[EM] Problems with finding the probable best governor

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

> > Average social utility is a measure of something similar to
> > Blake's goal.


>I had a couple of lengthy debates with Blake on the subject on EM, >most
>recently between 1/24/2000 and 3/2/2000.  As I recall, it started and
>ended with Blake not seeing any validity in SUE, at least when up
>against the CW.  We didn't get into what the standard should be when
>there was no CW.

Maybe the most convincing, for me, explanation of social utility's
importance is: Say that some new single-winner method will be
used in some distant election, years down the line. We don't
know what the candidate lineup will be, what kind of an "example"
it will be, or which voters we'll be in that example. Obviously
if that distant election is going to be by a method which we know
to do well by average social utility, our expectation, estimated now,
for that election's outcome is better than it would be if the
election were going to use a method which we know to have poorer
average social utility. So one can tell someone: "No matter which
method you prefer, no matter whether you value social utility,
_you_ can expect to be better off if we use the method with
better average SU".

I don't think there's need for concern about SU vs CW. It seems
to me that our partisan political elections are close to being
1-dimensional, though not entirely. Under those
conditions there's always a sincere CW, who will also be the
SU maximizer, if the voters' distribution density increases with
decreasing distance from the voter-median position. Maybe that
relation between sincere CW & SU maximizer extends to more
dimensions, to some degree. Besides, my interest in electing
the sincere CW is based on my concerns about defensive strategy
need, and the methods that do well by criteria that measure
that standard tend to do well by SU anyway.

Of course the simulations of rank methods assume sincere ranking,
and, with Borda, Black, or Tideman(w), sincere ranking is a
doubtful assumption if it isn't a 0-info election.

Mike Ossipoff

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