On Dec 31, 2007, at 13:53 , CLAY SHENTRUP wrote:
One of the Democrats considers changing from approval to ratings
style:
- overall ("absolute"/"idealistic") social utility could go up or
down or stay the same (depending on which party is "right")
- personal utility would go down
well, no. the average voter's personal utility is the social utility
divided by the number of voters. so a greater social utility means
the average voter has a greater personal utility.
Greater social utility means greater average social utility per voter
but that does not mean greater average _personal_ utility nor that
this voter would achieve better personal utility.
(That voter's personal utility might be in conflict with the overall
social utility. And even if that person would aim at or think that he
is maximizing overall social utility it would be based only on what
he considers to be best for the society, not what citizens feel in
average or what is the "true" best social utility.)
- overall utility as this voter sees it would go down if this voter
wants to improve social utility
i don't buy that argument. i think a voter increases social utility
more by voting honestly (letting others have their way more than if he
had voted approval-style) more than by strategically voting
altruistically for the candidates he thinks will make other voters
happy. mainly just because the former cedes power to the other voters
based on what they actually expressed on their ballots, whereas the
latter relies on the altruistic voters' best guess as to what other
voters want. i'm not sure whether there's a way to concretely address
this question however, so it remains speculative as far as i can tell.
Note my words "as this voter sees it". I think these words should
make the statement true also to you. My first bullet point addressed
the target of improving the "true" social utility.
I did not make any difference between cases "voting honestly" and
"make other voters happy". I classified them just as different ways
of forming one's own opinion on what one considers to be the best
thing to do (=do I trust more on my own thinking or on what I hear
others say).
This bullet point referred e.g. to you when you think that Range
would be the best method for the humankind and would vote that method
(is asked) just to make the world a better place for all of us. Some
others could vote e.g. for Condorcet and they would be just as sincere.
(I wonder if you would vote Range=90, Condorcet=30, Plurality=10 or
Range=100, Condorcet=20, Plurality=0 or Range=100, Condorcet=0,
Plurality=0.)
i think the best we can do is look at warren's social utility figures,
which show a large benefit for range over approval.
If all would vote in (non-normalized) ratings style the (average
personal) social utility could be better, but for individual voters'
decisions on how to vote (or for groups) it doesn't make much sense
to switch to ratings style.
i didn't say that it makes sense for an individual voter to use
ratings. it makes sense for him to want his society to use ratings,
but for him to vote approval-style.
Having the approach "all others please vote sincerely so that I can
then vote strategically and have more weight" doesn't make Range a
very nice method.
and we, as benevolent deities, would want our created societies to use
range voting instead of approval, as it would increase the average
voter satisfaction.
Yes, in many situations Range would indeed provide good results. The
problem is that in competitive situations it may not do so. (Full
degradation to pure Approval gives probably better results than
partial degradation.) Different elections have also different needs
=> maximizing the average utility is not always what we want.
People also tend to have their own understanding on what is best for
the society
i think that's a very good point. i tend to think ron paul would make
a lot of people better off who strongly disapprove of him. i believe
that if they understood economics and foreign policy better, they'd
understand why his policy would actually be beneficial to them in the
long run. i talk to people all the time who say they support people
like giuliani and clinton, and are blissfully unaware of their
connections to evil corporations, and their repugnant views on freedom
(giuliani says freedom is about authority, and clinton voted for the
flag desecration amendment).
but one thing i notice is that the more politically savvy people
support candidates other than the front-runners. so here's an
interesting thing to consider. do educated people, who are more
likely to know more about world affairs, tend to have their more
educated voices strengthened when using a voting method that is more
complex to game? i know it sounds elitist, but it's a legitimate
question.
I'd hope this to be true, or at least the more probable case.
Unfortunately there are also educated and clever people that use
their talent to serve their selfish needs. One approach is to hope
that the society continuously grows (from the laws of jungle) in that
direction (and that all people will learn from the best innovators/
leaders in this respect).
What if we look at Condorcet at the same level of recommending a
strategy that works well in most cases. The recommended strategy
could be: "list the candidates in the order of preference". That is
quite simple and understandable and works in most situations for the
benefit of the voter.
that's not the strategy. the gist of the strategy is to start with
that ordering, then bury your favorite front-runner's strongest
opponents.
Do you say that in Condorcet elections the best strategy for A
supporters would be to vote A>X>Y>Z>B if they believe that A is the
strongest candidate and B is the second strongest candidate?
So, is Condorcet strategy more straight forward than Approval
strategy? Approval strategy (e.g. "vote one of the frontrunners and
candidates that are better") requires the voters to estimate the
opinions of other voters while the described Condorcet strategy does
not.
that's because you described honest condorcet voting and strategic
approval voting. apples and oranges. you could rectify that by going
back and either describing the burial aspect of condorcet, or by
describing the approval voting strategy as "vote for every candidate
you like more than average", which requires no knowledge of the
opinions of others voters.
c'mon juho...you know better than this.
I just picked two strategies that have been often recommended and
that are simple. Similar comparisons can be done between any other
strategies you want to pick. The idea was thus to pick some
strategies that are known to be about equally good and reliable to
the voters and then see which one of them is the easiest to
understand and apply. Many Condorcet strategies are not easy to
understand and apply ((many of them are not very efficient and safe
either)) and are therefore not good candidates for this comparison.
Juho
___________________________________________________________
Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal
http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
