The alternative medicine field is pretty damn weird.  So how do you really discern what would be a great alternative practitioner to see, and what would be someone maybe on the far-fetched side, or downright pseudo-scientific? In this video I want to share what I think, as having been a patient for years, were some of the essential criteria I looked for in the really effective practitioners. Hey, it's Alex Hain, author of the health book Master the Day. So I've included a free download below this video. And the free PDF is going to be for Li Qingyun's five daily rituals to help you live to 100. And they're based on this Chinese medicine practitioner and Taoist medicine practitioner's five daily habits that help them to live unusually long. So it's the first link right below this video. Now the most important thing I think is that the practitioner, the physician, the healer, whoever is always the most important through-line for getting clinical results. You can find conventional physicians who use outdated, out-proven medicine that just frankly doesn't work or harms you. You can also find the same in alternative medicine. You can find conventional physicians who are well aware of alternatives that work better than what they do. And they will recommend that. And you'll find that in alternative medicine as well. These people having built this referral network. But for me in my process of trying to heal from these lifelong digestive problems, you know, one of the biggest things was I saw initially these alternative medicine practitioners who were very kind of mystical and spiritual about illness, right? And they would say that things are related to your karma and it's related to things that are psychological and spiritual. And it all sounded very cool, but none of it worked. And ultimately, the practitioners that ended up working the best that resolved my GI problems that I studied with, these people basically were just pragmatists. They didn't talk about your past karma. They didn't talk about spirituality or energy. They just said, this is what's going on with your GI and take these formulas and they worked. So for me personally, I really strongly think that the practitioner is the most important thing. It doesn't matter what medicine or alternative medicine. It's the doctor or the person giving the advice that is the predictor of whether or not it works. Now, building off of this, the second thing is that does this practitioner give pragmatic, grounded advice? Now, I have no doubt that there are highly creative, highly spiritual, highly synesthetic practitioners in every field that may not be able to explain well or advise you on your life well, but they can do it and they can fix you. I have no doubt they exist. My own experience was that typically people with clear explanations for what's going on have a clear understanding of what's going on. And I personally look for people that seem just very grounded, that seem pragmatic, practical. They can give me clear habits, strategies to work on. And I found that these were just far more likely to work in my experience than something that sounded really cool and sounded mystical and spiritual and far out, but didn't work very well because ultimately it has to work. Right where in the field of medicine, in the field of finger painting, it has to help the patient get better. And for me, the best people were the most pragmatic. Now, the third question for me that I think is very important is, do they come from a similar problem referral? And do they seem like they are busy? So when I say similar problem referral, I have no doubt that all the energy healers and the massage therapists whoever have tons of referrals, if they're great, they may not be the person that can fix your health problem though. They may be someone that's great for relaxation, mental-emotional healing, psychological well-being, but they may not be the person that can fix what you have. And so I would really look for someone that has a clear history of treating the problem that you have or if your friend is saying, oh, you've got to check out this person, ask what the friend is being treated for if they'll share. Because you want to find out if the person can actually treat what you have. And I know that sounds obvious, but just because someone had a great experience with someone doesn't mean they can fix a medical problem. And I think that's also difficult and important to differentiate. So can they fix what you have besides them just being great and enjoyable to be around and relaxing? Can they fix it? Now, in my opinion, that's one of the best ways to vet an alternative medicine practitioner. Because again, there's a lot. And if you have a problem that's been unresolved for a long time, you can really go down the rabbit hole. And you can really lose sight of what's grounded and what's pragmatic and what works because you're desperately grasping at straws. You're trying to figure out, feel solid ground and just find anything that can save you. And that's a dangerous place to be in. But again, I myself have been there seeing tons of alternative conventional doctors from my own health stuff. And this is what's helped me a lot to find the really, really rare practitioners who are really, really good at what they do. I hope that helps. Again, there's a free download below this video. It's on five daily habits you can use to potentially add 10 years to your life. And there are Li Qing Yun's rituals to live to 100. So you can check it out right below this video. And then remember, I have two related videos on this topic there.


Hi, my name is Chad Mathis. I'm the director of Potter's House Thrift Store and we've set out these boxes for the students to donate items as they're leaving campus. Our ministry is to kids in Fayetteville. We have after-school programs and mentoring and it's very local. It definitely promotes kids in Fayetteville. What students can donate are clothing, anything useful. A futon if you want to set it by the box and just drop it in your box. We appreciate your donation.


There's a longing that we have in our hearts, but we think of somebody passing away and never, I'll never see them again or whatever. There's a sense of, to me, a sense of loss, a sense of sadness that comes up, because somehow that connection and that love got associated with those bodies and those memories and then it seems the sad thing to never see that face again, never see that smile again, never feel those arms and be hugged again and in that same way and to me, that's all part of Jesus helping us slowly, slowly get into a deeper purpose to transfer the love, to get deeper and deeper into this unconditional agape, universal love, which knows no end and no limit. So I always see those connections, like you're describing with your brother, is that's just another reminder and another step of love, true love, coming closer to us. You know, it's almost like we draw forth these reflections and instead of looking at it from a perspective of loss, which is how the ego sees it, like, wow, that was spectacular, but it's sad that it's over. The spirit's coming around saying you can feel the gratitude and the love for that love coming closer, closer into awareness, and it's very optimistic and I feel that gratitude with every pet that I've had, every animal, every relationship, every time I think of somebody, it's like this coming closer and closer to this never-ending love.


Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video and today we're going to talk about what I think are the two most important things if you really want to improve your miniature painting and that is exploration and repetition in the proper order of course. Now this is going to be a little different because I am painting something on screen and don't worry I'll pop up with a little overlay of exactly what paints are being used and so you can watch how I actually paint these skeletons in case you want to replicate this. But recently I saw Richard Gray shared a single test mini from one of his cursed city skeletons that was done in this really nice style that was really focused in laser focused on the placement of light and value in his non-metallic metal and I thought it looked really cool and I thought you know I really need to practice non-metallic more on gaming figures establishing a way to get it done in such a way that I can actually be happy with what I get in a relatively quick amount of time. I often paint non-metallic metal on display figures but I usually avoid it on gaming figures for a host of reasons but I thought let's use this opportunity to practice really practice to explore specific light placement to really understand value and how I want the lighting of the figure to be cast. At the same time I thought let's also explore something a little different than what I normally do you know I often paint over Xenothol not over black I know he paints over black I often paint in very bright colors I said let's try something pretty dull so let's pick a dull scheme. So this was an exploration of lots of different things that I wouldn't normally do and I think that that's really important you have to sometimes be willing to break your habits we all have them we all have these heuristics these shortcuts we use when we're painting oh this is a belt let me get out my belt color this is a skull let me get out my skull color and you can see as what I'm showing right now these skulls are done in a mix of deep camo green and cloudy sky which is a sort of warm pseudo bone color but the fact that they're using green instead of brown as the undertone was an attempt to say hey can I unify all this fig together constantly just exploring with these figs these aren't part of any army for me they were just a fun chance of something that came along with Kerr City to really just see what I can do and to work on areas that I want to work on it allowed me to work outside my comfort zone something that we all should do once in a while if you're in your comfort zone you're not learning that's the unfortunate part of it and it becomes really easy especially after you've painted for a while to just stay in that zone where you know what you know and you know that you're going to achieve some level of results close to what you want right and this can happen all over the place maybe for you it's base wash layer maybe it's particular recipes you use on particular parts of minis like I mentioned earlier maybe it's not trying things like non-metallic metal whatever it is that's fine for a lot of our painting not everything needs to be a growth opportunity if you don't want sometimes we can just paint stuff for armies and for fun and that's okay but when we want to learn when we want to grow when we want to advance we have to take ourselves outside of that comfort zone because otherwise you're never going to actually learn anything painting more and more figs over and over again using the exact same techniques sure you might gain a little brush control or something like that but for the most part you're not improving now there are things we have to accept when we push ourselves outside of our comfort zone when we explore all right when we take these risks and those things are that we have to accept that it will take longer you know the first skeleton I did here when I was learned when I was testing out the scheme it certainly took me longer than it would normally take me to paint a single skeleton you have to accept that you'll fail when I was first messing around with this there were things I didn't like about it there were elements that I wanted to change to keep pushing myself on you have to accept when you're trying new things you won't always succeed that's okay there's nothing wrong with that because that just means you have to accept that it will take multiple attempts right the reality is is that if you're wanting to push yourself if you're wanting to try new things like I was here right where I'm really focusing on trying to differentiate the elements working up from black using this dull palette but still making the figure interesting just lots of different things I was exploring with these figures all while sort of inspired by Richard Gray's original skeleton inspired by