[EM] IRV Psychology (Was - Alex, Irving still holds the Trump Card)
Adam Tarr said: It seems from previous posts that Donald and other IRV backers do not really see a distinction between the left, center, right example and the one I just gave. In their minds, the center candidate is weak, just like the Green and Libertarian candidates I show above. The fact that your center candidate is preferred by a majority over every other candidate just doesn't strike them as significant. I think you hit on the fundamental reason why some people are staunch advocates of IRV. The concern with absolute rankings (rather than relative rankings) produces arguments that are self-consistent, and hence impossible to argue against. Never mind that relative rankings reflect comparisons of merit, while absolute rankings depend (in part) on the presence or absence of additional candidates. (Hence this physicist likes like Condorcet: It's all relative ;) The different postulates used by IRV and Condorcet supporters reminds me of an economics joke: Two guys are standing in their respective yards and shouting at each other. An economist walks by with his friend. The friend says Do you think they'll ever reach an agreement? The economist says No. They're arguing from different premises. Alex For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
Re: [EM] IRV Psychology
Your response greatly reinforces the main point of the posting to which you replied below, which is that IRV psychology will not be won over by a system with as low expressiveness as plain Approval (no matter how it may compare on other grounds) since it does not allow them to vote their favorite above their compromise candidate while still supporting their compromise in any degree. For that reason I have suggested in a more recent posting that for public service we devise and promote methods that beat IRV in every category, especially simplicity, the Favorite Betrayal Criterion, and expressivity. The simplest ballots that allow more expressivity than ordinary preference ballots are CR ballots like the Grade Voting (five slot) ballot. The simplest way to use them is to give the win to the candidate with the greatest number of passing grades (C and above). This solution completely satisfies IRV psychology. There may be other better solutions, but I doubt that they will be as simple as this and still beat IRV in every category. Forest On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, Blake Cretney wrote: On Thu, 19 Apr 2001 15:27:41 -0700 (PDT) Forest Simmons [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my conversations with fellow Greens I've learned that they can live with non-monotonicity, they can live with elimination of Condorcet Winners, and they can live with low average social utility. The one feature that they cannot live with is the spoilage problem. They don't want ever again to have to vote Gore over Nader to keep Bush from winning. The funny part is this: they sincerely believe that IRV satisfies the Favorite Betrayal Criterion better than Approval does. They believe this because, as they point out, in the last presidential election IRV would have let them vote for Nader over Gore without any regrets, while Approval would have required them to vote Gore equal to Nader or else risk spoiling Gore's chances against Bush. The Favorite Betrayal Criterion implies that voting another candidate over your favorite is a betrayal, but that voting another candidate equal is not. Not everyone feels that way. Many Nader voters would consider voting Gore equal to Nader to be a betrayal. Personally, I think this is a very emotional way of thinking about election methods. IRV allows you the luxury of voting your favorite above all others as long there is little chance of your favorite winning or when there is little chance of your favorite losing, i.e. when your vote has little chance of making a difference in your favorite's fortune. The times when IRV puts the lesser evil dilemma in front of you, giving strategic incentive to vote your compromise (Gore) above your favorite (Nader) are only among those times when your favorite most urgently needs your vote. True, but Green party supporters may reason that although IRV may give the victory to the Republicans, it might also give it to the Greens. It all depends on the second choice of the Democrats, in your kind of example. Of course, the Green voters may cower, and vote Democratic out of fear, but then again, they might not, if they feel they have a good chance of winning. Of course, an argument can be made that in such a situation the Democrats should win, being at the center of public opinion, but I can see why this wouldn't appeal to Green party members. Also, I think it's pretty clear that for Greens to actually win, some of them have to vote for the Green candidate alone. They can't win as long as they all vote for the Democrat too. And voting only for the Green introduces a risk that the Green candidate will act as a spoiler. That seems to me to be a pretty similar situation to the one described for IRV. --- Blake Cretney
Re: [EM] IRV Psychology
