Demorep wrote: >D- What will John/Mary Q. Citizen-Voter think of the machinations involved >(in addition to the various politicians in power and the great minds on the >U.S.A. Supreme Court) ??? > >Let us guess/ estimate (without using any computer strategies) ???
I'm not proposing this as something to implement. I'm asking whether it is possible in principle to satisfy strong FBC. If we can't even satisfy FBC by entering preferences into a machine which assigns strategies based on FULL knowledge of the electorate, then there's no way to satisfy strong FBC. I think I could make that into a theorem, at which point strong FBC becomes "The Small Conjecture: Prove that voters have an incentive to input insincere data into a Small Voting Machine." If proven true then strong FBC can never be satisfied. What I'm doing, Demorep, is similar to some of the abstractions used in thermodynamics and computer science. In thermodynamics there's an abstraction called the Carnot Engine: It's the most efficient engine that can operate between two heat reservoirs. No machine can actually operate as well as a Carnot engine, but if you can determine that a Carnot engine cannot do something then no engine can. In computer science there's an abstraction called the Universal Turing Machine. I'll let somebody more knowledgeable describe it. I just know that in computer science they use this abstraction to establish the feasibility of certain tasks. Personally, I think the question of strong FBC is worth answering, since it will give more insight on just "how good" a voting system can or cannot be. Alex ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em