You're contending that fifty-dollar price tags increase an author's chance of winning the Hugo? Really? Are you even trying to make sense?
Connie's 779 to 753 victory over a novel as weak as Feed doesn't scream shoo-in to me. And while I agree that A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was excellent and the best book on the ballot, I think its 744 to 750 loss against Cryoburn in a head-to-head matchup indicates that its appeal to the Hugo voting public just wasn't as strong as it needed to be. (I don't think its early elimination indicates that; I suspect that if The Dervish House had been eliminated first, it would have picked up a bunch of second-place votes.)
It's possible that Who Fears Death or Kraken wouldn't have fared any better if they'd made the ballot, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that they would have lost.
You're contending that fifty-dollar price tags increase an author's chance of winning the Hugo?
Yes, for a long-anticipated bad book.
Really?
Yes.
Are you even trying to make sense?
Yes. Cognitive dissonance. People were waiting for nine years for a book, spent fifty bucks to read the complete two-volume set and...gosh, it wasn't actually very good. Well, cognitive dissonance, which is a real phenomenon, is a feasible explanation for why some voters would champion a bad book at award time—they spent so much time waiting for it, and so much money to read it, that it really had to be good after all. The higher the effort, the greater the justification. So yes, a $50 book would trigger more dissonance than, say, a bad mass market paperback people were sure they were "supposed" to like. There are other issues as well—Willis's personality, popularity, momentum from other awards, etc. but cognitive dissonance is a real phenomenon.
Connie's 779 to 753 victory over a novel as weak as Feed doesn't scream shoo-in to me.
And yet, tons of people predicted a Willis win, and they were right. At Worldcon itself, at the Hugo reception specifically, on the 'net beforehand, etc. I heard very few other predictions of which book would win (not should win)—especially after Willis won the Nebula and the Locus.
Feed was also a weak novel, but the author is popular online and among fandom.
So your definition of a "shoo-in" is a book lots of people predict will win, even if lots of people don't actually vote for it? It barely got a fifth of the first place votes, 20.6%, and only 50.8% of the final-round votes; if its victory was so inevitable, shouldn't there be some evidence of better-than-average performance in the actual balloting?
My "basic argument" is that it wasn't inevitable, and that putting a different novel on the ballot might have changed the outcome, even though there still would have been a lot of people predicting she would win. I personally think that "a novel which got 50.8% of the vote against a so-so book might have lost against a better one" is a stronger argument than "a novel which got 50.8% of the vote against a so-so book couldn't possibly lose against a better one, because lots of people predicted beforehand that it would win".
My "basic argument" is that it wasn't inevitable, and that putting a different novel on the ballot might have changed the outcome
You do realize that part of the predictions that Willis was going to win was based on the nominees, and not just some airy generality, right? So yes, in some different universe with a different ballot, it may have been less obvious that Willis was going to win. However, the predictions were made after the nominees were announced in this universe.
"a novel which got 50.8% of the vote against a so-so book couldn't possibly lose against a better one, because lots of people predicted beforehand that it would win".
Not "because lots of people predicted"—what was your obnoxious question above? Oh yeah, "Are you even trying to make sense?" Did I say that predictions caused the victory? No, I said that the winner was easy to predict, and indeed, was widely predicted. Why? Easy—Willis wins a lot. The book won the Nebula and the Locus, and there is some voter overlap as SFWA members and Locus subscribers have a tendency to be Worldcon voters. The only other person as famous as she on the ballot was running with the nth installment as a series book. The long wait, high profile, and high price of the books make people want to like them. That's how predictions work in the absence of pre-vote polling.
Using the vote itself to work backwards and say that the winner maybe wouldn't have been the winner if only it competed against other books isn't relevant to the fact that many in-the-know people looked at the actually existing ballot, predicted Willis would win, and then she did.
Your claims—in your exact words—were that "individual participation won't change the results" and "why bang a drum to get, say, Novel X nominated, when Connie Willis will roll in and win anyway because She Is The Connie?"
My argument was that a four-vote difference in the nominating process might have made a difference. My claim (exact words) was that "I don't think it's at all absurd to suggest that Connie Willis might have done worse against stronger competition". I supported that argument with the narrowness of her win against the novels she was up against.
