[EM] Responses to some of Forest's ideas

[Forest Simmons]

In this context I take "zero-info" to mean negligible information about
the preferences of other voters.  In practice this would be hard to
achieve because the same channels that give information about the
candidates tend to reveal information about voter preference (biased one
way or another).

Condorcet advocates should take heart because such information tends to
move the Approval winner closer to the Condorcet Winner (if there is one).

But I'm not so sure that the CW is always an improvement over the sincere
zero-info Approval winner, which as you note, may have greater claim to
the title "Consensus Candidate" than the CW does.

Forest


On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Bart Ingles wrote:

> 
> 
> Richard Moore wrote:
> > 
> > Forest Simmons wrote:
> > 
> > >
> > > I vaguely remember that there was a sudden realization that the above mean
> > > criterion was necessary but not sufficient for optimizing expected utility
> > > in a zero-info environment.
> > 
> > I think it's necessary and sufficient for zero-info, large
> > populations.
> 
> 
> Suppose you have absolutely no polling data of any kind, but know enough
> about the candidates to place them on a policy continuum.  Should this
> still be considered a zero-info situation?
> 
>