At 06:09 AM 10/30/2006, Chris Benham wrote: >Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: >The strongest preference is expressed in range by rating the >undesired outcome at the minimum rating and the desired outcome at >the maximum rating. If the majority does this, and if they are in >agreement about these two things, they will prevail. >> >>"Strong preference" means strong preference for a desired outcome. >>If they only have a weak preference, and express such a preference, >>they might not get it. > >CB: This requires them to be coordinated regarding their "desired >outcome". What if they agree that X should lose but are split about >which individual candidate should get max. rating, >or they agree that Y should win but are split about which candidate >should get minimum rating? Why shouldn't they also "prevail" in those cases?
Chris is going to argue indefinitely, it does not matter what I write. I'm not. If I can't answer an argument by Chris, I won't. I won't continue to argue based on an assumption that what I said in the past is true, and must be defended to the bitter end. The line of argument that Chris has presented simply disregards what has been written here about the connection between a desired "strategic" outcome and the true sincere votes of voters. Continually, it is assumed that the majority should "prevail," i.e, a small preference by a majority should prevail over a large preference of a minority, no matter how great the gap in preference, and no matter how close the minority is to the majority. His argument here applies equally well to Approval Voting, it is just that the matter is starker there, and does require strategic considerations on the part of the voter. I.e., under Approval, a voter must, to vote with full power, determine an approval cutoff which involves knowing who the top candidates are likely to be, and then the voter must effectively state that both of them are equally preferred. Approval is a Range method with binary input. The majority should prevail when it is voting on a single question. This is Robert's Rules, actually, and election methods have been exempted from it because it was not obvious what would be better than the Majority Criterion. The U.S. generally, has an even weaker system, not requiring a Majority winner. Systems that have a top-two runoff are closer to satisfying the real, informed preference of the majority. The Majority Criterion is sensible when it is a two-candidate election, and both sides are informed about the preference strengths of the other. Venzke pointed out that this is what happens with pizza, which is why pizza choosers don't actually use Range. They do the Range work informally and then use a Supermajority criterion, Approval Style, unless nobody has a strong preference, in which case they will simply choose the favorite of the majority. But that informal process breaks down on a large scale. So the question is, what methods are going to have the same salubrious effects on the unity of the association or society that the informal Pizza process produces. Range gets the closest. Yes, Range does not satisfy the Majority Criterion. But Range with the safety valve that I have described does. If there is a Majority winner, then the majority must consent to the election, by one of two methods. The Range winner cannot win with either method if the Majority so strongly prefers someone else that they will disregard the social consequences. They are willing to go ahead. And they have that right, unless we have weighted systems, which is a whole other kettle of fish and territory I'm not willing to enter, except where the weight comes from the free choice of voters. Asset Voting is an example of that. Does Asset satisfy the Majority Criterion? Isn't that an interesting question? The Majority Criterion is weak when considering elections with more than two candidates. To repeat, Chris, in his argument, continues to rely on the Majority Criterion. He is using the Majority criterion to justify the Majority Criterion. He is not deriving the Majority Criterion from generally accepted principles that do *not* include the Majority Criterion. I'll quote again and answer directly: >What if they agree that X should lose but are split about which >individual candidate should get max. rating, >or they agree that Y should win but are split about which candidate >should get minimum rating? Why shouldn't they also "prevail" in those cases? They are split about the second-best. The question should be reversed. We are examining the Majority Criterion. The question should be, "Why should the preference, no matter how weak, of the Majority prevail?" This goes back, if asked, to the foundations of democracy, its theoretical underpinnings. It should be remembered that a number of the writers we consider the forerunners of democracy *were opposed to elections*, as I remember the matter. Their arguments apply most strongly to pure preference methods, but they also apply to Range. Range works if we make certain assumptions about what it means to assign a value to a candidate. But full-on deliberative methods with a Yes/No vote to confirm any choice are what represent the true majority will. >>There are value judgements embodied in the language used that >>essentially incorporate the conclusion. > >CB: No, the language is purely technical. Yeah, I've heard that argument before. A writer, an academic, states that the writings of so-and-so are "racist." Naturally, there are objections from supporters of that writer, who think that the writer wasn't a racist. But, in fact, if you know the academic, technical definition of "racism," it is practically undefensible that the writer is racist. Under that definition. But "racist" is loaded with highly negative connocations. And "vulnerable" is loaded with connotations, implying that the vulnerability is pathological. We don't use "vulnerable," for example, to refer to the Condorcet method as being "vulnerable" to selecting a winner that satisfies the Majority Criterion. Range looks