On 2/4/12 4:12 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
On 02/04/2012 06:47 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On 2/3/12 11:06 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
No, he's saying that when the CW and the true, honest utility winner
differ, the latter is better. I agree, but it's not an argument worth
making, because most people who don't already agree will think it's a
stupid one.
as do i. it's like saying that the Pope ain't sufficiently Catholic or
something like that. or that someone is better at being Woody Allen than
Woody Allen.
but for the moment, would you (Jameson, Clay, whoever) tell me, in as
clear (without unnecessary nor undefined jargon) and technical language
as possible, what/who the "true, honest utility winner" is? how is this
candidate defined, in terms the preference of the voters?
Utilitarianism is a form of ethics that proposes that the actions to
be taken are the ones that produces the greatest good for the greatest
number.
thank you. i *did* know what Utilitarianism is and suspected that the
term "utility" referred to that. and i understand the different norms
for combining the individual utility measures to get an aggregate
measure of utility to the group. the "taxicab norm" and the minmax
(more like the maxmin) norm was brought up. no one seemed to mention
the Euclidian norm.
i would say that the most fair combination is the mean magnitude
(taxicab) because it weights every voter's franchise equally. but what
is left unanswered is how the measure of utility for each voter is
defined. we can say that, for each voter that voted for the eventual
winner as their 1st choice (or most highly scored), their measure of
utility is "1". but what measure of utility do you assign to voters
that did not get their 1st choice? that is not well defined. given
Abd's example:
2: Pepperoni (0.61), Cheese (0.5), Mushroom (0.4)
1: Cheese (0.8), Mushroom (0.7), Pepperoni (0)
who says that for that 1 voter that the utility of Cheese is 0.8? how
is that function defined in the "proof" that Clay repeatedly refers to
where "it's a mathematically proven fact that Score does a better job
picking the Condorcet winner than does Condorcet"? it's such a
subjective thing and it can be defined in so many ways that i am dubious
of any tight mathematical "proof" that is based on that. it's not
subject defining the boundaries. if you get exactly what you want, the
utility metric is 1. if you get *nothing* of what you want, the utility
is 0 (i.e. that pizza voter on the bottom may be a vegetarian and would
not be eating pizza at all, if they got Pepperoni). there's a whole
range of quantity that goes in between that is not objectively defined.
so, i have a few questions for everyone here:
1. do we all agree that every voter's franchise is precisely equal?
2. if each voter's franchise is equal, should we expect any voter
that has an opinion regarding the candidates/choices to
voluntarily dilute the weight or effectiveness of their vote,
even if their preference is weak?
3. so, based on the answers to 1 and 2, if there is an election or
choice between only two alternatives (yes/no) or two candidates,
that this election be decided any differently than, as we
were told in elementary school, the "simple majority" with
"one person, one vote"?
if the answer to 3 is "no", on what basis would you assign non-equal
weighting to each vote? or if "simple majority" is not the criteria for
the collective decision, what is the alternative? award office to the
candidate with the minority vote?
--
r b-j r...@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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