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A comment on How to get rid of gerrymandering: the math is surprising. Parent comment

Re:How to get rid of gerrymandering: the math is surprising by karpierz on Wednesday May 11, 2022 @08:34PM (#31347799)
I don't think objective is the word right word to describe this. It's algorithmic and deterministic. But it's not objective in the sense that it's objectively correct to group people like this. You're baking in a lot of implicit assumptions about how representation should/should not work by choosing this particular grouping algorithm.

It also doesn't remove the human factors from redistricting; humans would have to choose and approve this method. It's just laundering the gerrymandering through an algorithm to give it credibility.

But if you're the party that stands to benefit from changing redistricting laws, then the system loses credibility because you picked this method.

And if you're the party that stands to lose from changing these laws, then you're unlikely to self-sabotage yourself by doing so.

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Re:How to get rid of gerrymandering: the math is surprising by samatman on Thursday May 12, 2022 @07:00AM (#31352174)
I think you're wrong. An algorithm which will produce the same results every time you feed a set of numbers into it is objective.

I don't respect your attempt to make objective mean something it doesn't.

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Re:How to get rid of gerrymandering: the math is surprising by minkzilla on Thursday May 12, 2022 @10:37AM (#31354852)
I think the two of you are using two different but legitimate definitions. GP is not trying to make it mean something it doesn't.

1. Existing independent of or external to the mind;

2. actual or real. Based on observable phenomena; empirical.

3. Uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices: synonym: fair.

For an example, I write an algorithm to use different seeds and distance functions for the Voronoi diagram to find the one that benefits Republicans the most. It would be deterministic and maybe objective in definition 1 and 2 but it would not fit definition 3. I would say it is heavily influenced by personal prejudice, just one step removed because it is the coders prejudice not the algorithms.

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