From: Blake Cretney [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [EM] IRV Psychology True, but Green party supporters may reason that although IRV may give the victory to the Republicans, it might also give it to the Greens. It all depends on the second choice of the Democrats, in your kind of example. Of course, the Green voters may cower, and vote Democratic out of fear, but then again, they might not, if they feel they have a good chance of winning. Of course, an argument can be made that in such a situation the Democrats should win, being at the center of public opinion, but I can see why this wouldn't appeal to Green party members. Good, good point. For someone from a party that isn't smack on the fence, is a method that favors centrists such a big bargain? Is that what anyone really wants? How would we feel about a whole House of Representatives made up of nothing but exact center members? It certainly doesn't match the ideal that motivates proportional representation -- that if ten percent of the voters are in the nut fringe, then ten percent of the Members will be from the Nut Fringe Party. Also, I think it's pretty clear that for Greens to actually win, some of them have to vote for the Green candidate alone. They can't win as long as they all vote for the Democrat too. And voting only for the Green introduces a risk that the Green candidate will act as a spoiler. That seems to me to be a pretty similar situation to the one described for IRV. Yes, in the case of Greens voting for Democrats to make sure the Republican doesn't get elected, the Democrat is very much like a spoiler. But then perhaps this problem is unavoidable, since independent of system, giving strength to one faction at least has the potential to work against all others. Very good points you bring up. An aside: I didn't reply to some responses about whether a jury is voting on matters of pure fact. I received two responses, showing different viewpoints, and pretty much balancing each other. And both showing how slippery the question is. I can't think of anything to add, except that I don't think the situation is clear-cut at all. (e.g. is a dermination of guilt a matter of pure fact? If there are technicalities, are these distractions from fact, or parts to it? Etc. It could go on forever.)
Re: [EM] IRV Psychology
Thanks, Tony. The part about fortunate and unfortunate is true. There is time, but Greens seem to think that they can cross that bridge when they come to it, like the guy who painted himself into a corner and didn't worry about it until was too late. There is time, but if we get locked into IRV, all that time is wasted. And thanks for reminding me to separate the symbolic value and the pragmatic value of voting. This separation helps to clarify what price you pay when you sacrifice one for the other. Sometimes I think the biggest obstacle is that most people don't have the patience for (or even trust) analysis that involves more than two steps of logic. If the board is set up for checkmate in three moves, they won't believe the analysis until two of the moves have been made. Forest On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Anthony Simmons wrote: From: Forest Simmons [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [EM] IRV Psychology When you tell them that there are other situations in which IRV would give them strategic incentives to vote Gore above Nader, and that Approval would never do that, they tend to think of those situations as rare, if not completely hypothetical. [...] So what do we say? [...] No problem. Tell them I said this: What they mean is that because they are Greens, they don't expect they will ever be in a position to have any effect on an election except to ruin the Democrat's chances. Sorry, Greens, but that's the assumption that makes the "IRV doesn't cause spoilers" proposition come out true. (Or that Nader will get so many votes that nobody else has a chance.) Since they assume they will never have any material effect on the outcome, they consider their vote to be a statement only, not part of an actual democratic process in which they play an active role. Given that the only purpose of their vote is to make a statement, they are correct about IRV. And after all, if Nader is never going to win, then it makes no difference at all whether they rank Gore below Nader or equal. At least it makes no difference to the outcome. But it does make a psychological difference; it does make a difference in the all-important statement. For them, given their assumption, IRV does work better. On the other hand, they are not just making a statement about who they prefer to elect. By assuming that they will never have any substantial effect on elections, and choosing IRV, they are also making a statement about their purpose in the nation's political process for all time to come, and it is not an enviable one. That whole approach is one of self-deception. I don't believe that Greens would really be content to condemn themselves to losing every election in order to avoid ruining a Democrat's chance of winning. But that is exactly the alternatives IRV offers. Fortunately for Greens, and equally unfortunately, they are not in a position in which they have to immediately confront the reality of their choice. Much like people who make all manner of foolish political choices and think they can get away with it because the piper won't be demanding payment any time soon, they figure a real spoiler situation is far enough off that they would rather have the satisfaction of pumping up a losing vote today than of laying a foundation that will serve them when they are waging a campaign they might possibly win. I'd say that the most important consideration, for a Green, is not trying to get Nader elected instead of Gore. Yes, I'm sure all Greens would prefer that. No, the absolute most important thing for a Green is to make sure they do nothing to help elect Bush. And in order to do that under IRV, Greens must always remember that they can never be too successful, that Nader can never threaten Gore. Is that really what Greens want? I understand it's difficult for a large part of the electorate to take the trouble to make sense of the alternatives at anything but a superficial and misleading level. But that is the nature of most political considerations. And the reality is that with IRV there are two separate possibilities. The first possibility is that your vote is only symbolic, and that it makes no difference to the outcome who your favorite is. The second possibility is that your vote may have real effect, and in order to make sure you don't cause horrible damage, you cannot vote for your favorite, so again it makes no difference who your favorite is. On the other hand, if Greens want to at least allow for the possibility that some day they might actually count in a real election, they better take a long look at their assumptions, and then take a long look at the alternatives. And if that doesn't work, tell them that if they don't do
