Interesting Links for 19-02-2026

[andrewducker]

1. Messages telling people to gamble responsibly have no effect.

(tags:gambling )

2. One Way to Immunize Yourself Against Pseudoscience and Other Nonsense

(tags:belief science )

3. A lost story from The Dark Is Rising.(Made for TV in the 70s)

(tags:fiction children UK video viaDrJon )

4. Tactical voting - a ton of information about who voters would pick in various situations

(tags:voting polls uk )

5. Designing for the average designs for no one - Lessons from the U.S. Air Force Cockpit Design (

(tags:design average usa military )

Comments

[channelpenguin]

1. As expected.
2. Delightful! I am with the commenter in upvoting The Demon Haunted World.
4. Seems the Lib Dems and Greens do well...
5. Dept of the Obvious, but nice to see a case study.

[andrewducker]

I think the LDs are doing well because they're considered "Less bad than those other options" and the Greens are doing well because they've not annoyed people as much.

Noteable that if it's Lab/Con then lots of Lib Dem and Green voters will stick to voting for their own party. But when it's Lab/Reform or Con/Reform they'll switch to vote against Reform.

[channelpenguin]

That seems far too sane!

Tactical voting - a ton of information about who voters would pick in various situations

[jack]

It seems LD win every head to match up, Green beat everyone else, Labour beat Con and Ref, Con beat Ref. But a lot of those margins are very tiny. And obviously in FPTP it really really really matters where votes are concentrated.

I don't expect a LD/Green parliament :) Most green voters have always been in a "only X or Y can win, who do you pick" situation.

There's a fair transfer between Con and Ref. I guess the desperate vote doesn't want the incumbents, and the racist vote wants Con.

Re: Tactical voting - a ton of information about who voters would pick in various situations

[andrewducker]

Lots of Reform voters were Conservative voters, because the Tories were as far right as was available to them. Now there's a further right option, they'll go with that given the chance.

But everyone except the Conservatives (and about half the Conservatives) hate Reform. And so they'll vote for whoever isn't Reform.

I also don't expect a LD/Green parliament. It's all going to be jostling for position, and then whatever the polls say locally a couple of months out will inform the tactical voting.

Re: Tactical voting - a ton of information about who voters would pick in various situations

[andrewducker]

Oh, and I'm very interested to see what happens in the May elections.

[juan_gandhi]

Thank you so much!!! As a result, after reading #3, I got familiar with Chandrasekhar limit and the quantum reason for it (electrons are fermions), and that he was a nephew of C.V.Raman ('C' standing for Chandrasekhar), and that he was a Tamil, and wound up slightly editing the limit article and another one... Thank you!

As to #5, that was a really cool explanation why "average" does not work in multidimensional spaces: after all, all the volume is not inside, but close to the surface. That is, averaging makes no sense. Probably it works in human interactions as well. One has to lower the dimensionality to rely on averages.

Really impressed today. Spending over an hour based on just one dreamwidth post!

[andrewducker]

I'm delighted to provide that much entertainment!

[sigmonster]

Dimensionality hits in just 2D - 3/4 of the area of a 2D circle is closer to the circumference than to the centre. Much (much!) worse in higher dimensions.

This is also why you buy the biggest size of pizza.

[calimac]

If LD would defeat both Lab and Con in two-party matchups, that sure sounds like past experience of mid-term polling, which tended to collapse towards the Lab and Con when election time actually rolled around.

[andrewducker]

I think it will very-much depend on what polling shows closer to actual elections. I haven't seen people this fed-up with Labour since the run up to 2010.

[calimac]

At which election Labour did surprisingly well considering how much it was excoriated.

[symbioid]

The messages telling people to gamble responsibly should offer a certain percentage of chance of reward over time. Gamify not gaming. (oh god... we're in hell)