I certainly didn't try to copy his work exactly although there's absolutely nothing wrong with that and it can be a great technique for learning but I had to accept that I wasn't going to nail it the first time and as a matter of fact each of these 10 skeletons though as you'll see at the end they look pretty much aligned certainly from the perspective of a unit they're close enough they would look fine sitting on the table there are differences between them areas where I tried to push highlights maybe a little higher and didn't like it or tried different things or different steps right because this was in itself a learning opportunity and I had to accept that to get it right would take multiple attempts it wouldn't be something I would just pick up and do because this was about learning it was about working outside of my comfort zone and breaking the habits that I have the way that I paint the steps that I use and I like to think of myself as a pretty explorative painter someone who doesn't really get hooked on the same heuristic shortcuts and biases every time but I will say this lesson there this attempt or whatever we want to call this this exploration really did open my eyes as to just how much I do rely on certain things unconsciously of course we all do because when I was forced to go back and really think about things from the ground up in this way I saw just how much different my painting was when I was really being mindful about every step and that's the last thing I'll say about this phase about exploration because that's going to really transition us into the next one is that when you're working it's often easy to be mindless about it what I mean by that is those heuristics don't just give us predictable outcomes they also allow us to turn our brain off and if we really want to grow we have to be mindful about what we're doing now eventually though you can't just explore forever because you have to get a new skill then after that you have to build that new skill you have to move out of that exploration zone and bring that new skill into your comfort zone and that's where repetition comes in as you're going to see in just a few seconds I've got one skeleton to where I wanted and then I did it again and again and again as you move from learning to practicing as it becomes less of a skill that you're just trying for the first time and more of a part of your overall repertoire now it's important in that learning phase to retain that mindfulness to keep thinking about what you're doing at all those steps don't just let it become unconscious reflex when you don't have it all the way down yet stay engaged with what you're doing think about where am I putting my brush where am I placing this highlight you know this was a real mindful exercise for me because I had to really look at the fig and think deeply about where exactly am I going to place every little bit of light in this metal and then I had to do it again and again and again and again and again and again right now when I was practicing especially focusing on things like the metal I kind of ignored the rest you know some of the other parts you don't need to work on everything at once focus on the thing you're trying to improve you're trying to explore you're trying to learn and don't worry about the rest focus on that one thing make each figure that you're working on an opportunity to continue building whatever that new skill is that you're working on now at the end of that project there's one more vital step after all this repetition once you've done all that once you've done this over and over again as I you can see me doing here on all these different skeletons checking the light placing everything in making sure I like where everything looks one two three ten times there's a really vital last step I think we often skip and that last step is appraisal looking at your work and really trying to see where did you fail where did you succeed so putting all of that work together and understanding how'd you do give yourself a grade see where your opportunities for improvement are and take that into your next project so there you go I hope that helps and explains how exploration and repetition can be used to grow your skill in the hobby this was certainly a really fun project for me if you like this give it a like subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future but as always I thank you for watching this one and we'll see you next time


episode of Hawaii Food and Farmers Series where we're meeting with Hawaii's farmers, foodies, and people who just care about our local food system. As always, not always, but most of the time I'm your co-host Matt Johnson here with Justine Espiritu. Say hi Justine. As always you can join the conversation and we hope you do. You can tweet if you're into tweeting at Think Tech HI and you can actually call in the hotline. We're really hoping for some phone calls today and the number listed right at the screen below<PHONE_NUMBER>. And also too, you can check out the show later on YouTube at Think Tech HI, Think Tech Hawaii YouTube. There it is at the bottom of the screen. Thank you, Justine. So, Justine, why don't you go ahead and introduce our guest today. Awesome, thanks Matt. So today is gonna be a little different. We're not really gonna call it an interview. We're gonna call it just a conversation. We have two guests from the University of Hawaii from the Department of Geography. Just for the sake of time, I'm just gonna call them Mary M who is the assistant professor and we have Eli L who is an undergraduate student with the Department of Geography. And so you guys are working together right now on some interesting research and looking into some things that are going on in our local food system, particularly how folks are getting involved, why that's important and kind of the role that plays in food production here in Hawaii. So if we can start off with kind of making that connection between geography and your interest in the food system, if we want to start with that. Sure. Yeah, really interesting question. I think geography is a very broad discipline and for human geographers, especially we're very interested in looking at the relationship between humans and their environment. So of course, agriculture and food plays a huge role in our environment and the way that we that place is produced and place making practices. So a lot of geographers including Eli as an undergraduate student and myself and also our colleague, Christmas or Unata, is engaged in looking at how people engage with food and also looking at agriculture and the various ways in which agriculture affects our lives. So we look at it from a political perspective, an economic perspective, a social and a cultural perspective, as well as an environmental perspective. And that's really interesting to me because I think a lot of people, not me, but think of geography as like, oh, you do GIS. And so we talk about human geography.  So in terms of like local agriculture, what are you guys looking at and seeing? Or what has been your focus with that? Yeah, so one of our projects that we're working on now is looking at the various ways that people value agricultural and food events in Hawaii. And what we see is that there's a growing interest and excitement around food and agriculture. And so people are really excited to go volunteer on farms. They're excited to do woofing, which is also known as the Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. People are doing meditation on farms, yoga retreats and various other kinds of activities. And we're interested in knowing where is this excitement coming from and what role does it play in the way people value agriculture, as well as the viability of agriculture in the state? I think that's an interesting point. When we talk about these kind of events that are going on, I think with farms we've talked about and in terms of that viability, I think there's been a message that farms have to kind of embrace this idea of the community being involved to kind of proliferate that image and get the excitement of supporting local farmers. And it's aside from just focusing on production, that engagement is really important in terms of their viability as a business or a revenue stream. Yeah, that's a really interesting point, actually. And what we found is that a lot of small farms, especially, that most of their revenue or more than 50% actually comes from these alternative revenue streams. So, for example, having different kinds of events or having farm fairs or these kinds of things make up a huge percentage of their revenue. Also, federal grants for various kinds of youth training programs or various kinds of community development programs. So, it's an important way that people are both supplementing their revenue as well as creating community through food and agriculture programs and events. And additionally, when people go to these events, they go to do yoga on a farm or go to a music event on a farm. It also gets them interested in agriculture, right? It gets them interested in, it educates them a little bit as well because they learn a little bit more about the process and about foods. And then, like myself, I went to a couple of events on farms, and then I was like, this looks really cool. Maybe I want to volunteer, get more involved. So, it kind of creates that awareness as well. So, with the, so you guys are just kind of seeing this trend, but what, what are you, I mean, guess what, what kind of results or what kind of things are you seeing?  So, what, what kind of, I mean, what kind of conclusions or what, what are you seeing? Like, what, what does this all, I guess, mean? That's a really good question. I think it's really important to think about the, what we call the performative value of these kinds of events. So, rather than the economic value, the value that they play in re-articulating the discourse around food and agriculture and the significance of that for garnering support for things like local agriculture. So, for small farmers in Hawaii that depend on people valuing local agriculture, you have to develop that value, right? That's a cultural, that's cultural. And so to, for people, it's a, it contributes, and you need, it's part of social change and social change is oftentimes very slow. So, it's all of these things combined, you know, it's the bumper sticker that says, know your farmer, right? Or it's the, who may be your yogi at the same time. Right, exactly, exactly. It's all of these things sort of combined. It's more like a theoretical speak, you might talk about like the assemblage components of this broader, this broader articulation of what is food and agriculture? Why do we, why do we value it? What is the significance of valuing it? And why is it important? And so all of these things play a huge role in supporting local food and agriculture in the state. So despite the fact that it's actually a very small percentage of the economy, it does play a huge role in creating the space for broader structural changes and policy changes that we need to contribute to the growth of local food. So, so in your research, what are, what are the kind of things you've checked out that you've seen specifically what farms are, are doing? What have you checked out? Specifically what farms? I mean, you guys had Sean Anderson on the show from creating these farms. He does like stuff with Yo-Garden and other events. So that was where I volunteered once as well, actually, because like the environment there was really enjoyable. I really enjoyed being there. What else? And you guys checked out a couple of Woofer farms? Sure. Yeah, Mary did a lot of work with Woofer farms. So what is Woofing again for any of our viewers that may not be familiar with it? It's an acronym that stands for Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. And it's actually a world, so it's a worldwide program and people do it. It's an opportunity for people to volunteer on farms for usually around four hours per day in exchange for accommodation. And there are more than 300 Woofing farms in Hawaii alone. And so it's an important way that especially small farmers are able to offset the cost of labor, as well as create these sort of unique creative opportunities for people to learn about organic agriculture and create new forms of community. You know, and one of the things I talked about before specifically with Hawaii being in an island, I think there's been particular emphasis to kind of experience Hawaii or get get a connection or a sense of community through food that we've seen volunteering at farms or living on a Woofer property has been this kind of gateway to experience a more authentic experience with Hawaii. I think specifically with tourism being such our dominant economy, like this is a way that agriculture can kind of insert itself into kind of compete in that economy in a way to kind of give that alternative experience. And I think for Hawaii that's particularly unique with the with the incorporating the food system into that. