[EM] reply to Heitzig criticzing range voting

[Warren Smith]

You continued:
> In the Hitler/Stalin/Harding example, the voter is satisfied with 
> nobody.  It is clearly stupid for the voter to say that honestly.

>No, it's not. First of all, whereever such an example as the above is
possible, there are much more serious problems than the choice between
those three candidates... However, if you consider this realistic, you
should simply add a requirement to the method saying that only
candidates with more than 50% approval can win and that the election
must be repeated if there is no such candidate. 

--well, I really dislike that gimmick.  It seems to me not to solve anything.
It sort of leads to perpetual check.  It is a failure - a voting system's goal
is to deliver a winner and if it does not, it failed - that is my view.
You here are "fixing" a method by turning it into a "failure".  (I also believe
based on my polling experience that it will be quite common
for no >50% approved candidate to exist...)

> --- Re range voting, an "honest" range vote would consist of 
> utilities for all the candidates. (Of course, there would have to be
>  some kind of agreed-on units for measuring utility, etc, so this is
> a fantasy.) 

You got it. Utilities are just fantasy (or, more precisely, a model used
by econometrists because of the nice mathematical conveniences they come
with). Show me a voter who can sincerely assign numeric values to Bush
and Kerry!

--Not so fast...  I'm not letting you get away with that...
CRV recommends 99 for the best candidate, 0 for the worst,
which is fact is what any strategic voter would do anyhow...
(can interpolate between for the rest).  That causes utilities to be much less of a fantasy.
In fact they are now quite real.  I don't think you can object to them now,
or if you can, then I can also object to the idea that A>B when in fact A and B
are incomparable objects.  The only reason we can claim A>B is Util(A)>Util(B).

[And claims that A=B are generically always a lie, so it bothers me when Condorcet
advocates enhance their methods by allowing A=B votes.  This can cause good
behavior with respect to strategic voting (it is hoped)  but only at the cost
of taking special measures to permit votes that are a priori evident lies.]

Of course with such "rescaled honest" range voting it is no longer the case that the 
range winner needs to be best for society.   But in practice it tends to often be,
and to often be pretty good.

> If all range votes were honest, and if votes going
> outside the allowed range were not an issue, then the winner would be
> the uniquely best candidate for society in terms of maximizing human
>  happiness. 

I must admit I can't stand this ever and ever repeated seeming
triviality. How on earth can you suggest "human happiness" should be
defined as a sum of individual utilities! 

The sum is such a non-robust
statistics that a single over-pleased individual can make it arbitrarily
large while all others have zero utility. If you want to define social
utility (my term for your "human happiness"), then at least use a robust
measure such as the median.

--Well since you insist, I can answer the "why on earth" question using science:
A1:  money is additive.  Economists like using it as utility but I do not.
But it is anyhow well correlated and important, even to you...
A2:  happiness is a chemical in your brain.  Count the total number of happiness molecules.
(Or maybe it is neurons doing something in your brain.  Count the neurons or
neuron-events.)  There is no such thing as a "super well pleased individual" with say
99999999999 times more happiness so he alone controls the world - since 
nobody has tremendously more molecules or neurons in their brain than anyone else.

(Wasn't that fun?)

So no, robust measures are not needed with honest voters.  The problem is not
non-robustness.  The problem is dishonest voters.  However, the simple
measure of putting lower and upper bounds on the allowable range takes care of
dishonesty fairly well while at the same time allowing a lot of honesty for those
who wish to be so.

The result (range) is very simple, easy to understand its behavior and strategy (but
I bet you cannot fully understand DMC strategy - too complicated...), and
pretty well behaved for both honest and strategic voters.

I often feel like there is some kind of drive to invent more complicated and crazier
methods so you can get a PhD, which obstructs the more-deserved attention on the 
simplest ones like range.
wds