Re: [EM] IRV Psychology
On Thu, 19 Apr 2001 15:27:41 -0700 (PDT) Forest Simmons [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my conversations with fellow Greens I've learned that they can live with non-monotonicity, they can live with elimination of Condorcet Winners, and they can live with low average social utility. The one feature that they cannot live with is the spoilage problem. They don't want ever again to have to vote Gore over Nader to keep Bush from winning. The funny part is this: they sincerely believe that IRV satisfies the Favorite Betrayal Criterion better than Approval does. They believe this because, as they point out, in the last presidential election IRV would have let them vote for Nader over Gore without any regrets, while Approval would have required them to vote Gore equal to Nader or else risk spoiling Gore's chances against Bush. The "Favorite Betrayal Criterion" implies that voting another candidate over your favorite is a betrayal, but that voting another candidate equal is not. Not everyone feels that way. Many Nader voters would consider voting Gore equal to Nader to be a betrayal. Personally, I think this is a very emotional way of thinking about election methods. IRV allows you the luxury of voting your favorite above all others as long there is little chance of your favorite winning or when there is little chance of your favorite losing, i.e. when your vote has little chance of making a difference in your favorite's fortune. The times when IRV puts the lesser evil dilemma in front of you, giving strategic incentive to vote your compromise (Gore) above your favorite (Nader) are only among those times when your favorite most urgently needs your vote. True, but Green party supporters may reason that although IRV may give the victory to the Republicans, it might also give it to the Greens. It all depends on the second choice of the Democrats, in your kind of example. Of course, the Green voters may cower, and vote Democratic out of fear, but then again, they might not, if they feel they have a good chance of winning. Of course, an argument can be made that in such a situation the Democrats should win, being at the center of public opinion, but I can see why this wouldn't appeal to Green party members. Also, I think it's pretty clear that for Greens to actually win, some of them have to vote for the Green candidate alone. They can't win as long as they all vote for the Democrat too. And voting only for the Green introduces a risk that the Green candidate will act as a spoiler. That seems to me to be a pretty similar situation to the one described for IRV. --- Blake Cretney
[EM] IRV Psychology
From: Forest Simmons Subject: Re: [EM] IRV Psychology Thanks, Tony. The part about fortunate and unfortunate is true. There is time, but Greens seem to think that they can cross that bridge when they come to it, like the guy who painted himself into a corner and didn't worry about it until was too late. I don't know what it is about people. Yes, I understand there are people who are not mathematicians, but there are some things that just aren't rocket science. Like the effect of consuming a nonrenewable at = some constant rate. It's amazing how many people think we can do that indefinitely without running out. A quantum theorest once responded that people have been saying that about oil for fifty years, and it hasn't happened yet, so there. I know he can figure out the situation for himself, and yet there's something else going on in his head. I didn't mean to run off the track, just to illustrate how people don't necessarily believe that what they can see for themselves is obviously true. It looks like denying the spoiler problem by calling it hypothetical is one of those situations. You can see exactly when IRV will fail, and I can't believe these people really think that those situations are merely hypothetical. There is time, but if we get locked into IRV, all that time is wasted. That's a big problem. People want to make a change, but they want to go straight to the decision without spending some time at the deliberation stage first. Do this have something to do with "I'll see it when I believe it?" And thanks for reminding me to separate the symbolic value and the pragmatic value of voting. This separation helps to clarify what price you pay when you sacrifice one for the other. How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? It's amazing how many people will say five. It's a symbolic society. In the last major U.S. election, all of that campaign money went into assigning names -- TV ads, directed at the putative body politic, that called someone a liberal or a pawn of special interests or some such. If you watched carefully, sometimes you would see ads that had no actual empirical content at all. That in no way diminished their effectiveness. There's a quote I once heard, supposedly from Oscar Wilde, though I've never been able to