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there's like definitely a strong connection between people seeking sort of authentic tourism experiences. So a lot of woofers are like we want to get to their motivated by the idea of having an authentic Hawaii experience. And so part of that is getting to know people in the community as well as sort of getting their hands dirty and stay in it for a longer period of time. And that's not exactly unique to Hawaii. If you around the world is I've done I lived and worked in New Zealand for a while and Woofing is a huge part of the agriculture system there where you have a lot of people who will travel for up to even a year or longer just going around the country or around a region volunteering on farms. And they see this as a way to have a more authentic tourism experience. And I think that's not unrelated to people's desire to have more sort of authentic connection with their food. So we can see this for example when you see like fair trade products and you'll see a picture of the farmer and they'll say meet farmer Joe who grew your coffee right. This is sort of one way where people seek out this intimacy with food and agriculture and they're also seeking out a sort of a more authentic experience authenticity I think is an important discourse to think about when we're thinking about the way people value these kinds of systems. So kind of taking like these these individual I guess farm experiences and some of the successes that you're seeing. Are you guys seeing this as a trend that could at a larger scale for the entire state help when we're talking about food security for the state or increasing the amount of locally grown foods. Is this I guess a trend or even like a recommendation like are you guys kind of trying to develop some kind of a model that that you could see working to make Hawaii more food self-secure. I mean one of the things we do look at with these agro food initiatives is what's the viability of these small farms right. So as Mary mentioned earlier like a lot of the revenue generated comes from not necessarily the produce although the produce is obviously a big part of it but from events as well. So if you're trying to figure out what the viability is and you can kind of put your thumb on it essentially. And that comes becomes a blueprint for other small farms that might want to start up as well so they can invest in like agro tourism right or farm tours or events like they can have that in mind as they work. I think that's definitely like part of that. Okay. Oh good. And another big part of that especially in Hawaii is like agriculture the sort of vision of agriculture is important for the marketing of place. Right. So this is obviously a tourist economy tourism economy. And so it's important to keep that sort of vision of Hawaii. You don't want to not have any agricultural land in Hawaii for example. So it's not just agriculture itself but it's the tourism economy and it plays into other industries as well. And so agro tourism in particular is an important way that people of that farmers in Hawaii are offsetting sometimes declining revenue through farming itself. It's a way to create sort of value added place based marketing. Yeah. So we're going to take a quick 60 second break and then we're going to get back to it because I'm curious of what that kind of balance is maybe between focusing on production or trying to build up this other side of it. So we'll take a quick break and get back into it. I'm Ethan Allen host of likable science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world. Scientists who talk about their work in meaningful easy to understand ways they'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking way of knowing about the world. You'll learn interesting facts interesting ideas. You'll be stimulated to think more. Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii for a likable science with me your host Ethan Allen. Aloha Kako. I'm Marcia Joyner inviting you to navigate the journey with us. We are here every Wednesday morning at 11 a.m. and we really want you to be with us where we look at the options and choices of end of life care. Aloha. To Hawaii Food and Former Series I'm your co-host Matt Johnson here with Justina Spiritill and Justine who do we have with us today? We have Mary M. and Eli. You don't even want to try? Don't want to waste time. Don't want to waste time. The Department of Geography at UH doing some interesting research and analysis on agro food initiatives or food events. Things are that are cultivating kind of a sense of a community between consumers and farmers and we're kind of talking about that that balance of of where that gets us or how that contributes to the viability of small farms. And so I'm I'm wondering when we're talking about small farms that really represent this kind of local identity and representation of Hawaii and how much effort they need to to put into these kind of events versus maybe the focus on production itself. One of the things the interesting things that I've learned from talking to farmers and working with farmers is they're they're a little bit isolated and we talk about how they there's so many skills they need to have and they're producing their product. They have to market it. And I think this idea of putting on these initiatives that's it's a very conscious effort you have to take and not everyone is able to do that. Maybe that's a question I have of are there farms that are doing this and farms that aren't and kind of that what's that different capacity. And when we talk about Kahumana or Greenrose those are farms that really are it's kept alive by a community and maybe farms like family farms like whole farms I think is maybe just getting into it because that's a smaller family thing. If you kind of want to touch on that here's a business from Greenrose right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that really that question really it really comes a lot of that a lot of the differences are around labor issues. Right. So for when a lot of farms try to scale up that becomes the sort of bottleneck in which it's sort of that either things either far that becomes the issue that a lot of farmers deal with. So when people try to scale up they have to start increasing their costs and when you have to increase costs for labor if you don't have family to help out on the farm then you're going to be hiring people for around twelve dollars an hour is around about the going rate. And so this becomes that one of the big differences between farms that don't pay that don't pay directly for labor or who have subsidized labor versus other kinds of other types of farms. And that's what is one of the big differences between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland. So for example on the U.S. mainland around fifty to seventy percent of agricultural laborers are undocumented workers. Fifty to seventy percent. Yeah. So it's unclear the exact statistic because of the legality of it. But around fifty to seventy percent. And so when you look at Hawaii where we don't have that many undocumented workers in the same way that maybe California might we pay a lot more for labor. And so that is what makes the production that's one of the reasons production in Hawaii is significantly higher. And one of the reasons why if we want to increase local food production we also need to increase local food consumption. And so that's where these kinds of events really play a huge role. And just like drumming up that demand for it. Right. Absolutely. You have to create the demand right. So it's a again it's like a cultural shift. And so that's why these events are important in creating the demand and creating the consumption. And that will play a huge role in farmers ability to scale up. So you think farms that don't engage in these kind of activities these kind of events are they putting themselves at a disadvantage if they don't put resources and brainstorming into into doing these kind of things. Well I guess not necessarily right. Like you mentioned whole farms earlier like they're doing quite well. You know they have a very successful like you know means of producing and selling their product right. So it's not necessary behind it. But that depends on that depends on the model right. That depends on what system you have. If you have like a real like a value added product or a niche product that fits into a market really well. You might not necessarily need to do like these kinds of events initiative. So it depends. OK. That's interesting. I mean I think what's most interesting to me is that there are so many different types of models where I think back in the day and which is changing as people think about oh going into farming. You're just thinking about going and working in the dirt and and just pulling weeds and which is definitely still and always going to be part of agriculture. But it sounds like what you guys are seeing the trends are is that there's different ways to do it where you don't have to just go in and be you know hardcore production type farm. I mean you still need to have those kind of farms and you're going to have those farms which is good but there's more diversity also to with the types of technology that's available. So aquaponics is becoming super popular which is also creating other I guess revenue streams for the aquaponics firms because there's so much interest in it. So people are coming in doing tours. I know Marys garden just started doing yoga as well seems like yoga. The next thing I was talking to the farm manager who's like the last person I would ever expected to be interested in yoga. But they're smart they're entrepreneurs and they're you know finding opportunities and also working with like Nica Caldari they started doing on farm tours and they realized that they're able to do that instead of actually going to the farmer's markets. And farmer's markets are a great outlet for products but also can be very time consuming costly and it's a hard thing to do. So it's an interesting shift for Nica Caldari where for the longest time they're like gotta go to farmer's market gotta go to farmer's market and now they get to stay on the farm and a large part of their customers are are coming to them. It's not really a question. Because it's a conversation. So why don't you lead us into a question. What's on that list. So looking again at whooping when we talk about the disadvantages to labor costs in Hawaii is that I've always is whooping then kind of controversial in that sense of capitalizing on free labor.  