I was in a hurry yesterday, and so it wasn't possible to answer all of Russ's questions.
I'd said:
The party that is always CW or at the voter-median would keep winning at MW equilibrium. Just that one party.
But it's true that Approval would fairly deal with any number of parties. But it wouldn't include them all in a winning equilibrium, nor should it.
Russ replied:
If only one party is popular, then obviously that party will dominate. That is true for practically *any* democratic system.
But I didn't say that if a party is the only popular party it will keep on winning at MW equilibrium in Approval. I said that if a party is always at the voter median it will keep winning at MW equiilbrium. That isn't the same thing. Though you don't tell us what you mean by "popular", the fact that you say that the only popular party dominates in practically any democratic system shows that "the only popular party" doesn't mean "party at the voter median". If you understsood that, you wouldn't have thought that your statement about the only popular party had any bearing on my statement about the voter median party. But it would be giving you too much benefit of the doubt to assume that you know what you mean by "the only popular party".
That sloppiness is typical of you, Russ. You come along, repeating the Approval comments made by people who have just been introduced to it, announcing that you'vd discovered that Approval requires strategy decisions that are often based on uncertainty :-) , and actually believing that you're telling us something that hasn't occurred to any of us. And you talk about delusions of grandeur.Of course newcomers are welcome, but you come putting on airs, with the arrogance that typically goes with complete ignorance, expounding on a whole list of things that you obviously have no understanding of, acting out a delusion of grandeur that you're informing us of something and meaningfully participating in the list.
If you have questions, and had asked them less pretentiously and more politely, we all would have been glad to help you. But it's become evident that it would be better if you get your elementary education somewhere else.
I reply:
No, you don't undestand at all. I'll patiently repeat what I said: With Plurality, nearly any 2 parties can keep on being the top votegetters at MW equilibrium. With Approval, if one party is consistently the CW, no other party can win at MW equilibrium. That CW party will soon win, and will keep winning. And no, that is not true of all methods.
What is it that I don't understand, Mike? You forgot to say. You quoted two sentences of mine above, and I want to know which you disagree with or shows that I "don't understand at all."
I reply:
Alright:
You don't understand that "voter-median party" and "only popular party" don't mean the same thing.
You also probably don't understand what you mean by "only popular party". Certainly no one else has a way to know what you mean, and you don't understand that either.
You continued:
Are you claiming that if only one party is "popular," it will not "dominate"? Or are you saying that this is not true for "practically any democratic system"? Please clarify. I'd really like to know of a "democratic system" in which only one party could be popular and yet not dominate the elections. That must be a very strange system indeed.
I reply:\
No one made any of those statements. No one but you has referred to the only party that is popular.
You continued:
Now, when a voter tries to plug into one of your formulas, he must somehow translate polling data into probabilities. Perhaps I missed it, but I don't recall any guidance from you explaining how to do that. Yet that may be the harder part of the problem.
Translating polling data into probabilities involves the mean and the variance of the polling data. If either are off, the computed probabilities may be useless. In particular, if the error in the mean approaches or dominates the error in the variance, then all bets are off.
I reply:
If you believe that that is the only possible source of a voter's probabilities, then it would be better if you didn't try to discuss probability.
Though a voter could use polling data, and the previously-observed variabilitly of its accuracy, to calculate probabiilties, or could similarly use past election results, that certainly isn't the only source of probabilities for the voter. Anyway, only some of the Approval strategies explicitly use probabilities, such as Pij or Pi.
You continued:
You think that the WTC couldn't have collapsed as it did without pre-installed explosives.
I've replied to that already, but let me add that you think that the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor, and CNN are all Leftist henchmen of Al Jezeera (to use your own phrase). That's because they reported things that you don't want to believe about the Fallujah massacre. But then you also believe that evolution of species via natural selection has never taken place and isn't feasible, though you've never been able to defend the fruitcake pseudo-technical objections that you've parroted from somewhere.
Most of the errors in your posting were replied to in my previous posting. This one just covers a few that I didn't have time to comment on, the first time.
You continued:
Mike, you are a pathetic amateur
I reply:
What's this? Before I told you that you no longer have permission to have my articles at your website, you were telling people that I was a "world-class expert". So then, just by denying you permission to have one's atricles at your website, one can go from a world-class expert to a pathetic amateur :-)
And no, I'm not saying that that proves that I'm a world-class expert. But it does demonstrate that, as I was saying at the outset, what you say has little if any relation to what you believe to be true. In other words, what you say doesn't mean anything. I'm not saying that you're intentionally dishonest, but maybe you just don't know what honesty or accuracy is. I won't use the "L" word, because namecalling serves no purpose, but people whose word is worthless, whose statements have no meaning or value, aren't usually well-regarded, and have no value at a mailing-list.
You continued:
...who imagines himself a professional.
I reply:
Perhaps you determined that by ESP? Because I didn't make any such claim. Amateur? Of course. There are many amateurs in voting systems. There are some voting system professionals too. Some are useful & helpful, and some aren't. I choose to deal with voting systems because it seemed to me that the topic was important, and wasn't being addressed as well as it should be.
Are all amateurs pathetic, or just ones who imagine themselves to be professional? Maybe it's pathetic to do any kind of work without expecting pay. It would be nice to be paid for voting system efforts. But I must admit that there isn't really a lot of money in it.
Mike Ossipoff
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