[EM] Re: Jame G.'s & Curt's Strange Prediction About Your Voting

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Curt--

You said:

Mike, that's a straw man.  I agree that your scenario is ridiculous.
It wasn't my scenario, though.

I reply:

Sure it was. You & James G. said that people would prefer their last choice 
to the compromise that they formerly preferred to the last choice, and had 
voted over the last choice, if the compromise didn't get many votes.

You disappoint me. Have the honesty to not try to own up to what you said. 
It's in the archives, after all.

You continued:

This kind of debate is tiresome

I reply:

Of course it is, but I merely replied to something that you said. It must 
have become tiresome very rapidly if it's tiresome upon receiving your first 
reply.

But yes it of course is tiresome in another way. It's tiresome when all the 
old IRVer arguments are posted again and again. If only people would read 
the archives first. I don't know how many times we've answered the old "last 
choice preferred to unfavorite compromse" argument of the IRVers.

You continued:

- any one of us can choose example
candidates to appeal to biases.  Why not just use Ghandi, McCain, and
Satan?

I reply:

What you name them is irrelevant. You said that people would start 
preferring their last choice to their compromise if the compromise wasn't 
much of a favorite, and would vote ther former last choice over their 
compromise in a runoff between the CW and IRV's winner.

Two points.  First:

You yourself are on record as saying that you prefer CR to Condorcet if
there isn't tactical voting, to maximize social utility.

I reply:

And that's relevant to this question....how?

I wasn't saying that SU doesn't matter. I was saying that it's ridiculous to 
say that people will start liking their last choice over their compromise if 
the compromise is favorite to fewer. Now your theory is that those majority 
voters will decide that they want to maximize SU instead of avoiding the 
election of their last chioce? :-) This gets better and better.

You continued:

Bolson just posted a scenario where the social utility winner is
different than the Condorcet winner.

I reply:

Did I say that I was replying to something that Bolson said? The less-likely 
scenario in which IRV picks better SU than Condorcet is quite irrelevant. In 
Merrill's simulations, pairwise-count scored right up at the top, and IRV 
did considerably worse. The nonranked Approval did significantly better than 
IRV at SU, and pairwise-count did better still.

So I have no interest in someone's unusual scenario in which IRV does better 
than Condorcet at SU. Nor did I mention it in the posting to which you're 
supposedly replying.

You continued:

It just so happens that in that
particular scenario, IRV picked the social utility winner.

I reply:

I said nothing about that atypical example in the posting to which you don't 
seem to be replying.

You continued:

Second:

You're trying to argue that if a population votes rationally and a
Condorcet winner emerges, that it will be *impossible* for anyone,
anywhere to regret their vote if their candidate wins, and that it is
ridiculous for myself or James to argue that.

I reply:

What I said is that it's ridiculous for you &/or James G. to argue that 
people will start liking their former last choice better than their 
compromise when they find out that their compromise isn't a big favorite. 
They had reasons for one candidate being their last choice, and another 
being their compromise, and there's no reason to believe that those reasons 
depended on an assumption that their compromise will be favorite to more 
people than their last choice, or to more people than their favorite.

So Yes, your claim that those people will suddenly decide that their last 
choice is better than their compromise because their compromise isn't 
favoraite to many--yes that's ridiculous.


This is wrong.  A perfect example is a primary.

I reply:

A perfectly different example from the elections that we've been discussing, 
which are final elections and not primaries.

Aside from that, if the general election will be by Plurality, then yes, it 
would be advantageous to go into it with a good Pluralitly scorer. I just 
wasn't aware that you were talking, in the posting that I was replying to, 
about an election that was a primary, and for which the general election 
would be a Plurality count. :-)

You continued:

It's a very different example than your example of a Nader-or-Kerry
voter deciding to vote for Bush.

I reply:

You got that right. It's completely different from the kind of election that 
you were talking about when you posted the posting to which I was replying.

James G.:

Aside from those questions, you're saying that, because you think that those 
majority members might change their mind, and start liking their last choice 
better than their compromise--because of that, you would disregard the voted 
preferences that they expressed. Ignoring what they actually indicated 
because you feel that they might change their minds. Do you see the 
ridiculousness of that?

Mike Ossipoff

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