So what you're doing is if you have a farmer that hosts woofers and they don't pay for labor they're going to be they're going to be able to sell their produce for example the farmers market for cheaper than farmers that pay for their labor. Right. So that is definitely a tension that we've heard some about from farmers and yeah I think that's an ongoing discussion or among farmers in Hawaii. Although there is some difficulty there with whooping we've seen before with woofers don't typically have lots of experience in farming right. So yeah like make mistakes or maybe it's a little bit slower production records are not entirely sure they have to be trained on the jobs obviously that takes like effort and hours from a manager from whoever. Well that's what I thought there's a little bit of like a sacrifice and the level of production my experience with volunteering with farms they have to you know they've got their routine and their system and that whole idea of trying to bring the public into you know they have to paint it in a certain way they can only do so much and so there really seems to be that balance of of how much do we bring these community helpers into help. And so I'm always interested in how farmers balance balance that because I know like yeah Kahomana for the longest time they had a large woofing program. I think they decided to scale back just for the kind of reason that you were describing where they're actually starting to produce more. I think they've gotten to a point where they still have woofing program but you know there are you know set backs to that as well. And also have like the apprenticeship as well. They have people on for longer periods of time. So it's kind of a similar idea where you take someone who's maybe newer to agriculture doesn't know as much then you give them the time to you know to learn and to like become part of the whole whole system they have set up as well. And it's far more reliable as well if you have someone on for like a set period of time. Yeah what we see is that a lot of people a lot of farmers that host woofers they if they're scaling up they ultimately will scale up slowly into some sort of internship program. So they have more of a commitment because there is a huge opportunity cost if you're spending all your time training people to pick weeds or different kinds of techniques. How about with act tourism. I mean I think there's a lot of potential around that what what models have you seen that you feel are working really well or that you've been impressed with. Tons of opportunities for act tourism in Hawaii. It's one way that tourists like to again it comes back to this sort of seeking out an authentic Hawaii experience and agriculture really can play a huge role in that in terms of people saying oh I want to go you know have lunch on a farm and we're going to go meet people and have a tour and we met this tour guide and he's from Hawaii and he told me all about the community these kinds of things these intimate encounters are really important for people who are seeking these kinds of experiences which there's quite a huge market for definitely. And we definitely see that also with farmers markets right so like the KCC market. I don't know the numbers but I would say a high percentage of the people at the KCC market are actually tourists right and so they're coming for some of the prepared food but also to get a sort of local flavor of Hawaii. So they'll buy some of the prepared food bring it home and there's this sort of value added place based marketing around sort of like local Hawaii honey for example. I think I see a lot of that success too with the integration even with locals. The idea of these dinners these farm to table dinners. I know a particular mushroom farm that throws awesome parties. And that idea you know even to give you that advantage you know when you're at the grocery store it's like oh I know yang. I'm going to take those really kind of yeah shaking that barrier between consumers and farmers. And so some of your your research as well goes into why kind of farmers get into this or kind of take this on is not true kind of looking into their their motivation with this kind of like changing landscape of the viability. So can you share a little bit about what you've what you've heard from farmers. On that.  OK. Yeah. So we're really we're interested in looking at what motivates especially new farmers in Hawaii. And this is really interesting given there's a lot of a lot of initiatives to to encourage people to become farmers in the state. And so there's these sort of new new farmer training programs. And a lot of people that enter these programs a lot of them are very young and really interested in sort of in these kinds of experiences as well as people that are retired are looking for second careers. And so oftentimes what what we often hear is that people are valuing these types of experiences for way more than the sort of the economic aspects to it. So they're not trying to go into it to make a lot of money rather they're trying to go into farming because they value it for other reasons. So the community they build around farming as well as contributing to the production of local food and other reasons why people and also the lifestyle. Right. So with new farmers the other the other group of large group of new farmers and even larger than the sort of then farmers that go through a lot of these training programs are new are new immigrants. So you have farmers from for example Lao and Thailand that are coming to that are farming in Hawaii. And so there's good thing they're not on the president's fan list. Right. Yeah. I mean that's a big issue. That's another show. Yeah. So there are various ways that new farmers are valuing farming in Hawaii. Some farmers are valuing it for the lifestyle that it offers while others for example new immigrants oftentimes are valuing it for the livelihoods that it offers. So this is sort of this the lifestyle and livelihoods is an interesting way to think about the various ways people can value farming. So we have 20 seconds left. Awesome. Yeah. Definitely.  Thanks for coming on and sharing some of your research. Yeah. And having this conversation with us. Great conversation. We're out of time. All right.


Hey everybody, it's Hari Swaminathan from OptionTiger.com. It's Thursday, May 21st and let's get to the good news first. That is Facebook. As you can see now, Facebook is going up another $1.42. The position is up $5,600 just on my five contracts. There was no doubling down, nothing. And you can see this is at $4 and going for almost $16. So that's a 400% return, 300% return I would say. And so this is great. This is fantastic. You know, you need trades like this and this is what a long call or a long put can do. And we are seeing that now, of course, Microsoft, we just put this and it is still just a little bit over. But what we want to do today is obviously take advantage of this. Now yesterday during the daytime it was up, I checked it, you know, it was up around $6,000 on my position. And so if somebody wanted to take this kind of a, you know, a profit and you know, I'm not going to, in general, I'm going to try to avoid giving any intraday alerts, whatever. If there's any change in strike prices and everything, I will probably send an email before the market starts. And I also sent out an email just sort of recapping all the various important points about how to look at the swing service and hopefully you've gone through that as well. But today we're going to take advantage of this. We're going to close this. I think it's going to go over $6,000 because Facebook is up $1.47. And so there's a couple of things I want to do here. One Google, as you can see, it's going, it's gone very close to the short call. And therefore now Google, I've booked about 1800. And so it is still a profit. This trade is a profit. So I want to close this out. So I'm closing Facebook. I'm closing Google. And the same thing with IBM. IBM, we booked a loss of 1000. And so now it's up about 1400. So which means about $400 both Google and IBM are $400 trades. If you want to join the swing trading signals program, you can go to this bit.ly link, http bit.ly slash 25 swing to get a 25% discount on the monthly plan. You can also come to the option tiger website at option tiger.com. And on the homepage itself, you'll see the algorithm based swing trading signal service. If you click on learn more, that will take you to the swing trading signals page. And here you can get some more details on it. And you can also sign up on a monthly plan for 25% off or an annual plan for 50% off the list price. Thank you.


Well, thank you to everybody for joining. My name is Caitlin Penya. I am the Director of Operations and Programs with the Center for Election Science. We have an exciting event for you all today. First of all, we'll be joined by Aaron Hamlin. He is our Executive Director for the Center for Election Science. And then we also have online with us today Jean-Francois Lathlier. He's a researcher at the French National Center of Scientific Research, and he's a professor at the Paris School of Economics. His research is focused on democracy, particularly on voting rules and voting behavior. And then we've also got Herod Egershine. She is also a researcher at the French National Center of Scientific Research, and she's a professor at the University of Strasburg. Her research domains are history of economic thought, welfare economics, and experimental economics applied to voting. So these two worked with Aaron on a nationwide polling study in 2016 around the presidential election, and that's what they'll all be discussing today. So I will go ahead and hand it off to Aaron. We're very excited to have Dr. Egershine with us as advisors. They're wonderful and it was amazing to be able to work with them on the 2016 project. So maybe just to kind of start us off leading in that direction. Herod, would you like to maybe summarize and talk about what we were doing with the project, the kind of methodology that we did in terms of the questions that we were asking about different voting methods, what we were looking for, that kind of thing, just to kind of get us started off? Yeah, so that's a very vast issue to start with, but I will try to to cope with it. So yes, first of all, thank you for having organized this event. So yeah, as you just said, I'm a researcher at the French CNRS, the Center for National Research, and since 2017, I'm beginning to work with Jean-François in particular, Jean-François Lalier on voting methods and with an experimental perspective. And so a few years later, Aaron asked us and me in particular to join the Center. After an invitation by the World Forum for Democracy, where I have talked about our results in France because we have conducted many experiments in France since 13 years now and a little bit more for Jean-François, actually. And so difference with what we'll talk about today regarding the 2016 election in the US, because we have studied data but focused on our survey. And what we did in France is a little bit different actually because we are studying data collected from field experiments. So experiments conducted during actually the near the official station the very day of the French presidential election. So that's a little bit different. Of course, regarding the analysis of the data and stuff like that, we can have the same kind of reasoning and that conclusion because it's essential premature to speak about the conclusion of our results now. But the methodology is really different when we cope, of course, with survey than with data collected from the field. And one of the things that you had mentioned that I think it's important to point out, both you and Jean-François have an immense amount of experience doing voting methods research. So when you go on Google Scholar and you're trying to look at comparisons between voting methods using polling or exit polling, there's not a whole lot out there in terms of like direct comparisons of different voting methods. But when both your name and Jean-François's name come up quite frequently, particularly with the French studies that you referenced. So maybe you can go into the type of maybe Jean-François, if you want to go into the type of voting methods that we looked at during the 2016 election. During this poll, the main objective was to study approval voting because it was conducted by the center. So it is really about approval voting. And because it is in the U.S., the idea was, of course, to construct contrasts the outcome of approval voting with first as a post method. Still, the survey was a little more sophisticated than just comparing simple plurality with approval voting because it also involved other questions asked to the respondents. Namely, how would you vote on what you call the, I think the rank choice model, rank choice voting model? How would you kind of sincerely evaluate the candidates? So that was these four methods, in a sense, were studied. And on top of that, there was an experimental design with this