[EM] Ratings as a standard

[Bart Ingles]

Blake Cretney wrote:
> 
> Bart Ingles wrote:
> 
> > Nearly a year ago, Blake objected to my use of average ratings as a
> > standard for comparing methods, partly on the grounds that average (or
> > total) ratings would give more weight to extremist voters.
> >
> > The discussion assumed we were using sincere ratings in hypothetical
> > examples only, and that the ratings were on an absolute scale.  There
> > was no suggestion that the ratings standard itself be used as a voting
> > method.
> >
> > At the time I had suggested some ideas for ratings-based standards where
> > the effect of extreme votes could be limited.  It now occurs to me that
> > this is entirely unnecessary, and that extremist voting is not a
> > problem.
> >
> > All you need to do is stipulate that comparisons using average ratings
> > (i.e. social utilities) are valid so long as the actual methods you are
> > comparing don't give undue influence to extremist voters.  You simply
> > compare the methods with the understanding that no method would or
> > should yield the highest possible rating in all situations.
> 
> My problem with this, is that I do not accept the average ratings
> standard.  Since it is fairly intuitive, I felt I should give some
> justification for why I reject it.  The best reason for rejecting a
> standard, it seems to me, is if it can be shown to require an absurd
> conclusion, in some cases.
> 
> The average ratings standard seems to do this, for examples like the
> following:
> 1  voter   A 500 B 0
> 40 voters  A 5   B 9
> The average ratings standard says that A should win, but I tend to
> doubt this.  It seems more reasonable to conclude that the single
> voter is being unreasonable.
> 
> Of course, you could avoid this conclusion by coming up with a new
> standard that balanced average ratings with some kind of extremist
> avoidance.  But such a standard would no longer be intuitive, and
> there would be no real reason for accepting it.  Such a standard might
> restrict average ratings from falling into obvious absurdity, but I
> would suspect that its conclusions would still be incorrect, just not
> taken to the logical extreme.

My point was that you don't need to come up with a more complex
standard.  You only need to require that any actual methods to be
compared are not subject to extreme voting.  With this requirement, all
reasonable methods will score equally with the above example -- the
winner will always score 8.78 out of a possible 500 (assuming the
maximum range is 0-500).

Of course, this is an odd example where the vast majority of voters are
almost completely indifferent.  It also seems to imply a very bad
nominating process, since the majority of voters don't like either
candidate.

Bart