[EM] Problems with finding the probable best governor

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

>But his vN-M utilities before an election are influenced by past
>experience.

Yes, but if the voter is risk-averse, they're also influenced
by fear of the worst result, an emotion that he won't experience
after those decades of voting are past and he's evaluating how
he did in lots of elections. But I've been saying that fear shouldn't
be expected to influence people's voting, when there's such
a small chance that their vote will have a material effect. But
of course we know that it does. So I can't really say that
the vN-M approach couldn't match how voters would want to decide
their strategy.

>Ratings and probability estimates are just a way of putting what
>you know in one place -- you ultimately have to decide how to weigh the
>information.  And the 'lottery' part mostly just consists of identifying
>frontrunners.

You mean that the probably part mostly just consists of
identifying the frontrunners. Maybe now, but, for one thing,
I don't know if, even right now, it would still seem that way
if Approval were being used instead of Plurality. Plurality
greatly exaggerates, maybe outright manufactures, the appearance
of some certain 2 media-favored candidates being frontrunners.
And it would be especially less likely to be that way after
a better voting system ended the 2-party illusion, with the
result that more kinds of candidates could run, and more
running candidates would be considered viable. So, that
statement that the probability judgement is mostly a matter of
identifying 2 frontrunners is likely to only apply while Plurality
is in use. Later it might not be so obvious who the frontrunners
will be, and frontrunner probabilities will be what we have.


> >Isn't it just as valid, & just as
> > easy, to guess what feels like the best way to vote in the actual
> > election, as to guess what feels like the best choice in those
> > hypothetical lotteries? If so, then the vN-M approach merely
> > adds unnecessary complication. This is a subjective matter, and
> > I'm not entirely sure that your position isn't more right, for
> > all strategizing voters. But what I've said above sounds convincing
> > to me.
>
>I'm not sure we have the same exact definition of vN-M utilities.
>
>My view:  If you start by assigning ratings to the candidates, and
>optionally consider the probabilities if you know them (generally by
>simply acknowledging the front runners), and you feel good about voting
>based on your calculations, then the ratings and the vN-M utilities are
>probably in close agreement.

True.

>If instead you decide the mathematical result just doesn't look quite
>right, and overrule your initial calculations in order to vote what your
>gut tells you, then you are really choosing vN-M utilities over sincere
>ratings (provided the voting system doesn't have some sort of bizarre
>optimal strategy).

Agreed. But you aren't having to figure them out and use them in
a strategy calculation.

>
>In the second case, you are in effect weighing the value of additional,
>perhaps intangible information, and using it to correct your raw
>calculations in order arrive at the vN-M utilities implied by your final
>vote.

True, so you could then calculate your vN-M utilities of candidates
from how you voted, and your probability estimates?
And use them in another election with those same candidates
or parties, to maybe get a calculated strategy that you won't
feel like overruling?

No it sounds to me as if we don't have different meanings for
vN-M utilities.

Sure, if I calculated my vote based on sincere ratings, and
then didn't like the result, and had to overrule it, and I wanted
to have candidate (or party) utilities to use in future calculations,
to get a result less likely to need being overruled by me, then
I'd use vN-M utilities too. And if hypothetical lotteries would
make the vN-M utilities easier than working backward from how
I voted, then maybe I'd use those too.

So I should back off from my claims that vN-M utility isn't
in keeping with what a voter would feel like doing, at the
eve of the election, because we know for a fact that voters are
risk-averse; and should back off from saying that calculating the
vN-M utilities couldn't be useful--when a person doesn't like
what calculations with sincere ratings tells him to do, but still
wants to use mathematical strategy.

It's just that I personally wouldn't use vN-M utility, unless
it seemed that estimating them from lotteries, or from how I
feel like voting, seemed easier than guessing my sincere ratings
of the candidates. Really all I can say against that is that
when I did the mayoral election, I felt most comfortable with
sincere ratings estimates. Maybe I wouldn't always feel that way,
and maybe some or most people rarely would.

Mike Ossipoff

> > If the voters weren't fooled, then, for the Democrats, Perot
> > really is better than the Bush, and for the Republicans, Perot
> > really is better than Clinton.
>
>Over the long haul the Democrat and Republican voters may not be better
>off, if they are likely to win at least some elections and they think
>that Perot is only slightly better than the main adversary.

You mean the 2 party organizations will be better off? Probably,
but maybe that won't be what's most important to the voters.
Surely if they've been electing candidates who are even a little
better, that can only make them that much better off.

>
>Additionally, society may not be better off, if it winds up with someone
>that most people hate only marginally less than a worst choice, instead
>of a government with support of at least a sizable minority.

The reason why I argue against these arguments is that IRVists
are using them against Condorcet. If the middle candidate is
so mediocre, so little better than the worst, that just means
(to me) that those people need to run and vote for someone better.

But it's very important to protect their compromise, however
mediocre, boring, unspired, or Gore-like he is. That's because
we don't want it to be that people, out of fear that their
compromise will be dumped, to insincerely vote as if he were their
favorite, which is exactly what they do now. That's the voting
behavior that I don't want people to need.

Mike Ossipoff


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