it was presented it became open as an allowed point of discussion. As a result, refuting it does not, a straw man make. -It would make for a straw man if you had not presented the previously quoted argument in the first place and you had still gotten the same response of “people know how reality works”, but that’s not what happened.