to a different Criterion. We might call it the Range Criterion, which is shorter than "Maximizes the Sum of Satisfaction with Election Values." But that criterion is exactly at the foundation of democracy. Greatest good for the greatest number. Not tiny good for the greatest number, which is what Majority Criterion winners *can* represent. (Often the Majority Criterion will indicate the best winner, i.e., the Range winner, *if the election method is run with preference strengths expressed. It appears that the Schulze method, which seems to be preferred by Condorcet advocates, infers preference strengths from rank sequence, which is about the best you can do with a pure ranked ballot, and uses this information to choose a winner when there is no Condorcet winner. Now, question is, why not just choose the candidate with the most first-preference votes? I agree that the Schulze method is superior, but just making the Plurality choice satisfies the Plurality Criterion, which is broadly accepted, though, I think we would agree, it is accepted ignorantly. I don't understand the Schulze method, I just have noticed that it makes assumptions about preference strength. (It assumes that the voters have voted "linearly," i.e., that all expressed preference strengths are equal. >>He expects that people would engage in a conspiracy to vote >>insincerely in order to impose their weak preference on the society. >CB: What "conspiracy"? An agreement to vote insincerely. "Strategically." >>No, if they are actually going to do this, they have a strong >>preference. Their so-called "strategic vote" is actually a sincere one. > >CB: In my examples, votes that I specify as insincere are insincere. But this is tantamount to assuming two contradictory conditions. That is, the two conditions are unlikely to exist in reality because they imply a relatively strong preference (strong enough to motivate the voters to distort their expressed votes in the strategic plan to thereby "win"), stronger than the supposed "sincere" preference. The presumption here is that "insincere" preference will be expressed under two conditions. The first here is habit. We have polarized political systems that encourage partisan behavior. This is not so true in local politics. It's a problem of scale. So, there is a habit of believing that one's favorite is the greatest candidate since Abe Lincoln, and an opposing candidate, since he seems to be against Lincoln, must be in favor of slavery; after all, the enemy of the good is evil. The system encourages polarization, because large shifts in policy can result from tiny differences in voting support. If this were a control system we were engineering, we'd say that it suffers from hysteresis. Such control systems can shake an airplane to pieces. And it *is* a control system we are engineering. The winner-take-all nature of preference election systems is quite dangerous, from an engineering perspective. Condorcet could make it worse, because the Condorcet winner in one election might be from fanatic party A, with 35% of the vote, and the next one from party B, with 35% of the vote.... The society swings. (And this is indeed what I think we are seeing in U.S. politics. We'll see. The percentages may be about right, if Condorcet were being used.) >>Right off I'll note that these votes are preposterous. People will >>not vote, in such numbers, anything like this. > >CB: Completely irrelevant for my demonstration. But what Chris is demonstrating is that Range does not satisfy the Majority Criterion. We already knew that, it is not at issue. What is at issue is the social benefit of the Majority Criterion! So a preposterous example, one which incorporates assumptions that are, in reality, almost certainly mutually contradictory, is what is irrelevant. It is a smoke screen, put up to conceal the weakness of the argument for the Majority Criterion. My realization of the depth of the problem with the MC is quite new. We ought to make this very explicit, in the Range material and elsewhere. Crhis has not even come close to answering these objections to the MC, he just keeps presenting evidence that Range violates it! Which it *must* in order to maximize perceived social benefit. "Violation" is also a loaded term. That Range "violates" the Majority Criterion, which is technically true, there is no doubt or argument about this, carries an impression to an average reader, and even, possibly, a subconscious tilt to the thinking of an expert, of some kind of defect. It isn't a defect, it is a strength! An optimal system *must* violate the Majority criterion under some scenarios. >> No election method is going to produce a satisfactory result in >> this situation. It is entirely unclear to me which of the three >> candidates is actually the best. >CB: Of course. With a sincere Majority Loser and a sincere Condorcet >winner some of us are not so confused. This is because the example given shows what are clearly two radically different factions, in direct opposition to each other, with this opposition being as polarized as possible, and, to me, it is almost certain that there is a better winner than A, B, or C. It is D. Who is not on the ballot. The only way to select D is a process which is not a single election. But Chris is an Election Methods Expert. It does not matter if his technical truths have real application to actual societies. He is not even concerned if the parties tear each other apart after the election. His precious Majority Criterion has been satisfied by the method.... If an election comes up with such equally matched votes, I'll repeat, the real situation is None of The Above. Libertarians actually would put this on the ballot, it is one of the Libertarian proposals I'd agree with. "I prefer A, and if not A, then None of the Above. Or, if there is no candidate on the ballot who would make me reasonably happen, None of the Above, period." >>Bottom line, though: if I could make a suggestion to this society, >>it would be that you need to find a candidate with broader support. >>Any