find the source, that says something like: In matters of the greatest importance, style is everything and substance is nothing. I was kidding when I suggested naming your IRV alternative "Supervote Plus". On the other hand, Supervote Plus would actually draw more support than plain old Supervote. Seriously, that's what you're up against. Sometimes I think the biggest obstacle is that most people don't have the patience for (or even trust) analysis that involves more than two steps of logic. If the board is set up for checkmate in three moves, they won't believe the analysis until two of the moves have been made. Well, if the situation is explained properly, sometimes people will react. Telling someone "smoking isn't good for you" is one thing, but "you have emphysema and now it's just a question of whether you're going to die from it" is something else. I really do think that third parties will react more if they are confronted with the fact the way that IRV shifts the spoiler effect to situations in which they have a chance to win. Basically, they are taking a stance that depends on losing. Psychologically, that's a tough way to run a movement. Forest On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Anthony Simmons wrote: From: Forest Simmons [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [EM] IRV Psychology When you tell them that there are other situations in which IRV would give them strategic incentives to vote Gore above Nader, and that Approval would never do that, they tend to think of those situations as rare, if not completely hypothetical. [...] So what do we say? [...] No problem. Tell them I said this: What they mean is that because they are Greens, they don't expect they will ever be in a position to have any effect on an election except to ruin the Democrat's chances. Sorry, Greens, but that's the assumption that makes the "IRV doesn't cause spoilers" proposition come out true. (Or that Nader will get so many votes that nobody else has a chance.) Since they assume they will never have any material effect on the outcome, they consider their vote to be a statement only, not part of an actual democratic process in which they play an active role. Given that the only purpose of their vote is to make a statement, they are correct about IRV. And after all, if Nader is never going to win, then it makes no difference at all whether they rank Gore below Nader or equal. At least it makes no difference to the outcome. But it does make a psychological difference; it does make a difference in the all-importan
[EM] IRV Psychology
In my conversations with fellow Greens I've learned that they can live with non-monotonicity, they can live with elimination of Condorcet Winners, and they can live with low average social utility. The one feature that they cannot live with is the spoilage problem. They don't want ever again to have to vote Gore over Nader to keep Bush from winning. The funny part is this: they sincerely believe that IRV satisfies the Favorite Betrayal Criterion better than Approval does. They believe this because, as they point out, in the last presidential election IRV would have let them vote for Nader over Gore without any regrets, while Approval would have required them to vote Gore equal to Nader or else risk spoiling Gore's chances against Bush. When you tell them that there are other situations in which IRV would give them strategic incentives to vote Gore above Nader, and that Approval would never do that, they tend to think of those situations as rare, if not completely hypothetical. In any case they believe that IRV will require Favorite Betrayal less often than it will encourage Favorite Loyalty, so that on the average IRV does as well or better than Approval in this department. The other funny thing is that in a certain statistical sense they are probably right. So what do we say? Do we say, "Well yes, IRV is probably just as good as Approval in the spoilage department on average, but let's consider social utility ..." and change the subject from the one aspect of voting they are most passionate about? Or do we point out the subtle fallacy in the statistical based reasoning? Mike has some good stories for illustrating the fallacy. Here's mine: Jack has a car that never surpasses thirty miles per hour. Jill has one that gets up to seventy. Jack's car never breaks down. Jill's car never breaks down either, as long as she carries no passengers, and even when she does carry passengers it only breaks down about half of the time. Jill and Jack's neighbor Joe needs an emergency ride to the hospital. Jill has the fast car and Jack has the reliable car. They reason that Jill's car is equally likely to go at a rate of seventy or zero miles per hour. On the average that's 35 mph, which is better than what Jack's car can do. IRV allows you the luxury of voting your favorite above all others as long there is little chance of your favorite winning or when there is little chance of your favorite losing, i.e. when your vote has little chance of making a difference in your favorite's fortune. The times when IRV puts the lesser evil dilemma in front of you, giving strategic incentive to vote your compromise (Gore) above your favorite (Nader) are only among those times when your favorite most urgently needs your vote. As long as Jill doesn't try to transport her neighbor to the hospital her car will run well, but as soon as that extra weight hits the passenger seat something goes kaput. The sad thing is that it's only a loose wire under the passenger seat causing the problem. It could be easily fixed at no cost. The same ballots used for IRV can be used for Approval Completed Condorcet at reduced cost, since