[EM] Sports and "The Condorcet Mindset"

[matt at tidalwave.net]

On 17 Nov 2002 at 16:27, Alex Small wrote:

> So, we aren't looking to race wheelchairs here.  We are looking for
> competitions with fewer loopholes that a weak candidate can use to slip
> by.

Of the three methods (Approval, IRV, Condorcet), I suspect that Approval may have 
the fewest such loopholes overall at the expense of being less expressive. 

> Finally, to make a few more bad sports analogies, Donald Saari's favorite
> sport must be synchronized swimming, because it respects symmetry (that's
> about the only merit to the Borda count, which really does put lame
> candidates on crutches).  Alan Natapoff doesn't give a damn about sports,
> he just likes to place bets (and what could be more random and chaotic
> than our electoral college?).

I may be wrong, but I think Dr. Saari's focus on symmetry is partly a product of the 
difficulty of discussing nonlinear dynamics to a general audience.  My impression (I 
have not attempted to read his work) is that Dr. Saari's support for Borda is based 
on solid mathematics.  Borda may be a very good method for those unusual 
situations where all voters can be expected and required to competently fully rank 
all candidates.  Approval, Condorcet, and IRV don't require that all ballots provide 
complete rankings and therefore are not in direct competition with Dr. Saari's less 
than fully practical Borda.

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