[EM] The Repoman strikes again

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

>I basically accept the SU arguments.  I don't necessarily accept the idea
>that a candidate who recieves a lower SU is necessarily more "extreme", nor
>do I really accept the idea of voters voting in a neat line from left to
>right (or vice versa).  The example is contrived.

They aren't always one a line, neat or otherwise. Sometimes they're
in a multidimensional issue space.

My point wasn't to advocate SU. My point was just that IRV's jumps
to extremes register strongly in the simulation studies, enough to
greatly lower IRV's SU score.

In the spatial studies, extreme candidates _do_ have lower SU, which
is why those studies' SU scores so well demonstrate how much IRV
is jumping to extremes. That's all I was saying. That the SU scores
register IRV's jumps away from the voter median point.

Every model for every simulation study is "contrived". You don't
agree that an extreme candidate will have lower SU. Typically, the
farther out a candidate is from the median, the greater is his
summed distance from the voters. That will obviously tend to be so,
whether or not you agree that the voters are on a neat line from
right to left.

Aside from that, the simulation studies didn't only study candidates
& voters on a line. They also did multidimensional spatial studies,
with 2 or 3 issue dimensions, maybe more.

For any model, someone can always say "I don't accept that model".
They're called models because no one's saying that they're perfectly
accurate representations of society. But models are still useful.

But Merrill, & maybe Norm, refined the model by correlating the issues,
because there's a tendency for certain issues to be correlated, as
judged by most voters. A model like that is getting pretty good.
Norm additionally refined it by varying the percentage of the candidates
that people rank.

>Say I pretend to be an IRV advocate.  I give the following example with
>Hitler, Mussolini and Roosevelt as the candidates;
>
>H>M>R	42
>M>R>H	10
>R>M>H 48
>
>Roosevelt wins in IRV. Mussolini wins in Condorcet.  It isn't that hard to
>think of some anti-Condorcet arguments to go with it; something about an
>unpopular and irrelevant candidate winning, when the contest should really
>be between the other two.
>&c.
>

I guess you could say that Mussolini is between Hitler & Roosevelt.

The Roosevelt people prefer him to Hitler, because Hitler is worse.
The Hitler people prefer him to Roosevelt because he's fascist and
an ally, whereas Roosevelt was of course an enemy to Hitler's &
Mussolini's side.

So I don't understand what your problem with the example is supposed to
be. Are you saying that Mussoline shouldn't have won? Why not?
He's the middle candidate. He has majorities against each of the
others. Craig, we can't say that a method looks bad just because we've
put a villainous name on the CW. In that lineup, with that electorate,
Mussolini is the middle candidate, the CW, and the rightful winner.

You've postulated an electorate with a fascist majority, and then
you complain because a fascist wins. In that electorate, Roosevelt
is an extreme. Political minority extremes shouldn't win.You've skewed the 
example's electorate. You might be confusing "democratic" with
"desirable". Craig, we all agree that a Roosevelt presidency would
be better than a Mussolini presidency. But for Roosevelt to win
in your example would be undemocratic. Mussolini is the rightful
democratic winner, no matter how much you or I may disagree with his
politics.

Normally, we can expect that the candidate at the voter median is
going to be someone not too out of step with the society. Your
example wouldn't happen in the U.S. We really are safer electing
someone at the voter median rather than someone at an extreme.
Demorep's example is more realistic than yours, in regard to where
the voter median is.

Mike Ossipoff

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com