Anthony on mathematics & logic

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Anthony said:

On whether Richard's diagram shows something of interest to
voters:  I no longer even recall the details of Richard's
argument.  What I do recall is that it concerned how many
votes have to be moved, and how far they have to be moved, in
order to create a configuration that qualifies as a win.

I reply:

IRV arguments too concern the moving of votes, to create what
qualifies as a win. IRV also minimizes the distances that the votes
are moved, in terms of rank positions in the voter's ranking.

Everyone who argues for a voting system talks about the considerations
that he considers important. Maybe, to Richard, it's important
to define some sort of space, and consider votes as being moved in
it, and judging the distance that the votes are moved in that space.
Fine. As I said, I don't deny that that's important to Richard
, and maybe to you. You aren't wrong. Standards are individual
and subjective.

Anthony continues:

Thus, Richard not only dealt with the overwhelming concern
of voters -- how their votes are reflected in the outcome --
but he even quantified his argument, and offered proof.

I reply:

You see, you're repeating again. I had just answered that statement
in my previous posting.

Advocates of any method, when applying their own personal standards,
will talk about how people's votes are reflected in the outcome.
IRV advocates, Margies, and Borda advocates talk about that, for
instance.

Obviously any voter would agree that the outcome should reflect
voters' votes. Richard agrees with the voters on that, and that's
very nice.

But what you keep missing
is that voters haven't said that they have any interest in
Richard's notion of the way in which the outcome should reflect
voter's votes. Maybe I'd better explain this to you: There are
innumerable ways in which an outcome can reflect voters' rankings.
That's because there are innumerable possible rank counts. And there
are many proposed ones. So what could be sillier than telling us
that Richard answers voters' concerns because he talks about how
the outome reflects voters' votes, in terms of how he thinks it
should, without citing any evidence that appreciable numbers of voters
share Richard's measure of how well an outcome
reflects voters' votes, or that that measure speaks to a
specific concern expressed by voters. Richard & most voters
agree that the outcome should reflect voters' votes? Meaningless,
useless, ridiculous.

I'd said:

>>By the way, are you one of the mathematically-trained people that Blake 
>>referred to, the ones whose words are especially valid? :-)

Richard replied:

Accounting is training.  Mathematics is education.

I reply:

I should explain to you that I was using Blake's term, facetiously.

Blake had referred to mathematically-trained people. If, as you
suggested, you identify yourself as such a person, then these
postings of yours say something about how reliably we can be assured
that what a mathematically-trained person says is meaningful &
valuable.

Mike Ossipoff



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