[EM] RE : Re: RE : Majority Criterion, hidden contradictions

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi,

--- Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> a écrit :
> At 11:06 AM 11/2/2006, Kevin Venzke wrote:
> >--- Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> a écrit :
> > > I've been realizing just how defective the Majority Criterion is.
> > > People tend to assume that the Majority Criterion is an important
> > > characteristic of any proper democratic election system.
> >
> >I suspect that many people would insist on a majority favorite being
> >elected at least if the method collects enough information to
> >determine who this candidate is.
> 
> Sure, people will insist on this. Because they 
> have confused the Majority Criterion with 
> Majority Rule.

But as far as I can see it does little good to say that the "people"
here are mistaken.

> > > Yet the
> > > Criterion itself suffers from a number of serious problems.
> > >
> > > (1) It is clear that any method which satisfies the Majority
> > > Criterion cannot maximize the expected value of the election. Range
> > > is the method which directly does the latter, and this is directly
> > > connected with its non-satisfaction of the Majority Criterion.
> >
> >However, it is possible that there is no real method that can "maximize
> >the expected value of the election," unless you just mean to maximize
> >the value among all possible methods.
> 
> No, Range does this. If we assume that voters 
> express their expected value for the various 
> candidates, the expected value for the voters, 
> collectively, is the sum of the individual expectations.

Sure, but I don't see how this assumption can be taken for granted.

If we can't make this assumption then there is no guarantee that Range
will outperform a majoritarian method in terms of expected value.

> Objections to Range are often based on the 
> assumption that voters will distort their 
> expression for strategic purpose. However, I've 
> shown, I believe, that this is an oxymoron. The 
> alleged distortion is an alleged strategic rating 
> of a serious competitor to the favorite at zero, 
> even though, in the scenarios proposed, they 
> actually only mildly prefer their favorite to the competitor.
> 
> Yet, the scenario assumes, they are willing to 
> lie about their preferences in order to gain the 
> election of their favorite. I claim that this 
> would be evidence that they are either mentally 
> ill or they actually strongly prefer the 
> favorite. It might be because their favorite is 
> from their party, rather than because of the 
> individual characteristics of the candidate. But 
> preference strength and Range ratings include 
> such considerations as party affiliation, at least for some....

I don't know if you remember, but I commented on this interpretation.

> >I don't think it is fair to say that Range "directly" "maximizes the
> >expected value of the elections." I would grant that Range is equipped
> >to do this better than other methods due to the ballot format, though.
> 
> Range is designed to do exactly this.

But it isn't enough to be designed to do this.

> Note that a Range ballot can be analyzed and used 
> for other methods. It collects the most 
> information of any ballots I've seen proposed.

Sure. But naturally the use of the information, and the incentives
created by the use of the information, are at least as important as the
amount of information collected.

Kevin Venzke



	

	
		
___________________________________________________________________________ 
Découvrez une nouvelle façon d'obtenir des réponses à toutes vos questions ! 
Profitez des connaissances, des opinions et des expériences des internautes sur Yahoo! Questions/Réponses 
http://fr.answers.yahoo.com