survey, which was to have some participants voting on one set of candidates, a small set of candidates, and the remaining voting on a larger set of candidates. This idea was, came out from theoretical research on voting methods, research that points that the one key feature of the voting, different voting methods, is how do the results vary when you add or remove candidates who might, in any case, be losing. But the fact of adding candidates that are losing may change who is a candidate who is winning. So these kind of issues have some importance in theory. And so this survey tried to tackle also that issue. So, Harad, with the issue of adding and taking away candidates, perhaps you'd like to talk about the long and short list of candidates and how that played in with what we saw. Yeah, so I don't know if it's possible to share something right now. Yeah, I would be proud of you. So that's here, but that's not the right slide. Regarding this issue, the right slide is here. Sorry. I think that's the one. Yeah. You've come quite prepared with slides, Harad. Exactly. The slide, not the slide, but we have tried to understand why the importance of changing the set. So as Jean-François just said, the long set with nine candidates and the short set with four candidates and to understand, in fact, why we obtain different kind of results regarding the sets we are dealing with. So maybe I should come back first on the results now or I don't know if everyone has the results we obtain in mind or... We'll leave it up to you. I think you should record briefly the main results. Yeah, yeah. So that's another slide right here. Yeah, so that's the results we obtained with three of the voting methods Jean-François just mentioned. So plurality, approval voting and range voting. And so here you have the candidates, the nine candidates. So in the short sets you have here four candidates, Clinton, Trump, Johnson, Stein. And in the long sets, you have all the nine candidates included. It's the same for approval and the same for range voting. So here you have the main results regarding plurality with the short sets, plurality with the long sets. So the person and it showed the percentage of voters which vote for one or the other candidate, the same for the long sets. For approval, it's a little bit different. In fact, it's a percentage of voters who approve of one or the other candidate. That's why the total can be up to more than 100%. And for range voting, in fact, it's an average grade each voter, each candidate. So here you can see that an important result of this study is that as you can see under plurality with the short set and with the long set actually, Clinton is the winner of this election. So first change regarding the official and national results, of course. Regarding approval, it's very interesting as well because you can see Clinton is the winner with the short set. But there is a tie with the long set between Clinton and Sanders. The results are very, very close. So there is a tie between these two candidates with the long set. And for the range voting, the results are even more interesting for the long sets because you can see that there is no tie anymore between Sanders and Clinton. Sanders is the winner of this voting method. So the range voting method, Clinton, Sanders, sorry, is the winner followed by Clinton, followed by Trump. So just to stress, of course, how to put into light these results is very interesting per se because you can see very clearly that if you change, in fact, the voting rule, you obtain a different winner. And that's a very important first point. And now shall I continue? And you, with rank choice voting, which isn't on this particular screen, also chose Clinton for both the short and long set. Is that correct? Sorry, I didn't fully understand. So rank choice voting isn't on this particular one, on this particular slide. But that also chose Clinton as well, correct, for both the short and the long set. I don't know if you have rank choice voting on there as well, or if there's another slide. Yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah, it's another slide. Sorry. Yeah. So that's the second slide with the results, sorry. So that's the instant results you mean, the instant results. So here you have Clinton, yes, at the winner of this election. So here you have Clinton at the winner of the instant runoff followed by Trump, Sanders, and then that's the result for the long set. And so we have here our main results in this very simple table. So here you can, I mean, visually see the difference of winner regarding the short set versus the long set, and of course, regarding the different voting rules. So like going back, when we're looking at, say, like, either the grading voting method, range voting, or the other cardinal method, approval voting, one of the criticisms within those is that either selecting only one candidate or in this in the instance of range voting only using the extreme scores. I had seen on one of the slides that you had was a frequency distribution, looking at approvals per ballot. And you may also have one on range voting. So that may be interesting to look at in terms of being able to see how respondents within the study used the grades and decided how to allocate their approvals within their ballot. And that's a question from Keith. So thanks, Keith, for your question. So maybe I don't know if you would like to. Yeah, you mean the, yeah, so that's we have, I have two slides here regarding the way, in fact, people grade or the way people choose to approve of one or the other or not to approve of one or the other candidate. And there is an interesting connection, by the way, with the study you made regarding the the primary you sent us yesterday. So here you have the the distribution of candidates approved per ballot. So that's for approval voting, of course. So you can see here and we have a long this kind of long discussion regarding this issue. You have here the so this distribution and so the average number per ballot for AV. So approval voting is 1. 1.40 24 sorry for the short set and 1.73 for the for the long set. So it's not a lot. In fact, it's not very important, meaning that more than three out of four candidates voters choose to approve of just one candidate and two out of four choose to approve of only two two out of four, sorry, choose to approve two candidates, one candidates for the long set. So we had discussion regarding this very specific point, because yeah, we thought that it's not very important, at least regarding the French experiments, which turn around 2.5 approvals per ballot, which is a little bit more. And we had discussion regarding this point. I don't know if Jean-François wants to add something maybe on this issue. Well, yes, maybe I can answer on the issue of the maximal grade used by voters on the range voting. So the question is that how many people in a range voting system are going to use the extreme grades? So first, there are two extremes, the maximal grade and the minimal grade, the minimal grade when the system starts at zero, which is often considered the case under consideration. Then especially when there are many candidates, these zero also is a grade chosen by voters who just do not know the candidates or who know that they are very minor candidates who for some reasons are not interested in the race. So there are always a lot of people who choose the zero grade. Now more interesting is how many people use the maximal grade. So the theory goes that in fact all people should choose once at least once the maximal grade and that no one should ever use any intermediate grade. And that is clearly something that is not observed in the data. All the data we ever gathered on various selections always show a smooth distribution of grades so that it is not true that people use only maximal grades. This is what we observe in these experiments. Now of course you can try to save the theory by saying of course but these are only fake elections and in practice people will not do that. Of course that's a possibility but at least for the time being we have no indication that that might be true. I would like to ask that to add a point and important point with respect to range voting is that the issue is quite different if there are negative grades. We did try to test these kind of things and not alone but the presence of negative grace completely changes the picture. If we want to talk about that we could but it takes us maybe a little further away. Well do you see how do you see using like say negative grades as being material versus just using a simple scale that starts from zero to some positive end. But again we observe that. So the question was raised because there are these theoretical answers. The theoretical answers are priori answers that tells you well if you use for instance the tags zero or one like under approval voting all the tags minus one plus one it should not matter okay because why after all why why because there is a mathematical possibility that if everyone who votes zero under zero one turns to one under one minus one plus one then it makes the difference but the problem is that people do not do that. So with respect to in the last years we studied a lot of this by trying to have during the same election people using different scales okay. Our plan because in all these theory approval voting is kind of central so what we did is that we try to contrast each time approval voting with one or two other methods. Okay it's a benchmark case but as a matter of fact we do observe that negative grades have an impact as they are they carry some symbols that are different from the zero grade and that's it. So the discussion should we use negative grades should we phrase the presentation of approval voting which is binary choice as saying that if you don't vote you vote against this is something that is not well settled okay it is not clear I can give you my feeling but there are arguments for and against for instance reasonable people tell me that they believe the the mere possibility of saying that you are against okay as some democratic value and people do not think about that but once they they are given this possibility they realize that it's very important and so that's an argument in favor of using negative grades. There are arguments against that and I think an important argument is that in these systems you must be prepared to use these systems with many candidates including many candidates that are not known by the voters and that are not known for good reasons because they are odd candidates that and so many people will not express anything about these candidates okay and naturally they will use a zero if there is a zero for for these candidates okay so it makes the comparison with candidates that are known that receive negative grades a little bit strange because you compare people who say nothing with people who say something so it's a bit odd if you want my feeling about that after many open questions I thought that voting is so simple that it solves this kind of dilemma you know Harad when you showed the earlier slide and the frequency distribution for the number of approvals per ballot even for the long set like you said it was 1.7 approvals per ballot so given that like even with as few approval voting as as few approval approvals per ballot as we saw what kind of impact did just did that did that have compared to just being allowed to choose one so did being able to choose that extra on average 0.7 per ballot for the long set or 0.3 per ballot for the short set what kind of effect did that have yeah and yeah it does have an impact because as we just speak about about the results and the comparison of the results between plurality and approval so so you can see that in spite of the fact that 1.7 one man say yeah but it's not a lot and it doesn't make much difference but actually when you look at the results it's clear that it makes a very important difference as you can see here with this slice again this slice with the result which is important of course you can see that it makes all the difference between the plurality and and approval because the winner is different so the and we obtained this kind of results as well in France in our