[EM] medians and Heitzig's approval-voting strategy

[Warren Smith]

>> Re your "Weinstein" idea that you would vote for candidates above the median with
> approval voting, since you do not believe in utility, I ask you to consider
>   A.  Josef Stalin
>   B.  Adolf Hitler
>   C.  Genghis Khan
>   D.  Jacques Chirac
> where (say) A<B<C<D in your opinion.

>Depends on the priors. When they say D has more chance of winning than A
and B together, only D will be approved. When they say D has less
probability of winning than A and B together, also C will be approved by
Weinstein's strategy. Now show me please what the "tremendous harm to
humanity" will be of which you constantly talk.

--aha.  So by "median candidate" you do not mean what I thought you meant
(namely, in an N-canddt election, the top-quality floor(N/2) are above median)
but rather median in the prior distribution of probabilities of winning.

But wait, that would be even more insane, since the policy of
voting only for the candidates with above-median prior election 
probability, would be a policy that would completely disregard the
quality of the candidates.

So my revised statement is, I do not know what you are talking about.
You probably have somethign reasonably sensible in mind, but I do not know
what it is.  Regardless of what it is, if it ignores the utilities of
the candidates, it can lead to immense harm to humanity under the right
circumstances.

--PS. quit telling me about my emotionalism, otherwise I'll have to
kill myself.  :)

wds