Iīd said:
Many strategies can be related to Weber's strategy of voting for candidates with positive strategic value, according to Weber's strategic value formula. But that doesn't make them the same strategy, as we've been using the term here. Only Russ claims that to vote for whichever of the 2 expected frontrunners one prefers to the other, and for everyone whom one likes better is the same strategy as voting for all the candidates who seem better than the election's expected value--one's perceived expectation in the election.
No, that's not what I claim. What I claim is that the "best-frontrunner" strategy is not necessarily optimal if one or more parties/candidates has a non-negligible chance of winning.
Russ replied;
If only two candidates have any chance of winning, then the "best-frontrunner" strategy is a corollary of Weber's formula.
I reply:
Corollary of a formula?
From dictionary.com:
cor·ol·lar·y n. pl. cor·ol·lar·ies
1. A proposition that follows with little or no proof required from one already proven.
2. A deduction or an inference.
3. A natural consequence or effect; a result.
Russ, I donīt care whether or not you read my postings. In fact it would be better if you didnīt.
You said that you werenīt going to. What happened to your resolve? But if you donīt read them more carefully, then you shouldnīt reply to them.
I had filtered out your messages, but then I switched email clients and they started coming through again. I decided to keep it that way for a while at least. I will read your postings whenever I please, and I will come down on you like a ton of bricks whenever I feel like it. This is the Wild West, Mike. No rules -- or very few, at least. One of these days you will realize the you f***ed with the wrong person and you are in a no-win situation. I have little to lose here, Mike, because this mailing list is not my "career." I do respect and value the opinion of at least several persons on this list, but I don't depend on their acceptance.
I had just finished saying: Many strategies can be related to Weber's strategy of voting for
candidates with positive strategic value, according to Weber's strategic
value formula.
The Best-frontrunner strategy is not just "related" to Weber's Approval formula. It follows directly and trivially from it. If it was inconsistent with the formula for all reasonable input sets, it wouldn't be optimal.
But the resulting ways of choosing which candidates to vote for are different, even though all or most of them can be explained or justified in terms of Weberīs strategy method.
I agree competely that one need not use Weber's formula explicitly to determine a reasonable or even "optimal" vote, depending on the definition of the word "optimal." However, I claim that a vote cannot be quantitatively optimal unless it satisfies Weber's formula for some reasonble set of inputs. Any other "strategy" is essentially an attempt to make the formula more intuitive for special cases. That's fine, but don't fool yourself into thinking they are separate strategies unless they are non-optimal.
Does that help any?
Do you think you could try again to not reply to my postings? You were doing so well for a while.
I really should because I have far more important work to do than reply to your crap. I will stop here because the rest of your post is definitely not worth replying to. Let me just say that you don't need to consider tie probabilities to derive Weber's formula. That just confuses the issue. I realize that Weber himself did that, but maybe his derivation wasn't the simplest and most direct. See my previous post for the link to my derivation. I recognize his contribution, but I don't worship him. In my line of work these kinds of derivations are considered almost trivial (and I probably took longer than I should have to derive it -- especially considering that I knew the end result).
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