experiment in 2007 we got a different winner in a way between the the true run system which is this the official voting system in France and the approval voting and we obtained as well this kind of results in 2017 with not directly with approval voting but with different kind of range voting so even if people change only a bit their behavior it shows that it can change a lot the results and and so in terms of changing the results you you referred to an earlier friend study I assume one of those is referring to instead of Sarkozy winning Bahru winning instead is that one of the ones that you're referring to yeah exactly yeah in 2007 we found a different a very important difference yeah regarding the who could have been the the president of the french president and it was Bahru that is a centrist candidate who could have won the election on the approval voting yes instead of Nicolas Sarkozy um and uh John François perhaps you can answer this one so one one finding that seems to come up uh a lot so like saw it in uh one of the german studies and also seeing it repeatedly in the studies that you conduct that you as well as Farad have conducted with the french studies and that is the reflection of support that candidates get who don't win uh perhaps you can talk about that yes so uh obviously the the the main criticism of plurality voting or single name balloting is that people have to not lose their their their vote and therefore refrain from for candidates do not stand a do not have a chance which has an as an obvious consequence that these candidates do not get their share of votes in essence okay so uh this is um I guess uh an important point uh in for you in the US uh with uh plurality voting uh this is uh also true I think it's important to to to realize that it is also true in the in the runoff system despite the fact that because um the the presence of the runoff you can if you wish a vote at the first round without strategic consideration and not uh having any fear of wasting wasting your your vote and say okay I do uh I vote with my heart for during the first round and in the second round where the choice will be really serious then I will vote uh in a purely strategic manner and uh this is something that is often heard this is something that is at work in how people think and practice their their voting in this system but still it is not the case for everyone and it is just uh wrong to believe that uh people at the first round of a runoff vote sincerely and and therefore that the candidates have their fair share of votes so I could elaborate on that but but I mean I mean this is something that is very well known in in countries that practice uh runoff system this is something that is discussed uh uh every time in the in the families and in the bars before the elections so so these issues of strategic strategic voting at the first round of a runoff is something that that is a political reality I mean and I think this is something that you might have in mind in in the US because I know that you you are also discussing the the idea of having instant runoff okay and the argument goes that with instant runoff you can vote for the candidate you you you like because if he's not uh if your vote is not counted for that guy it will be counted next well that's not going far enough because in countries that do use this kind of system people do have to to to to to vote strategically even uh only at the at the first round okay compared to that the uh systems where you really ask to to to give your opinion to each candidate independently from the other candidates then you leave open the the possibility that uh each voter uh just say what he thinks about each candidate or say whether he approve or not each candidate uh whether or not this candidate stands a chance to win or not okay so it's not an absolute truth but uh this mechanism is at work in the mind of many of voters so that at the end it seems it looks like the picture that is given by this method is to all the candidates including the ones that stands no chance of winning is more true to to to what people think and uh Harad since you've you've you've kind of so prepared with all these uh slides um perhaps you can so um one argument of different voting methods is like this idea that uh third party and independent candidates candidates that aren't quite as mainstream can get that reflection support um how do you see this uh playing out with the data that we saw with uh ranked choice voting approval voting and range voting uh for uh independent and third party candidates relative to how they were reflected under um the plurality voting method oh and you're you're muted at the moment so yes you you mean uh with this um with this study um not sure exactly how to uh uh so so I can different kind of candidates we are dealing with with what and how my uh I mean uh for for example um and the 2016 election some of the third party candidates were uh folks like uh particularly johnson and stein were the main third party candidates in the 2016 election uh so how did voters ability to use something like approval voting or range voting or even ranked choice voting how did that affect uh the reflection support that these candidates got relative to um the choose one voting method as well as relative to an honest assessment yeah it seems to me that uh regarding this little candidate right uh it doesn't change um much uh yeah okay yeah so it depends in fact of the the kind of candidates uh we are dealing with uh regarding the the this study specific study uh I accept of course the change a very important change regarding uh bernie sanders uh it doesn't seem to me uh except you if you have different opinion please cut me but uh it doesn't seem to me that's the the role of this lead very little or very minor candidates uh is very different uh regarding this different voting rule probability approval or range voting or even instant runoff voting it doesn't seem to me that we have put some light on these issues uh I have here maybe just this slide but I think it's too it's not very appropriate to show you this um it in the difference uh regarding France actually is that some uh little very little candidates uh have much more lights uh with approval or with range voting uh that's the case for little candidates such as under probability or under the torrent system such as uh Jean-Luc Mélenchon for instance or not Jean-Luc Mélenchon but uh uh or if I should say sorry or Olivier Besançon in some elections in some previous elections so they got much more uh approvals they got they got much more support and it shows that they have really a role to play in in the political landscape and in the in the in the country or in the people are voting and so on and so forth but here for the U.S. presidential election I'm not really sure that we have we could show with the data we got that this little candidate played a real role except except Sanders except Cruz but uh yeah for example like uh with under say plurality voting within the short-sighted candidates when they're only Clinton, Trump, Johnson, and Stein uh it looks like uh Johnson uh gets 8.25 percent under under the poll uh whereas uh for under plurality voting whereas under approval voting it looks more than than double so so it seems like uh perhaps here uh they're they're still they still don't appear to be contenders so it looks like they were never really in the in the race as a as a competitive sense but thinking more about the reflection the support that they got so like Johnson going from uh 8.25 to over uh 20 percent uh and Stein going from three and a half to uh just over 11 percent and thinking about that like so here we're seeing that relative to priority voting and approval voting also thinking um it's the metric here for for ranges we're seeing here might be a little bit hard to compare uh but we may also be able to look at that with relative to say uh ranked choice voting say looking at how well a candidate did uh before they were eliminated with particularly looking at Stein and Johnson for instance yeah yeah yeah that's true but um um I think that the the main point of this result is not really here but yeah yeah you you are right of course but I have a I have a figure somewhere with this gap of scores between approval and plurality actually but I'm not sure I have it here but uh we see that uh even of course there is a kind of mechanic uh increased uh for this uh candidates it remains uh it remains kind of low uh as comparing uh with the the change of behavior with the with Sanders for instance that's it's a very important difference and for this other candidates it remains uh much more much less impressive I would say but I have a figure here but I'm not I'm not sure I will be able to to find it right now um and that's and that's how in fact we can uh define the different kind of candidates actually that's typically with the we can say the gap of scores uh that's the kind of study we have we have conducted in this paper we can define the kind of candidate and uh regarding how uh uh the how important is this gap between approval and probability arrange voting priority and so on and so forth and that's how we can define the kind of candidate we are dealing with and here uh John's with this definition in mind uh or with this idea in mind uh it seems that uh even if there is a some difference uh between Johnson between approval and probability and so on and so forth Johnson still remains uh a little or candidate according to to this uh definition but I don't know if we can continue or pursue on maybe I can say a word on this sure on on on this issue so with many uh candidates of course the it opens the the possibility of more renewal of uh political ideas and uh the appearance of new uh parties and things like that and and it has been a major political at large event in the recent past the emergence of green parties in in Europe uh in in the US of course it's uh impossible to to to see that because you have really two party system for the moment that you are more or less blocked with that and in uh in France it's a little bit the same as in the US we we we have these these rules whereas most of other european countries have system which make it easier for new parties to to to uh to appear and this is what happened in uh for instance in germany and in several other countries and the political landscape in these countries and therefore the the the landscape of ideas has changed now in France we we we observe that when we use uh approval voting the green candidates uh really happen to the same importance as they have in in uh in other european countries but uh they are bad they they cannot make it uh in in politics due to uh uh you single name balloting okay so i think we we saw uh in uh in France we we we use um the comparison between uh approval voting and single name balloting what has been predicted by by by the theory we see the advantage the statistical advantage of these kind of rules that can uh widen the political spectrum and this is i think the the the real particular importance of these feature of approval voting to to give a fairer chair more fairer chair to to to so-called small candidates so i think we can we can approve but we can really observe already that in in this kind of data and uh haraad with uh with this data that uh that we're seeing were there any uh was there anything um that you found like surprising relative to other data or uh going future into other studies are there types of questions that you would like to see uh asked and you and you mute it at the moment haraad um yes i i just say that i mean one of the surprise it seems to me uh learning this data and that's why the the results of the the survey you conducted with the democratic uh party is interesting uh at least in my opinion uh is um sorry i come back on this on the number of candidates approved by ballot as i just i was saying that we were a little bit surprised by the fact that uh the number of uh average um candidate approved by ballot remain a little bit low even if it changed the the results but still and um that's one of my that was that was my one of my interrogation regarding uh these these results as compared to to what we've obtained uh with the