[EM] Approval vs. CR, chess analogy

Kevin Venzke stepjak at yahoo.fr
Wed Jan 28 19:18:13 PST 2004


Bill,

 --- "wclark at xoom.org" <wclark at xoom.org> a écrit : 
> Then I don't see the significance of the strategic equivalence, at all. 
> If my strategy is going to be different for the exact same election with
> the exact same voter preferences, with the only difference being whether
> Approval or CR is used, then I don't see why they should be treated as
> being equivalent in any important way.
>
> My main reason for questioning the strategic equivalence between Approval
> and CR is that, in my experience, this equivalence has often been used to
> suggest that there's no reason to support CR.

This analogy occurs to me:

Suppose we have chess, and a variant of chess in which it is legal to
move one's king into check.  I would say they are strategically equivalent,
since it will never be in your interests to move your king into check.
But you seem to be saying that since the other guy might do exactly that, the 
two games are not strategically equivalent (since you might be able to
take advantage of that).

I think you're right, depending on the definition of "strategically equivalent,"
but I don't think this chess variant is worth considering, even though it
gives the player greater freedom.

> I think CR deserves a lot more attention than it's received.  In many
> ways, it's a generalization of various other systems.  By restricting the
> range of values in one way, CR can be made to simulate Approval.  By
> restricting them in another way, it can simulate Borda.  There are entire
> classes of variants that, to my knowledge, haven't been explored at all --
> because CR is dismissed as being "not worth pursuing."

Haven't they been thoroughly explored?  Approval is CR where you are not
allowed to vote "badly," and Approval is Borda where you are not *forced*
to vote badly.

You can get a Borda chess variant by requiring the player to move a pawn
every other turn.

Kevin Venzke
stepjak at yahoo.fr



	

	
		
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