winner for this election, among the three presented, will >>result in a badly fractured society, an officer who is *detested* >>by half the people. > > >>Well, I would have to assume that the serious closeness of this >>election would be known. A shift from 98 to 99 is hardly a major shift. > >CB: Sufficient to force those voters to stop expressing their B>A preference. Note how we have a situation where the "sincere preference" is 99 to 98 in Range. Chris expresses this situation as "forcing" voters to vote insincerely. But if they vote sincerely, with the initial conditions, they get a candidate who is almost perfect to them, relatively speaking. The difference is insignificant. So why are they "forced" to vote the extremes, to lie about their rating of their second choice? Where does this pressure come from? Not from strength of preference, for sure! It is coming from the Election Methods Expert, who thinks that people *should* always try to get their preference, or, at least, that they will always try to do so, no matter how slight the preference. It's not true, not even the second one. If the preference is as slight as is expressed in the example, they would be happy with a coin toss! In fact, in the polarized situation described, they will be deliriously happy with the election of A, their second choice. After all, C very nearly won! The problem here is that Chris is assuming some major social benefit from selecting the majority winner, when the margin between that winner and another is razor-thin. If it is razor-thin, there is no substantial advantage to selecting one over the other. What Chris is going to have to show, if he can, and he wants to use examples, is an example where social damage is done by selecting the Range winner over the Majority winner, in a pure Range system. (If the 25% rule is in place, if blanks aren't counted as zeros, there is danger, which is why I'd somewhat prefer to toss out the disregard of blanks, at least at first. There *is* social value in providing some recognition to a winner who has high ratings from those who know him, but I think that the time to elect this person is the next election, not this one. Or it would be in some kind of runoff, say if the 25% criterion is met, though the 25% criterion is a quite artificial boundary, I have argued on the Range list that the only boundary that is *not* set by some kind of complex balancing judgement is the 50% boundary, i.e., that at least 50% of voters must have rated a candidate for the candidate to win. I think there is more to the rule than that, I forget at the moment. >>I've recommended that Range elections include a facility for >>expressing Favorite *without* giving a higher rating. I've also >>recommended that Range be coarser, not 0 to 99, I'd rather see 0 to 10. > >CB: The fact that the range was so large (99-0) is what forced me to >make the difference in size between the two factions so small. Yes. However, with a larger step size (i.e, 0.1 rather than 0.01, comparing Range 11 with Range 101), it is more likely that candidates would rate equally. The Favorite expression option makes this less painful to partisans. A 10% difference in preference strength is probably still down in the noise in terms of what it means to human beings. It is still a slight preference. >>Now, note that I proposed, in these and concurrent threads, a >>safety feature, a runoff if the preference winner were different >>from the Range winner. > >CB: Yes *you* did, but that isn't the CRV proposal. That's right. CRV has *not* in my opinion developed, yet, a consensus definition of Range, as far as the details are concerned. > I have been addressing the pure Range method, not some as yet not > even fully defined "Range with Runoff" or "Range with Ratification" > scheme of yours. Yes. Note that these "schemes" would be normal in standard deliberative process. "Shall so-and-so take office" is a not uncommon motion. I'd insist on it, where I have the choice! In other words, the context of a method matters. A method which is vulnerable to some possible malfunction can actually be the optimal method if the context deals with that and prevents it from actually causing damage. >>I don't consider that a vulnerability. Vulnerability implies that >>there is something wrong with it. > >CB: Again, the language is technical. Yes. So what we see here is that Chris effectively acknowledges that the technical language is misleading to the ordinary reader. >>Remember, the "sincere" vote here was A99>B98. >> >CB: The ranking was sincere but as I explained, the ratings maybe not. We can't understand what the rankings actually mean if we do not know what the sincere ranking would actually be. What Chris was allegedly examining was the vulnerability of Range to strategic voting. But we can't examine strategic voting unless we understand what sincere voting was. The first results, 99 to 98, were presumably in the absence of strategic considerations. We can do nothing other than assume that these are sincere. If the preference were stronger than that, why would the Range voters not want to express it? That, without some plan, with voters going to the polls naked, as it were, they agreed on 99 to 98 is just about a proof to me that they don't actually have a preference between A and B, it is *way* down in the noise. Control systems that radically change output based on noise.... not a great idea. >The 18 B voters have "defected" from the AB coalition by insincerely >changing from B99>A98 >>>to B99>B0=C0, and Range rewards their dishonesty (and disloyalty) >>>by electing B. >> >> >>Now, why would they do this? Only if they strongly prefer B to A. >>But this contradicts the initial conditions. > >CB: Range only allows voters to express one "strong" (by your >definition) preference (between two candidates or two sets of >equally-ranked candidates). *Range is not about expressing preference, it is about expressing value. That Chris puts so much weight on preference is simply coming from his *assumption* that preference is