the french experiments and uh we wonder if it was a a kind of you specific us behavior uh i mean us voters would be less able to vote for more than one candidate or one or two but not more and so on and so forth and with our results you just uh posted regarding the uh the democratic primary we obtained kind of very very different um results uh i mean i mean global statistics with the the average number per ballot under approval voting very important number actually i just noted one of your results it was um four point nine candidates uh approved on average per ballot so that's uh very important of course and uh so that's one of the of the thing we can i guess uh put into light uh as a comparison between this study and what you just obtained that's what what one of my point of interrogation before going into other folks questions kind of a follow-up uh to that and perhaps uh Jean-François you can answer this one uh in terms of that uh discrepancy that Harad highlighted with the type the number of approvals per ballot that you see with some of the french studies uh that that were done versus what we're seeing here um in terms of thinking about explanations uh for instance like leading up to the election in 2016 there was a Gallup poll where uh response were asked whether they even knew who stein and johnson were at two-thirds people said that they didn't know so so in terms of the media attention uh that third parties and independents are are are able to get in the us relative to france and i'm i'm less aware in terms of the uh media attention that uh third parties and independents get in france so perhaps you can um highlight that as as a particular explanation yes yes absolutely so so so uh the situation is completely uh different uh in uh in france and in the us with respect to that so in france too we have often uh we have usually more than 10 candidates something like 12 12 candidates say uh for for this most more important elections among those there are uh candidates that are not known or that are not serious there are um maybe each time one or two and all the other candidates are very well known including those who have very low scores for instance uh we have always uh extreme left uh candidates trust guys candidates these guys are make uh they have all almost no votes very few very few people vote for them but see they are perfectly known and uh their image their ideas are perfectly known so uh this is completely completely different with the the polls that we we have in the in the us where we face this this forum um i think that it should be important to to to have um experience experiments uh done in the us maybe in the local elections with with uh more than and uh with more candidates uh known by the can by the voters if this exists i don't know actually you you have a problem with the uh implementation and research on that well voting uh in in the us which is that uh these uh rules shape the the the party structures okay and the party structure in the us is really uh defined by the current voting rule okay this is a basic uh take away of political science uh and if you want to change the voting order that you don't know maybe yeah and uh kelly maybe can highlight some of the other questions that we have from some of our viewers so i think we were able to cover some of the questions that we're already in here but if anybody does have questions feel free to go ahead and um put them in the chat uh there was a question from michael weinbaum he was asking about why the percentage that clinton and trump got in our poll under plurality voting why would that differ from the actual results of the election so i think it it it's not so different it's not so bad because this was a poll uh made uh before the election something like two weeks before and so the the week leading into the election yeah one or two weeks so so things change even in the last days of the elections so uh yes uh we don't have exactly uh we could have if we if we would have rescaled the the the the ballots observed in order to to match the exposed what we know exposed but of course we didn't do that so uh the result is different it's quite close uh the fact that it's quite close proves that that the sample was good the sample was sort of not that and people uh answer these questions the way we have them to answer please tell us what you would do in the election if it was great thank you um tommy was also asking he says sometimes score voting allows leaving no rating for a candidate right that way their vote doesn't contribute to the candidates average score so no rating versus zero rating are two different ballots yeah yeah so we can answer that that because uh um uh sometimes score voting allows uh what what that means it allows so the the definition yes so so so the issue is how uh are you going to to what are you going to say to the voters uh what is will be the form of the ballot okay what do the uh voters will understand of what you tell them how they would uh infer what they can do from the form of the ballot okay and how you count the the the the votes the ballots after that okay so it's it's a it's a more complicated issue that that than it looks this kind of this kind of question so uh would uh is no rating different from zero zero rating okay uh you cannot decide on that okay you can take a you can make a decision but then you have to and say well well i i for instance you can write in the in the legal definition of the rule that uh it is the same thing or that it is not the same thing but then you have to to check whether or not people understood that and whether or not they can have accepted that okay and we we looked at that quite in uh quite in details and uh try to to frame the ballots in different ways in different places where we we did the experiment and things like that and the answer is that there are no good solutions to that there are no good solutions for instance it's not true that if you just write down well uh ballots uh will be uh if you if you write nothing it will be counted as the smallest uh value or it will be counted as zero it's you you cannot uh be sure and in fact it's not true that people immediately understand and behave that way that's not it doesn't work so so you have to cope with these uh issues of uh understanding and uh i think this is a problem for uh a negative voting it is a problem for negative voting as a matter of fact you have always uh uh an important part of the voters that uh use zero as what the grades they give uh if they don't know as they don't want to grade okay and they uh are confident that the zero will be no point okay so um the strengths i think the strengths of uh approval voting and range voting is that it can be understood by the voters as a quantitative thing we add the points okay even if you don't say what you are going how are you are going to count ballots that looks like point voting uh people will infer true or not that that's what you are going to do okay and that is true also for that the simplicity of approval voting you just count you add the one the ones okay uh and uh in this framework uh zero is just zero okay and negative is something else you cannot say that negative is taking things away it's uh different yeah it's interesting how much psychology goes into voting systems right yes you you must face the fact that psychology pops in yeah absolutely um we do have another question from Colin he asks so how does this research inform 2020 and beyond what research is taking place this year or in this us election cycle um so maybe Erin you want to um note what we're doing and then um Rod and Jean Francois if you if you all have thoughts as well uh sure i can uh highlight real quick and what we're looking at uh for the uh 2020 election as well as what we've done in the primaries and uh of course uh want to hear more about uh uh the uh the work that uh Leslie and Dr. Egersheimer are doing for uh for France as well as uh how we'll be looking at the 2020 election right right now for the so we've already done a lot of the uh democratic primary uh election using polling using a lot of the same methodology that we've done in this 2016 election which is comparing uh four different voting methods having a control measure the control measure we did for the primaries was both this um honest assessment scale as well as an honest ranking um to be able to look at kind of an honest uh be all winner or honest condorsay winner as well as an honest kind of high utility winner so we we've already done that within the uh democratic primary uh looking forward uh um working with uh uh um Dr. Francois and Rod again in the 2020 election um uh doing really a similar type of setup and like it's still kind of early so it's it's hard to know uh all the all the details in terms of uh what will be going on what what I I kind of hope uh and I'm sure that uh Jean-François and and Harad are also hoping it's for some kind of interesting election so right right now in the U.S. uh for the general election it doesn't look particularly interesting um so uh only recently has uh the uh a third party candidate uh with some kind of name notoriety uh jumped forward um but if there are only two candidates it's not a very interesting election and even if there's a third candidate or more they need to have some kind of traction to to make the election interesting so for for research purposes kind of hoping for an interesting election to be able to uh to work with um but uh uh Jean-François and and Harad uh what uh what kind of things are are you looking at and are you thinking about with both uh uh U.S. elections as well as uh French elections or elsewhere uh maybe Harad you can you can lead us off uh yeah yeah yeah so uh you're right uh Aaron regarding yeah the 2020 election in the U.S. we'll see uh for the moment in France we still we are we say very much focused on the on the big uh elections in France or the the big rendezvous that is the the French presidential election so we still have a little bit time to think about it here uh two years um probably and um but yeah for for now uh i'm continuing to we are continuing actually uh to work on the on the data collected in in the in the previous election in in France and so we are continuing as well to to work and I hope to to be able to continue to work with uh with our room as well and and but we still have work to do on the on the data collected in 2017 actually in France so that's uh and in parallel uh i'm conducting as well some experiments in um uh in the lab and so not in the field but in the lab and uh in the lab on voting uh different voting rules and it's as an actual but uh it's uh very um and lighting as well because um uh it shows uh much more precisely uh this psychological trait uh in fact of the of the voters and uh they behave very differently uh in the lab as compared uh comparing with the behavior in the field and that is especially true uh regarding uh strategic voting uh and regarding uh what Jean-François was talking about that is the the the the scales with negative grades and that's very very um very interesting to compare in fact this uh two kinds of uh of behavior lab and field uh focused on on voting issues or voting methods yes so um research also is uh is going on in the important field of uh proportional representation and and voting rules uh under proportional representation which is a very vast and complex uh uh matter uh i i believe that uh we we've done a lot we with the uh main elections uh so the presidential elections uh in presidential system countries like the US or France of course are are the most most attractive ones they are the the most important but i i guess that if there are things to to to change the uh voting systems uh it will also come uh from uh other voting rules being used repeatedly by many people in in various circumstances so uh studying uh voting uh in less important settings but still important ones uh be political elections or uh elections and decisions uh in different settings is uh also valuable both for research and and for uh popular science i mean and for for culture in in general thank you um all right we've got two more questions and then we'll go ahead and wrap up let everybody get back to their day or their evening