[EM] minimizing voter despair

[Forest Simmons]

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, LAYTON Craig wrote:

> 
> >It seems to me that there might be a "tragedy of the commons" dilemma
> >here.  The voters know that if they all stick to their agreement to vote
> >their honest probabilities, the outcome for the group will be best, 
> 
> This is difficult.  Numerically representing your level of satisfaction from
> a number of different outcomes might be "honest" from your point of view,
> but without a standard that is followed by all of the voters, the honesty
> doesn't mean anything.

In this case there is a standard to be followed by all of the voters,
namely their subjective probabilities.  Subjective probabilities are
appropriate because they are being used to estimate despair and hope which
are equally subjective. 

Objective probabilities would be of little use in calculating despair or
hope.  The actual neglect of voter interests has only an indirect and
delayed effect on the feelings.  It is the perceived probability of
neglect or attention that has a direct effect on the voters feelings when
the election results are announced. 

All of our feelings of elation or depression at the moment the victors are
declared arise from our subjective expectations of their future
performance.

If my subjective probability that candidate A is going to do me more harm
than good is 25% and yours is also, then we both believe that he is
going to harm us three times as much as he is going to help us, assuming
we both understand the basic meaning of subjective probability. The pie
chart method could be understood by almost any non-visually impaired
voter.

At the moment of election victory or defeat it doesn't make any difference
to our feelings if these beliefs are accurate. It only matters that these
numbers are rough reflections of our beliefs.  If I believe that he is
going to disappoint me three times as often as he is going to come through
for me, then that is my belief, and my hopes and fears will be directly
related to that belief the moment he is elected, no matter how inaccurate
my belief may be.

Over the weeks and months of the term of office our subjective
probabilities will sharpen in preparation for the next election. 

As I said before, I 'm not seriously proposing this method as a practical
voting method, but only as one gauge for evaluating the performance of
various practical methods in a simulation.  The simulator can set those
probabilities to any values that interest him.

A random informational poll based on this method could be valuable also,
because it gives a more specific meaning to the numbers than just rating
on a scale of zero to 100%.  It does standardize their meaning in a
subjective sense, which is precisely the sense that is important for
gauging voter despair and hope.

Forest