Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "TED-Ed" channel.

Steve Edwards First of all the differences in standards are costing millions due to issues when dealing with other countries in any way at all. Also, the metric system these days is based on constants that anyone can test themselves and agree upon so you don't need a particular standard in one particular location to check if your measure is correct or not. Like if you are measuring 5 feet with two different tools and they disagree what one would you trust? With a metric system you'd have an internationally agreed upon highly accurate way of determining just that. Then there's the logical relationship between the various metric units. If you learn one of them you can derive many of the other ones from that one. So I think it's actually easier to learn for kids, although I don't have evidence for that...
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Steve Edwards Well, when it comes to measurements conversions mistakes can cost lives. And unlike languages the measuring system has very little effect on what thoughts people are able to think. In other words, you can justify languages in that their differences genuinely enable thoughts that adds value. I'm not seeing inches and ounce doing that...
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Sharon Grace Heiser Nope, if 50% + 1 votes in a state votes for another candidate then the one you vote for then even if there's a majority of voters voting for candidate x then the vote of people in such states that does not follow the majority view of that state simply does not count regardless of if it's one of the two major political parties or a third party. And that's why people who don't agree with either of the two majority parties simply have no democratic way of being represented at all. Also, because of that system any state that's "safe" is a waste of time to pay attention to for a presidential candidate. Leadning to a situation where both high population states and low population states end up with way less attention and power then they'd probably get with another political system. For instance in my own country votes are weighted differently based on among other things distance from the capital, but everyones vote is counted even if there's more supporters for one party in one part of the country then for another one those supporting the other party in that part of the country still have a vote that matters. Also, since those votes matters you can't get a theoretical situation where 50%+1 of the voters in just a few states making up about 22% of the voters in total would be capable of electing a president against the wishes of the remaining 78%. Furthermore, some of the states actually allow their electoral college representatives to make up their own decisions contrary to the wish of the voters. In other words what the vote of the voters there don't count at all if whoever they voted for decided to vote for someone else. Heck, a nominee don't need to be up for an election in a state at all and still win the "votes" from that state if their party wins there as the representatives there can just go ahead and vote for another candidate entirely. The US system is full of stuff like that. Don't get me wrong, there's no perfect system out there, and ours over here in Europe is certainly not flawless... But sometimes I wonder why the system in the US and UK is considered democratic at all when it's in essence letting an elite choose a couple of candidates and you have to choose who isn't the worse alternative between them. That's pretty much the same system as they got in Iran, and I don't think most people would call them all that democratic... The chances for a third option actually getting anything done other then "wasting" the votes of whoever is picking them is next to non.
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Austin Finell Start building your social network (both on-line and offline) Read up on networking. I'm sure that you can get quite a few people involved if you just try. =)
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Steve Edwards Different languages makes it easier or harder to express different ideas and concepts. English got an advantage there because of the number of words you've borrowed from other languages. That said, there's concepts that I can say in my own language in a single word that can't be expressed in English without a full sentence. And that's not the worst example either. There's concepts out there that can't be expressed in English nor my own language without pages of texts. This means that while the languages don't directly restrict what ideas we're able to hold they restrict what ideas we're easily able to express and share and therefore the interaction of thoughts between different people because no one language can ever express all thoughts and ideas as easily there will be differences not just in languages but in culture. And that opens up possibilities of new ideas to be created by people using one language and then learned by others using another one. Something I'm sure that a English speaker should be able to respect given how you can hold entire conversations without using a single word that you haven't loaned from another language at some point in time, conversations that generally are richer because of that even though you're also loosing out on some ideas due to the decreased popularity of the older less used words that these newer loan words sometimes replaces.
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Austin Finell Actually, I think the Republicans at a State level is onto something. Some states wants to convene a assembly of states or some such. Basically the USA as a Federal system is kind of like the EU in Europe in some ways. If 2/3rd of the American States where to decide that they want to gather together and they can get 3/4th majority for a decision then that decision trumps the very constitution. They'd be able to do things like force a election champaign funding reform or even a reform of the election system. And on a local level a state can choose to go from "winner takes it all" to a more representative system if they want. In essence, the whole voting system in the US can be changed at a State level, one state at a time if you guys wish (although for some of the changes you'd actually need a 3/4th majority of the states to agree on said changes) And while 3/4th is a high percentage that's needed, there's fewer checks and balances involved. If you can get that 3/4th majority at a state level then there's nothing that can stand in the way of those changes passing. No congress vs the senate bs, no president vs the other two bs, no judges deciding that the changes are unconstitutional. Get that majority and all of those other issues can be changed as needed.
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Steve Edwards I don't, but you can't have good ideas without the bad ones. They're like genes and are subject to evolution, with the ideas that's the best suited for survival surviving and the ones less adapted to a particular situation dying out. And just like a population with a limited genetic variation tends to die out when subjected to environmental strain so does a population with a limited variety of ideas. Every single invention around you, math, computers, even fire was made by someone thinking differently from those around them, generally ideas that's based on other ideas that's either merged together or modified. Very few if any ideas at all are purely american or British, they all tend to build on other ideas by people in other nations if you follow the ideas history back far enough. Therefore we need new ideas, ideas being mixed and so one. The day we get uniformity of thoughts is the day we will die as a species... Anyway, why do you fear the unknown so much? Let me give you an example from the nordic languages of a word that you can't find an exact parallel to in English. "Lagom" That's the Swedish variant, we also got it in norwegian in the form of "luggum" for instance. Anyway, there's just not one word that fit it perfectly. I encourage you to go and google the word though. =) That word is a huge part of why the nordic region is the way it is, for better and worse.
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Part of the problem is that there's kind of a binary result here, the examples are aiming for one result. One winner. A better option is to have multiple ones and then let them negotiate the alternatives within a system that penalize non-cooperation and lack of compromises and encourage cooperation.
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james anderson And the later nulls out the benefits of the former.
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Meister AnHero Um, I might be wrong, but I do think some states have that as a law while most does not. So the representatives from some states do have to vote according to the polls. There's of course a whole ton of other issues even if that one wasn't one...
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***** There might not be any federal law saying that they have to observe popular vote, but there are state laws saying as much in some states. As far as I can tell though that's the exception and not the rule...
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EN Fingerhut I'm not saying that most states don't have representatives that can ignore the voters wish. I'm just saying that saying that the representatives to the EC from all states can ignore said vote is wrong as far as I can understand... There are some states where the representative to the EC is required by law (if I don't remember wrong) to follow the wish of the people. Not all states, not most states, but some states. What I was objecting to with Meister AnHero 's comment was when he said "NO state has that law".
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Darth Utah 66 Um, sorry? Oh, right you're commenting on the first post in this thread... We've kind of moved onto other subjects like the EC not having to care all that much about peoples vote when electing a president with the exception of a few states... (meaning that the vote in quite a few of those swing states don't really matter all that much either technically)
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deet0109 Depends, technically even the vote in some swing states doesn't really matter all that much even if it in reality does...
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ThreeFingerG Actually, the way the US system works (including the electoral college) low population states actually have less say then in the alternatives.
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Yvonne Wagner Yes?
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+Choodel Larker I prefer Crusader Kings 2 myself =)
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Well, the metric system is just another memeplex, so like other memes and memeplexes you can vote by acting just like everyone else. Of course that's exclusively your own vote, so you might want to campaign for the merits of that vote too to.
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Allison Koester You're already using two different systems already. Switching to metric would just involve all of you going to the same unit, because you're never going to get rid of metric in the US...
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