[EM] Re: Comments on Approval strategy posting

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Before this reply, let me say that my demonstration that Approval soon 
arrives at the voter median, when there´s 1 issue-dimension, and probably 
Forest´s demonstration that Approval soon arrives at the CW, use the 
assumption that the voters and the candidates are the same as in the 
previous election. I haven´t seen Myerson´s & Weber´s demonstration of their 
similar claim, but it may very well make those assumptions too.

No, those assumptions won´t strictly be correct. Often they´ll be close 
enough. No, "close enough" isn´t a mathematical term. As I said, Approval 
strategy is based on best estimates, and so must be our statements about 
what Approval will do. No one is saying that those estimates or assumptions 
are reliably accurate, but they´re what one has, with Approval.

That´s something that has long been common knowledge here. Thank you for 
announcing your discovery of it. Now, are you finished repeating it?


Russ said:

I will read your postings whenever I please, and I will
come down on you like a ton of bricks whenever I feel like it.

I reply:

You mean you´ll come down on EM  like a ton of garbage.

Russ continued:

This is
the Wild West, Mike. No rules

I reply:

Rob L, is that true here? You own and manage EM. Some of Russ´s postings, 
the ones devoted entirely to another list member, and filled with frothing, 
raging, raving namecalling, lead me to ask you, Rob, if there´s such a thing 
as something that can´t be posted on EM, and if there´s anything that a 
person can habitually post to be kicked off EM. Is there? And, if so, is it 
possible that Russ hasn´t qualified for eviction?

Russ continued:

One of these
days you will realize the you f***ed with the wrong person

I reply:

But is there really any such thing as a _right_ f***-up to anger?

But that doesn´t mean that we have to go out of our way to not anger a 
f***-up.

F***-ups like you, pretentiously ignorant, angry cranks,  aren´t unheard of 
on EM, and they´re understood to be a nuisance. One would hope that at some 
point they´d get kicked off EM. But if for some reason that won´t happen, 
then people like you are just a fact of life on EM.

Russ  continued:

and you are
in a no-win situation.

I reply:

I wasn´t aware that I was in some game that could be won or lost. I thought 
that I was just commenting on the postings of some crank f***-up.

Russ said:

I have little to lose here, Mike

I reply:

No doubt. But your presence is a loss for EM, when you waste time and 
archive-space.

Russ continued:

, because this
mailing list is not my "career."

I reply:

You´ve said that EM is my "career". Not quite sure what you mean by that. 
But it´s a fact that I take EM more seriously than you do, since I don´t 
make use of it to vent grudges. And the pretentious ignorance that you post 
suggests that you don´t take the list´s topic as seriously as I do.

And what am I going to lose because of your postings? The list´s respect 
because I reply to you? Well maybe :-)  But I think that I can be excused 
for replying to postings that are about me. And of course it´s acceptable to 
reply to postings about the list´s topic, even if they´re by a pretentous 
crank f***-up.

Russ continued:

I do respect and value the opinion of
at least several persons on this list

I reply:

...but not enough to refrain from spamming them with your grudge-anger.

I´d said:

>I had just finished saying:  Many strategies can be related to Weber's 
>strategy of voting for
>candidates with positive strategic value, according to Weber's strategic
>value formula.

Russ replied:

The Best-frontrunner strategy is not just "related" to Weber's Approval
formula. It follows directly and trivially from it.

I reply:

Word it as you want. I and others have commented on EM that BF is a case 
Weber´s strategy of voting for candidates with positive strategic value. 
That´s common knowledge. But congratulations for discovering it. I also made 
that comment in an article that was at your website, till I withdrew 
permission for you to have my articles at your website. But that doesn´t 
mean that entirely different ways of choosing whom to vote for, based on 
entirely different information or estimates, must be called the same 
strategy, just because there´s only one optimal way of voting. Actually, in 
fact, different ways of votng can be optimal, with respect to their 
respective different kinds of estimates, when those different kinds of 
estimates, used with their different expectation-maximizing methods,  lead 
to different ways of voting.

Russ continued:

If it was
inconsistent with the formula for all reasonable input sets, it wouldn't
be optimal.

I reply:

When the voter doesn´t have an estimate of Weber´s Pij, then consistency 
with Weber´s positive strategic value voting, using Weber´s formula for 
strategic value, can´t be directly tested.

But what you´re saying sounds as if you got it from one of my Approval 
strategy articles that was at your website. Í´d said that if we assume that 
there´s just one best way to vote, and that Weber´s method describes it, and 
if we make a few reasonable approximations by which Forest´s 
Better-Than-Expectation strategy conforms to Weber´s method, then, by the 
assumption that there´s only one optimal way to vote, and by those 
reasonable approximations, anyone who, by any means, votes to maximize their 
expectation must also be voting for his/her better-than-expectation 
candidates. Yes that´s based on assumptions. The conclusion that I then drew 
was that, with  those assumptions and approximations,  Approval then 
maximizes the number of voters for whom the winner is better than the 
expectation that they had for the election, better than their perceived 
value of the election. And I concluded that it´s reasonable to say that, 
with those assumptions and approximations, Approval maximizes the number of 
voters who are pleasantly suprised by the outcome.


You´ve latched onto someting that you copied from me, and are now presenting 
it as if you´d found something new on your own.

I´d said

>But the resulting ways of choosing which candidates to vote for are 
>different, even though all or most of them can be explained or justified in 
>terms of Weber´s strategy method.

Russ replied:

I agree competely that one need not use Weber's formula explicitly to
determine a reasonable or even "optimal" vote, depending on the
definition of the word "optimal." However, I claim that a vote cannot be
quantitatively optimal unless it satisfies Weber's formula for some
reasonble set of inputs.

I reply:

That´s what I was saying at your website. Now it´s become your claim :-) But 
of course in practice, without an estimate of Weber´s Pij, there´s no way to 
test for whether or not a strategy conforms to Weber´s strategy.

Russ continued:

Any other "strategy" is essentially an attempt
to make the formula more intuitive for special cases.

I reply:

No. Other stratgies use different estimates, estimates of information 
different from the Pij. They´re useful because people don´t usually want to 
try to estimate the Pij.

Russ continued:

That's fine, but
don't fool yourself into thinking they are separate strategies
unless theý´re non-optimal.

I reply:

They´re separate strategies because they´re completely different ways of 
choosing whom to vote for, based on entirely different estimates--estimates 
of information other than Weber´s Pij.

If you want to call all expectation-maximizing strategies the same because 
ideally they´re the same as Weber´s way of voting, if we disregard the fact 
that that can´t be tested without estimating the Pij, then fine, you can 
make up your own definitions and names. But you´re a pretentious crank when 
you try to then pass off a different definition as a new discovery.

Russ said:

Let me just say that you don't need to
consider tie probabilities to derive Weber's formula.

I reply:

Weber´s formula for strategic value uses probabilities. There´s no way for 
anyone to know what you mean, or what you´re trying to say, when you speak 
of deriving, without considering probabiliies, a formula that´s based on 
probabilities. But we can´t expect to know what a confused, pretentioius 
crank is trying to say.

Mike Ossipoff

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