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A comment on Arrow's Theorem (2014). Parent comment

Re:Arrow's Theorem (2014) by wildmusings on Saturday November 11, 2017 @08:17AM (#15676222)
>it reveals that empirically, it produces a narrower political dialogue, poor participation, and low satisfaction with government compared to systems that produce better proportionality.

I am very skeptical of studies purporting to run statistical analysis on such small data sets as the recent history of countries, let alone the recent history of democracies. It seems that in the quest to produce quantitative political science research, people forgot all the statistical lessons about sample size, confounding factors, and so forth.

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Re:Arrow's Theorem (2014) by dragonwriter on Saturday November 11, 2017 @11:04AM (#15676819)
Weak empirical data is still stronger than abstract speculation with no evidence.
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Re:Arrow's Theorem (2014) by wildmusings on Saturday November 11, 2017 @02:32PM (#15677714)
That's not true. The conclusions you derive from the data can be totally wrong because of how weak the data is, but now you have a false confidence in it.
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Re:Arrow's Theorem (2014) by dragonwriter on Saturday November 11, 2017 @08:32PM (#15679194)
First, that's at least as much of a danger with basing conclusions on abstract speculation without evidence, and second, that's not a matter of which is stronger, it's a matter of treating either as stronger support than it is.
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