um so Keith earlier asked a question that he thinks maybe needs a little bit of clarification so he says his question is if a large fraction of voters score any candidate at the maximum not if every candidate is scored at maximum or minimum um oh wait keep can you clarify that because um here i'll unmute you that way you can ask go ahead so um there's this kind of two issues one is that everybody votes max and min and that's kind of viewed as a bit of a flaw the other thing is if no if a lot of people don't use the full range if they don't use the maximum value at all those are kind of and you'd want that you'd want people to kind of normalize relative to the candidate so you'd want them to have somebody at the minimum and somebody at the maximum so it's it they're kind of inverse problems really does that make sense yeah so so of course it's it's different depending on on the scale so we we use a small or large scales of of range voting so um with large scales and we used two large scales one is 0 20 that may may be strange to to you but that is very natural in France because it's the way kids are graded in schools okay so 0 20 is very natural things to do in France and 10 is a pass normally 10 is pass fail is at 10 okay and we also used a continuous scale which in fact is is possible when people vote online because you can click on on a line and it's also possible when people use paper and pencil because what you ask them is is to to mark a point on the on the line and then you can scan these and automatically get so with these large scales okay you really can ask the questions how many people will go to the maximum we many and there are people who go to the maximum for some candidates okay but the global picture is that they they tend to use a lot intermediate grades okay even if with these very large large scales and of course with small scales as for instance 0 1 2 the question is a bit different okay so the question is a bit different then you can ask the questions will people use the grade one in the grading system 0 1 2 and the answer is yes many people do for many candidates I don't know if you just answer the question maybe I just can add something regarding how people use intermediate grades and I was just talking about it in fact two minutes ago when I sorry I put I was talking about the difference between lab and field and what is interesting precisely and strategy and the issue of strategic voting and what is very interesting in fact when one compare this to a kind of of studies is when can see that people actually use intermediate grades much more much more in the in the field than in the lab in the in the lab even if you propose a 0 20 scales for instance as I was saying about that people will focus on 0 and 20 they won't use intermediate grades they they understand very quickly in fact how to vote strategically or to use this this grade this scale but with with the real election or with experimental election at least they are using intermediate grades so the so we can confirm through lab experiment that people know how to use maximal grades they know how to use it and they know how to vote rationally or strategically in a way but they prefer to vote through intermediate grades so that means that they they want to to say what they really think and not to just to vote strategically rationally if I may all this is pretty much consistent with what is known in in political science that most people vote sincerely that strategic voting exists a non-negligible fraction of of people do so okay but they they they they are not the majority and that's that is what what we see also in these experiments there is nothing much new I think here so the point is rather that voting strategically or sincerely doesn't mean the same thing on the different rules that's an issue okay thank you so much for that explanation all right we've got one final question from Colin he asks what an approval voting potentially enable a third party who isn't running to run and receive substantial support so if no substantial third candidate runs in 2020 plurality general that's not evidence that no third party candidate could have run in a 2020 approval general so essentially he's asking doesn't doesn't approval voting give give third parties a better chance at running so yes I think that that's all research on voting points to to to that I don't know if there exists proof in this matter but I mean it's I'm confident it is true all right well thank you all so much for joining us Sean Francois and Herat I know that you both are all the way over in France right now it's probably around your dinner time we're getting close we really appreciated you taking the time to chat with our supporters and explain the results of the election and I know that we're all looking forward to seeing what we what we do here in 2020 with the general election and and the studies that we're planning to conduct okay so thanks for for the questions I see that people some people have been asking whether the data was available actually there are plenty of data available on this on these things the data on fresh elections we are plenty of data that can be studied it's not immediate to do so because the what we did we always as Herade said work not with representative samples okay so it's difficult to to to study cities and the advantage of what has been done at the center with this pool is that it is done with representatives representative samples so it's much easier to use okay but still this data exists and I guess as soon as the the the paper we we we we have in writing on on on the last presidential election in the US is published the data will be available I'm in favor of releasing data immediately everywhere so don't hesitate to contact us if if someone is interested


When Radiohead came out with their In-Rainbow's album, they allowed it to play whatever you wanted. Yep. And most people assumed that they'd just get it for free. And for a large chunk of consumers, that was true. But what shocked I think the music industry was that most people ended up paying something for the album.


Hello and welcome to the session on stream control transmission protocol that is SCTP. At the end of this session students will be able to introduce the SCTP as a new transport layer protocol. Students will be able to identify SCTP services and compare them with TCP. Here figure shows the new transport layer protocol called SCTP. SCTP is designed as a general purpose transport layer protocol that can be handled multimedia and stream traffic which are growing every day on the internet. Strip control transmission protocol is a new reliable message oriented transport layer protocol. Figure shows the relationship of SCTP to the other protocols in the internet protocol suit. SCTP lies between the application layer and the network layer and serves as the intermediary between the application programs and the network operations. SCTP however is mostly designed for the internet applications that have recently been introduced. These new applications such as IUA use ISDN or IP, M2UA and M3UA which is operated on telephone signaling, H.248 which is a media gateway control, H.323 which is IP Telephony and SIP that is IP Telephony. They all need a more sophisticated service than TCP can provide. SCTP provides this enhanced performance and reliability. Here we concisely compare UDP, TCP and SCTP. UDP is a message oriented protocol. A process delivers a message to UDP which is encapsulated in a user datagram and sent over the network. UDP preserves the message boundaries. Each message is independent from any other message. This is desirable feature when we are dealing with applications such as IP Telephony and transmission of real-time data. However, UDP is unreliable. The sender cannot know the destiny of message send. A message can be lost, duplicated or received out of order. UDP also lacks some other features such as congestion control and flow control needed for a transport layer protocol. TCP is a byte oriented protocol. It receives a message or messages from a process, stores them as a stream of bytes and sends them in segments. There is no preservation of the message boundaries. However, TCP is a reliable protocol. The duplicate segments are detected, the loss segments are resented and the bytes are delivered to the end process in order. TCP also has congestion control and flow control mechanisms. SCTP combines the best features of UDP and TCP. SCTP is a reliable message oriented protocol. It preserves the message boundaries and at the same time detect lost data, duplicate data and out of order data. It also has congestion control and flow control mechanisms. SCTP has other innovative features which are unavailable in UDP and TCP. SCTP is a message oriented reliable protocol that combines the best features of UDP and TCP. There are services offered by SCTP to the application layer processes. Process to process communication. SCTP uses all well-known ports in the TCP space. Table shows list of some extra ports numbers used by SCTP, multiple streams. We know that TCP is a stream oriented protocol. Each connection between a TCP client and a TCP server involves one single stream. The problem with this approach is that loss at any point in the stream blocks the delivery of the rest of the data. This can be acceptable when we are transferring text. It is not when we are sending real-time data such as audio or video. SCTP allows multi-stream service in each connection which is called association in SCTP terminology. If one of the streams is blocked, the other streams can still deliver their data. The idea is similar to the multiple lanes of highway. Each lane can be used for a different type of traffic. For example, one lane can be used for regular traffic, another for carpools. If the traffic is blocked for regular vehicles, carpool vehicles can still reach their destinations. Here the figure shows the idea of multiple stream delivery, multi-homing. A TCP connection involves one source and one destination IP address. This means that even if the sender or receiver is a multi-home host that is connected to more than one physical address with multiple IP addresses, only one of these IP addresses per end can be utilized during the connection. And SCTP association on the other hand supports multi-homing service. The sending and receiving hosts can define multiple IP addresses in each end for an association. In this fault tolerant approach, when one path fails, another interface can be used for data delivery without interruption. This fault tolerant feature is very helpful when we are sending and receiving real time payload such as internet telephony. Here the figure shows the idea of multi-homing. In the figure, the client is connected to two local networks with two IP addresses. The server is also connected to two networks with two IP addresses. The client and server can make an association using four different pairs of IP addresses. However, here you have to note that in the current implementation of TCP, only one pair of IP addresses can be chosen for normal communication. The alternative is used if the main choice fails. Since in other words, at present, SCTP does not allow load sharing between different paths. SCTP association allows multiple IP addresses for each end. Here pause the video, think and answer. A connection in TCP, SCTP is called an association. The answer is B, full duplex communication. Like TCP, SCTP offers full duplex service when data can flow in both directions at the same time. Each SCTP then has ascending and receiving buffer and packets are sent in both directions. Connection oriented service, like TCP, SCTP is a connection oriented protocol. However, in SCTP, a connection is called an association. When a process at a site A wants to send and receive data from another process at site B, the following occurs. The first one is that the two SCTP establish an association between each other. The second step is that data are exchanged in both directions. And the third step is that the association is terminated. Reliable service, SCTP like TCP is a reliable transport protocol. It uses an acknowledgement mechanism to check the safe and sound arrival of data. Here is the reference. Thank you.