[EM] Re: paradigms...

[Rob Brown]

Jobst Heitzig <heitzig-j <at> web.de> writes:

> 
> Dear Rob!
> 
> you wrote:
> In a ranking, I cannot tie A=C, B=C, A=D, and B=D
> and simultaneously express A>B and C>D.

True, and you shouldn't be able to, because that is (in my opinion) illogical 
and contradictory.

But some ranking systems DO allow you to rank two or more equally, but not in 
a contradictory way  (say, expressing A>B, A>C, and B=C), which is all I was 
suggesting.

To be honest, I personally don't see such great benefit to allowing expressing 
them equally (I mean, geez, just pick one...are you really THAT concerned you 
might break a tie between two candidates that you condider equal relative to 
all other candidates?!!), but if necessary to prevent the voting geeks from 
demanding the ridiculous complexity of having ballots that allow full pairwise 
comparisons of all candidates, then sure let's have it.

> Don't you see that it is a difference
> whether I consider A and B equivalent, that is, equal with 
> respect to all relevant aspects, or whether I just cannot
> decide which is better because I have too few information
> or too few expertise or two conflicting criteria or any
> other reason to abstain from *this* pair

No, I don't.  At least not in the sense of how it should be handled in a 
voting system. You don't have a preference, and that is all it needs to 
know...it really doesn't need to know why.

> I don't think we should force voters with only partial 
> information to either not vote or distort their preferences.
> The former would waste valuable information and violate 
> equality, the latter would unnecessarily introduce "noise"
> into the information we get from the ballots.

Well for the former I really just don't see any benefit the system will get 
out of having you vote when you don't have enough knowledge to make a 
decision.  It's not going to be able to do anything intelligent with the 
additional information (ok, you want to explicitly say that you don't know 
which is better?  what is it supposed to do what that other than count it as a 
non-vote?)  You have not improved the results, you have simply complicated the 
interface.

As for the latter, the only effect of noice that has been introduced would be 
to break what would otherwise be a tie.  And secondly, I don't think any noise 
has been introduced (assuming the ranking system allows you to specify 
equality), all it has done is force you to vote in a non-contradictory way.

-rob