[EM] Markus--intuitive voting bottom line

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Dear Markus--

Some time ago you correctly pointed out that the fact that
, under existing conditions, I vote intuitively, rather than
calculating strategy, shows how much vN-M utility affects my
bottom line.

That's true, but I vote that way when it's quite obvious how to
vote, as it is now, when the candidates are all "acceptables" or
"unacceptables". When I determined how I'd vote in San Francisco's
Willy Brown/Amminao/Jordan/Reilly mayoral election, it wasn't
obvious how to vote, because I felt that the greater evil was
significantly more corrupt than the 2 lesser-evils. In a situation
where it isn't obvious, I prefer to estimate ratings &
probabilities and calculate strategy rather than to just
estimate the best way to vote.

That's because I feel that estimating the separate parts of
the decision problem, the ratings & probabilities is more reliable
and more direct than trying to estimate how to vote.

And, when calculating strategy, I feel that it makes much more
sense to estimate my actual sincere ratings for the candidates,
rather than estimating vN-M utilities from hypothetical lotteries,
because, by maximizing my expectation for the actual sincere ratings,
I vote in the best possible way for myself.

Of course if someone felt estimating how they'd feel like voting
in lotteries was somehow more reliable than estimating their
sincere ratings, then they might want to estimate the lotteries.
But it seems to me that the sincere ratings as reliable or
more reliable, compared to the lottery estimates.

Mike Ossipoff


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