what matters. > In "the initial conditions" >the B supporters strongest preference was B>C. Of course their >sincere B>A preference doesn't have to be all that strong for them >to want to make B win. Again, the contradiction is hidden in the word "make." Make implies effort and force. And one does not try to force decisions on a group unless one has a strong preference (or has a disorder that causes them to behave as if small preferences were commands from God. Properly, such people need medication. I know, I have a son who had this disorder.) How far would these voters go to get what they prefer? Would they spend, say, $100 each to put into campaign funds to attempt to elect B? From my point of view, that is not a particularly strong preference for an average citizen in first-world countries. But it is far higher than what citizens actually spend. Personally, looking back, how much *should* I have spent to try to elect Al Gore in 2000? The fact is that though I strongly preferred Gore, my preference was not great enough to get me out working for him, or sending in significant money. I think I *did* contribute to his campaign, which is, I think, a first for me. Or maybe I have that campaign confused with Kerry 2004. By 2004 I had realized, however, that the most efficient place for me to put my efforts was in the metastructure, not in trying to control the identities of the players in the existing system. If a significant number of others were doing the same, actually a tiny percentage of the population, we'd change the whole thing, I believe, in a fairly short time. This is because FA/DP is *not* goal-oriented. It is intelligence-oriented. Instead of trying to get society to take this or that measure, to protect the environment, to avoid war, to ensure economic and social justice, and so forth (or, from another point of view, to protect the world from the incursions of Communism, Secular Humanism, and the predations of feminazis and gay activists), we are trying to develop the tools which could examine and solve social problems, with minimal institutional bias. FA/DP organizations do not determine outcomes, other than reporting the level of consensus that exists. When consensus levels have risen high enough, people will act. FA/DP does not tell them how high is appropriate, it is entirely up to them, which, in practice, would mean that it is up to the leaders they have chosen, caucus leaders, high-level proxies, depending on how much trust has been given these leaders. Some might have appropriation authority. But the FA/DP organization stays out of this. As to decisions, it only makes those decisions necessary for its own housekeeping, it has no opinion on "outside issues," even if, in this case, outside issues are exactly what it is considering every day. >>. And yet we imagine that the B voters are going to lie about their >>preference, in cahoots with each other, in order to elect B? >CB: Who (besides you) mentioned anything about them being "in >cahoots with each other"? You did. You mentioned an agreement to vote in a certain way, as I recall. > No coordination is needed. As long as the other factions vote the > same way, individual members of the B faction can try the strategy > without any risk of it back-firing (and it can work if only some of > them do it.) And, again, what is strange in a practical sense about this is supposing that a behavior will, *without some kind of party discipline*, spontaneously result in all voters preferring the party candidate voting the same allegedly insincere pattern, while the supporters of a candidate *who is practically identical in acceptance to the preference of these voters* don't vote similarly at all. Once again, the suggested behavior makes no sense. It has been constructed artificially just in order to show a characteristic of Range Voting that we all agree is true. It does not satisfy the Majority Criterion, and, further, a group of voters voting in highly coherent patterns can push an outcome the way they want. Yes, they can. However, the point I've been making is that this is essentially stupid behavior. And there is no reason to suppose that, if Range Voting is implemented, such behavior will be common enough to significant affect outcomes, *plus* if it *does* affect outcomes, it seems that it does so in a way that is not offensive to the majority. The examples given all show election outcomes that are satisfactory to the majority. *Quite* satisfactory. So where is the beef? >>The Majority Criterion properly applies (i.e., is desirable) to >>binary elections. It gets dicey when there are more than two choices. > >CB: Why on earth is that, in your book? "Strength of preference" is >all-important when there are three candidates, but not two? Range methods are actually superior even in the two-candidate case, and this is easy to show. Chris is correct here. I was not thinking clearly about this. I had not said, by the way, that "strength of preference is all-important," but I will now. Weak preferences aren't important. Important preferences are not weak. There is some value to weak preferences when other things are equal. We may suspect that weak preferences are somehow more intuitively correct. But a society has not deviated from democracy merely because some selections being made are not worshipping at the temple of whim. It deviates from democracy when the government is not accepted by the majority. It deviates even when it *is* majority-accepted, but minorities are or consider themselves oppressed. Democracy is an ideal that is unattainable in its perfection, but it can be approached. Social decisions, binding on all, which are not accepted by a majority rather obviously violate basic principles of democracy. But decisions which are not consensus decisions still are offensive to a degree. It is just that the degree declines with the percentage of citizens who are offended. You cannot please everyone, certainly, but being content with 50% is surely inadequate. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info