The people you mention are too egotistic to even think that is a possibility. You don't get to be the people they are by thinking you have blindspots and aren't the greatest human to ever live.
His idea is eugenics but for chickens. Just let it spread it through all the birds and the ones that get infected will die and the ones that are immune will survive and breed and the chicken race will be stronger for it.
That'd be great if the viruses weren't also using accelerated evolution to become far more adept at infecting targets. By allowing the virus to spread unchecked, the chickens become a brilliant breeding ground for the virus and we're more likely to just breed stronger viruses (quite likely to be less virulent to chickens so that they can spread further, but also far more likely to jump between species).
Yes the idea is that birds that recover from bird flu will keep producing. You end up with more live birds than culling entire flocks. Some of the birds survive, because of their genetics.
It reminds me of that joke where young people see a floppy disk for the first time and say, "Oh, you 3D printed the save icon!"
Might be reality very soon.
It is important to contextualize that a lot of things this article is mourning have not come to pass.
> OBBBA sets the stage for the proposed cuts in the upcoming Presidential 2026 budget request, which aims to destroy federal research.
While it may seem hopeless and that "call your representatives" is pointless, there are several provisions that were stricken from this bill that are clear losses for the Trump admin. Trump's plan to sell off federal land was taken out of the bill due to huge backlash from Republican states for example. We are also heading in a midterm year so putting pressure on your representatives will be your best move. In the eyes of politicians, people who bother to call are people who bother to vote.
The answer is to vote out politicians. Getting ranked choice voting on your states ballot would go a long way to fixing this. They would not have Mamdani on the ballot for NY mayor if it wasn't for ranked choice voting. Certain politicans know this and have made RCV illegal in their state. Get RCV on the ballot for your state.
RCV / Ranked Pairs of course. The IRV decision process is still a relic of the two party system, with the possibility for some pretty terrible strategic-voting dynamics as votes diverge from just two major parties.
> Certain politicans know this and have made RCV illegal in their state.
That would be Republicans.
While Democrats have pushed across multiple states for changing voting mechanisms, Republicans in eleven states have pre-emptively banned any and all use of RCV at any level within the state.
If you're doing a new thing anyway then it makes no sense to do something worse instead of something better. Popularity is determined by people; make the better thing the popular one.
It absolutely makes sense. You need buy in from the public. RCV is the most known alternative and it has taken a decade to get it that far. If you want to start the work of informing people about STAR voting then be my guess but RCV is a tremendous improvement from what we have and an acceptable alternative.
Personally I think “approval voting” is almost as good as RCV but orders of magnitude easier to sell to the public.
There’s just a checkbox next to each candidate and you check the box next to any candidate you’re “okay” with. Results in the most “okay-est” candidates getting elected so when the winner is announced everyone goes “…okay.”
Also could make primaries less important, because multiple candidates from a party could theoretically run for the general election without splitting votes.
Communication is easier because in RCV the candidate who gets the most #1 votes doesn’t necessarily win which could lead to a loss of confidence in the system. Its very easy to tell the American public “this guy got the most checkmarks” and no one gets confused.
If I recall the problem with approval voting is that it is much easier to tamper with than RCV. Filling in an empty bubble is a lot easier than changing the order of ranking on a ballot
That’s a good point. Seems like that could be a problem for current ballots too - add a second checkmark to invalidate ballots voting for the “other” guy. Doesn’t seem to be a widespread issue, but detecting it for current ballots would be more obvious.
Maybe that breaks this idea. Maybe ideally you’d maybe want a touchscreen+printer to fill in the bubbles with printer ink and show it to the voter for them to double-check before putting in the stack (or, if wrong bubble filled, put it in rejected stack).
Would love more feedback from people to get a better sense of all pros and cons.
The exact mechanism won’t be standardized, some places fill in ballots with pen today, let the voter feed it into the machine and optically scans to tabulate, and others use a computer that tabulates and (usually?) spools a paper record that’s behind a window so the voter can see that the paper record is accurate. The important part is the actual methodology itself.
Most people don't actually know anything about any of this. If they've heard of RCV at all their understanding of it is at the level of "it's something different than the status quo and supposedly better". You could swap in STAR and they mostly wouldn't even notice that you've changed anything. But you'd notice the difference in the election outcomes, in a good way.
Enough people know about it that it has been put on ballots in several states and has had strong pushes in other states while STAR hasn't at all. If you want to get outside and start informing people about STAR then please do but RCV has a decade long head start and is the path of least resistance.
tl;dr IRV is extremely poor, doesn't actually solve the vote splitting problem, and is radically more complex and cumbersome than superior alternatives like approval voting, which would plausibly scale far faster once gotten off the ground. plus approval voting was adopted by 2/3 majorities in fargo and st louis, so we know it's politically viable.
Look for a new job but be amendable to your current one. If they want you to "vibe code" then do it and look for another job on the side. Get in touch with your network and see if anyone is hiring with reasonable coding practices. My company bought everyone a Claude subscription but they trust us to use it where reasonable.
I've been using Phind lately and I think they do a really good job avoiding this problem. I don't think I've ever run into a fake URL using it. As a search engine, I think I still prefer Kagi but Phind is a great if you want a free option.