To claim now that hypothetical situations involving different ballots are irrelevant, when the claim you're defending and the claim I'm arguing against is that there's no point in participating in the nominating process because (your words again) Connie Willis will roll in and win anyway regardless of whether Novel X makes the ballot or not, is—what's that word you just used?—dodging. Or lying. Take your pick.
My argument was that a four-vote difference in the nominating process might have made a difference.
So you acknowledge that individual participation wouldn't make a difference. Unless I get to a) vote four times, and of course with secret foreknowledge of the book that b) needs just four votes and c) can, through various occult practices, be "better" enough to beat Connie.
There's another embedded assumption in there as well—one I wish was true! That better books matter. Who Fears Death was a better book, but it wouldn't have been at all any stronger a competitor than Nora's book. It's still a first novel with peculiar themes from a demographic not known for winning Hugos. So, if we swapped out Nora's book for it, nothing really would have changed.
To claim now that hypothetical situations involving different ballots are irrelevant
They're irrelevant to the idea that Connie's win was predicted and thus predictable. You "asked" in the typical obnoxious fashion: "if its victory was so inevitable, shouldn't there be some evidence of better-than-average performance in the actual balloting?"
My response was that the victory was predictable because of predictions people made after the ballot was released. That is, I'm not changing arguments, I'm making two.
Argument one: individual participation won't change the results. And indeed, we agree that they won't, because your formulation would need four people voting strategically in a pre-nominee pool to get a specific "close" book on the ballot that, indeed, would likely not have been able to knock Connie off. Incidentally, for an award like the Nebulas, you'd even have a point, as SFWA members can see how many recommedations a book or story has received, and vote strategically to try to push one onto or off of the actual ballot. Not so with the Hugo.
Argument two: in specific response to your claim that Willis's relatively low vote total made her shoo-in victory less of a shoo-in, I pointed out that the people who made the very easy-to-make and accurate prediction were looking at the specific ballot she was on, not a hypothetical ballot that you whipped up on the spot out of cotton candy and unicorn pee.
Yes, if Neil Gaiman had a novel on the ballot, Connie Willis might not have won. Indeed, if Neil Gaiman has a collection of stained toilet tissue right from his glorious bum on the ballot, Connie Willis might not have won. However, the sort of book that would knock Connie off (Diamond Age in 1996, American Gods in 2002) are, gosh, not the kind of book that might just barely stagger onto the ballot if only four more people had nominated it.
If you believe that individual participation is meaningless unless you know in advance that your vote will change the outcome, then certainly I won't be able to change my mind. Most people would take the observation that a small number of people—this year, four at the nominating stage, or last year, one on the final ballot—could potentially alter the final outcome, as evidence that individual participation is not meaningless. I certainly have no interest in mounting a general defense of democratic voting. You could have saved a lot of time if you'd responded to my initial post, in which I said I don't think it's at all absurd to suggest that ... we might be celebrating Nnedi Okorafor's first Hugo win if just four more people had nominated her, with "It only counts if a single voter could have changed things." (And the notion that voters can only make a difference if they're voting strategically is just bizarre. Nnedi Okorafor would have made the ballot with just four more votes, whether those voters were coordinating their efforts or not, and whether they were trying to defeat Connie Willis or not.)
You responded to I don't think it's at all absurd to suggest that ... we might be celebrating Nnedi Okorafor's first Hugo win if just four more people had nominated her with the argument that Connie Willis is a shoo-in. Am I to understand, now, that this was a complete non sequitur, and that you weren't arguing that it would in fact be absurd to suggest that Nnedi might have won if she'd been on the ballot because Connie would have been a shoo-in regardless? If so, why are you wasting my time with complete non sequiturs?
I am not, in fact, assuming that Who Fears Death would have done better than The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms on the Hugo ballot, and in fact I specifically disclaimed that assumption: It's possible that Who Fears Death or Kraken wouldn't have fared any better if they'd made the ballot, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that they would have lost. I'm saying that we know from the published voting statistics that The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms didn't win and probably couldn't quite win even if it hadn't been eliminated in the first round; we don't know how well Who Fears Death would have done; it's my personal opinion that Who Fears Death was a better book and one that I suspect would be a bit more appealing to Hugo voters; and that, therefore, it's not absurd to suggest that Who Fears Deathmight have won.