ACC is a matrix based method unlike IRV. Above all else Green IRV supporters want a method that satisfies the Strong Favorite Betrayal Criterion, which says there can never be any strategic advantage gained by ranking or rating any other candidate as high as your favorite. They believe that IRV satisfies this strong version of the FBC for all practical purposes, and they know that ordinary Approval does not. Most of them do not have the patience to consider the Jack and Jill fallacy, or the acquaintance with alternative voting methods to judge the validity of the analogy. Nor do they have the experiential basis for judging the relative merits of the FBC and other criteria, let alone for putting into perspective the degree to which they are or are not satisfied by other methods. If we offer them a Condorcet method in which the SFBC is satisfied most of the time, they will think, "It's satisfied most, if not all, of the time in IRV, too." They will not feel competent to judge beyond that, nor will they feel any compelling reason to abandon IRV on that basis. The simplest improvement on IRV that satisfies the SFBC is Condorcet with random ballot completion. But we cannot offer that to them in good conscience because of the low social utility of the completion method. The simplest honest contender that completely satisfies the SFBC is Approval Completed Condorcet. I'm afraid that only methods that absolutely satisfy the SFBC will have any chance with the Green IRV supporters. I'm afraid that even my wonderful five slot method that has the most practical ballot with a slot for every type of candidate (favorite, compromise front runner, between, evil front runner, devil incarnate) does not absolutely satisfy the SFBC, though it does much better than plain Approval in that regard. And CR
[EM] IRV Psychology
From: Forest Simmons [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [EM] IRV Psychology When you tell them that there are other situations in which IRV would give them strategic incentives to vote Gore above Nader, and that Approval would never do that, they tend to think of those situations as rare, if not completely hypothetical. [...] So what do we say? [...] No problem. Tell them I said this: What they mean is that because they are Greens, they don't expect they will ever be in a position to have any effect on an election except to ruin the Democrat's chances. Sorry, Greens, but that's the assumption that makes the "IRV doesn't cause spoilers" proposition come out true. (Or that Nader will get so many votes that nobody else has a chance.) Since they assume they will never have any material effect on the outcome, they consider their vote to be a statement only, not part of an actual democratic process in which they play an active role. Given that the only purpose of their vote is to make a statement, they are correct about IRV. And after all, if Nader is never going to win, then it makes no difference at all whether they rank Gore below Nader or equal. At least it makes no difference to the outcome. But it does make a psychological difference; it does make a difference in the all-important statement. For them, given their assumption, IRV does work better. On the other hand, they are not just making a statement about who they prefer to elect. By assuming that they will never have any substantial effect on elections, and choosing IRV, they are also making a statement about their purpose in the nation's political process for all time to come, and it is not an enviable one. That whole approach is one of self-deception. I don't believe that Greens would really be content to condemn themselves to losing every election in order to avoid ruining a Democrat's chance of winning. But that is exactly the alternatives IRV offers. Fortunately for Greens, and equally unfortunately, they are not in a position in which they have to immediately confront the reality of their choice. Much like people who make all manner of foolish political choices and think they can get away with it because the piper won't be demanding payment any time soon, they figure a real spoiler situation is far enough off that they would rather have the satisfaction of pumping up a losing vote today than of laying a foundation that will serve them when they are waging a campaign they might possibly win. I'd say that the most important consideration, for a Green, is not trying to get Nader elected instead of Gore. Yes, I'm sure all Greens would prefer that. No, the absolute most important thing for a Green is to make sure they do nothing to help elect Bush. And in order to do that under IRV, Greens must always remember that they can never be too successful, that Nader can never threaten Gore. Is that really what Greens want? I understand it's difficult for a large part of the electorate to take the trouble to make sense of the alternatives at anything but a superficial and misleading level. But that is the nature of most political considerations. And the reality is that with IRV there are two separate possibilities. The first possibility is that your vote is only symbolic, and that it makes no difference to the outcome who your favorite is. The second possibility is that your vote may have real effect, and in order to make sure you don't cause horrible damage, you cannot vote for your favorite, so again it makes no difference who your favorite is. On the other hand, if Greens want to at least allow for the possibility that some day they might actually count in a real election, they better take a long look at their assumptions, and then take a long look at the alternatives. And if that doesn't work, tell them that if they don't do the math, the Libertarians will.
