[EM] reply to Gilmour attack on range voting & social utility; CCd to RangeVoting
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
abd at lomaxdesign.com
Sat Dec 10 18:52:47 PST 2005
At 04:14 PM 12/2/2005, Kevin Venzke wrote:
>--- Warren Smith <wds at math.temple.edu> a écrit :
> > Social utility is THE overriding goal which trumps and
> > encapsulates all else.
>
>Surely you see a problem in relying on voters to tell you the social
>utilities...
I don't and I don't think Warren does.
>I don't mind range voting, but I wouldn't use a social utility argument
>to explain what's good about it.
I think it's the only way to understand Range
votes. That is precisely what a sincere Range
vote would be, a perception of the social
utility, by the voter, of the election of the
candidate being rated, in comparison to the other
choices. Since "social utility" is mostly a
gedanken calculation, indeed, a Range vote is
about the only way to come up with actual numbers
for social utility. Any other method, such as
dollar value, is contingent and dependent on what people think is important.
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