Not that it's terribly relevant, but you do know the meaning of the words fifth and third, right? The books that came in just ahead of Connie's Hugo-losing novels were actually The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer and The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold.
And, to address another of your deliberately irrelevant tangents, I take the people who made "the very easy-to-make and accurate prediction" that Blackout/All Clear would get more than 50% of the vote in the final round as seriously as I take the ones who were sure that Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century would get more than 50% of the vote in the final round. I don't think the book that got 50.8% was any more of a shoo-in than the one that got 47.3%; I think the folks who predicted it just managed to narrowly avoid being wrong, instead of somewhat less narrowly avoiding being right.
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2011-09-01 03:54 pm
no subject
Connie's 779 to 753 victory over a novel as weak as Feed doesn't scream shoo-in to me. And while I agree that A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was excellent and the best book on the ballot, I think its 744 to 750 loss against Cryoburn in a head-to-head matchup indicates that its appeal to the Hugo voting public just wasn't as strong as it needed to be. (I don't think its early elimination indicates that; I suspect that if The Dervish House had been eliminated first, it would have picked up a bunch of second-place votes.)
It's possible that Who Fears Death or Kraken wouldn't have fared any better if they'd made the ballot, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that they would have lost.
no subject
You're contending that fifty-dollar price tags increase an author's chance of winning the Hugo?
Yes, for a long-anticipated bad book.
Really?
Yes.
Are you even trying to make sense?
Yes. Cognitive dissonance. People were waiting for nine years for a book, spent fifty bucks to read the complete two-volume set and...gosh, it wasn't actually very good. Well, cognitive dissonance, which is a real phenomenon, is a feasible explanation for why some voters would champion a bad book at award time—they spent so much time waiting for it, and so much money to read it, that it really had to be good after all. The higher the effort, the greater the justification. So yes, a $50 book would trigger more dissonance than, say, a bad mass market paperback people were sure they were "supposed" to like. There are other issues as well—Willis's personality, popularity, momentum from other awards, etc. but cognitive dissonance is a real phenomenon.
Connie's 779 to 753 victory over a novel as weak as Feed doesn't scream shoo-in to me.
And yet, tons of people predicted a Willis win, and they were right. At Worldcon itself, at the Hugo reception specifically, on the 'net beforehand, etc. I heard very few other predictions of which book would win (not should win)—especially after Willis won the Nebula and the Locus.
Feed was also a weak novel, but the author is popular online and among fandom.
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My "basic argument" is that it wasn't inevitable, and that putting a different novel on the ballot might have changed the outcome, even though there still would have been a lot of people predicting she would win. I personally think that "a novel which got 50.8% of the vote against a so-so book might have lost against a better one" is a stronger argument than "a novel which got 50.8% of the vote against a so-so book couldn't possibly lose against a better one, because lots of people predicted beforehand that it would win".
no subject
In words you apply to others: you're lying.
Nope. You're dodging.
My "basic argument" is that it wasn't inevitable, and that putting a different novel on the ballot might have changed the outcome
You do realize that part of the predictions that Willis was going to win was based on the nominees, and not just some airy generality, right? So yes, in some different universe with a different ballot, it may have been less obvious that Willis was going to win. However, the predictions were made after the nominees were announced in this universe.
"a novel which got 50.8% of the vote against a so-so book couldn't possibly lose against a better one, because lots of people predicted beforehand that it would win".
Not "because lots of people predicted"—what was your obnoxious question above? Oh yeah, "Are you even trying to make sense?" Did I say that predictions caused the victory? No, I said that the winner was easy to predict, and indeed, was widely predicted. Why? Easy—Willis wins a lot. The book won the Nebula and the Locus, and there is some voter overlap as SFWA members and Locus subscribers have a tendency to be Worldcon voters. The only other person as famous as she on the ballot was running with the nth installment as a series book. The long wait, high profile, and high price of the books make people want to like them. That's how predictions work in the absence of pre-vote polling.
Using the vote itself to work backwards and say that the winner maybe wouldn't have been the winner if only it competed against other books isn't relevant to the fact that many in-the-know people looked at the actually existing ballot, predicted Willis would win, and then she did.
no subject
My argument was that a four-vote difference in the nominating process might have made a difference. My claim (exact words) was that "I don't think it's at all absurd to suggest that Connie Willis might have done worse against stronger competition". I supported that argument with the narrowness of her win against the novels she was up against.
To claim now that hypothetical situations involving different ballots are irrelevant, when the claim you're defending and the claim I'm arguing against is that there's no point in participating in the nominating process because (your words again) Connie Willis will roll in and win anyway regardless of whether Novel X makes the ballot or not, is—what's that word you just used?—dodging. Or lying. Take your pick.
no subject
My argument was that a four-vote difference in the nominating process might have made a difference.
So you acknowledge that individual participation wouldn't make a difference. Unless I get to a) vote four times, and of course with secret foreknowledge of the book that b) needs just four votes and c) can, through various occult practices, be "better" enough to beat Connie.
There's another embedded assumption in there as well—one I wish was true! That better books matter. Who Fears Death was a better book, but it wouldn't have been at all any stronger a competitor than Nora's book. It's still a first novel with peculiar themes from a demographic not known for winning Hugos. So, if we swapped out Nora's book for it, nothing really would have changed.
To claim now that hypothetical situations involving different ballots are irrelevant
They're irrelevant to the idea that Connie's win was predicted and thus predictable. You "asked" in the typical obnoxious fashion: "if its victory was so inevitable, shouldn't there be some evidence of better-than-average performance in the actual balloting?"
My response was that the victory was predictable because of predictions people made after the ballot was released. That is, I'm not changing arguments, I'm making two.
Argument one: individual participation won't change the results. And indeed, we agree that they won't, because your formulation would need four people voting strategically in a pre-nominee pool to get a specific "close" book on the ballot that, indeed, would likely not have been able to knock Connie off. Incidentally, for an award like the Nebulas, you'd even have a point, as SFWA members can see how many recommedations a book or story has received, and vote strategically to try to push one onto or off of the actual ballot. Not so with the Hugo.
Argument two: in specific response to your claim that Willis's relatively low vote total made her shoo-in victory less of a shoo-in, I pointed out that the people who made the very easy-to-make and accurate prediction were looking at the specific ballot she was on, not a hypothetical ballot that you whipped up on the spot out of cotton candy and unicorn pee.
Yes, if Neil Gaiman had a novel on the ballot, Connie Willis might not have won. Indeed, if Neil Gaiman has a collection of stained toilet tissue right from his glorious bum on the ballot, Connie Willis might not have won. However, the sort of book that would knock Connie off (Diamond Age in 1996, American Gods in 2002) are, gosh, not the kind of book that might just barely stagger onto the ballot if only four more people had nominated it.
no subject
You responded to I don't think it's at all absurd to suggest that ... we might be celebrating Nnedi Okorafor's first Hugo win if just four more people had nominated her with the argument that Connie Willis is a shoo-in. Am I to understand, now, that this was a complete non sequitur, and that you weren't arguing that it would in fact be absurd to suggest that Nnedi might have won if she'd been on the ballot because Connie would have been a shoo-in regardless? If so, why are you wasting my time with complete non sequiturs?
I am not, in fact, assuming that Who Fears Death would have done better than The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms on the Hugo ballot, and in fact I specifically disclaimed that assumption: It's possible that Who Fears Death or Kraken wouldn't have fared any better if they'd made the ballot, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that they would have lost. I'm saying that we know from the published voting statistics that The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms didn't win and probably couldn't quite win even if it hadn't been eliminated in the first round; we don't know how well Who Fears Death would have done; it's my personal opinion that Who Fears Death was a better book and one that I suspect would be a bit more appealing to Hugo voters; and that, therefore, it's not absurd to suggest that Who Fears Death might have won.
Not that it's terribly relevant, but you do know the meaning of the words fifth and third, right? The books that came in just ahead of Connie's Hugo-losing novels were actually The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer and The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold.
And, to address another of your deliberately irrelevant tangents, I take the people who made "the very easy-to-make and accurate prediction" that Blackout/All Clear would get more than 50% of the vote in the final round as seriously as I take the ones who were sure that Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century would get more than 50% of the vote in the final round. I don't think the book that got 50.8% was any more of a shoo-in than the one that got 47.3%; I think the folks who predicted it just managed to narrowly avoid being wrong, instead of somewhat less narrowly avoiding being right.