[EM] Cardinal Pairwise

James Green-Armytage jarmyta at antioch-college.edu
Sat Mar 5 21:13:29 PST 2005



>Fair enough, stating a first impression, but it´s also fair to ask you
>why 
>you doubt that AERLO & ATLO will be as effective and easily 
>strategy-resistant as Cardinal Pairwise.

	I did explain this a bit already, as you might have seen later in the
message, in this paragraph:
>Also, I believe
>that cardinal pairwise achieves many of its counterstrategic benefits
>without any need for conscious counterstrategizing by the voters.
>Lots of voters giving Bush a very low rating and Kerry a very high rating
>makes it
>very hard to overrule a Kerry>Bush defeat, but the voters don't all need
>to understand majority rule cycles, or anticipate a particular strategic
>incursion, in order to guard against an incursion that attempts to
>overrule the defeat. The neat thing about cardinal pairwise is that rating
>the candidates intuitively is usually a good protection against strategy.
>AERLO and ATLO don't have this benefit, because the concept of truncation
>lines and equal ranking lines is never going to be as intuitive to voters
>as ranking the candidates on a scale from 0 to 100.
>
>I won´t presume to comment on what you say in the paper unless I´ve read
>it. 
>I haven´t checked the paper yet. 

	I don't quite understand why you would want to continue this discussion
without reading it, since it is not long, and it is readily available on
the web. 
http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/cwp13.pdf
	I can send you a different format, if you don't have a pdf reader. Also,
sections 1-5 probably cover stuff that you already know; most new info
would just be in sections 6 and 7... hence an even easier read.
>
>Sure, the benefits of AERLO & ATLO _might_ be gotten by merely voting as
>one 
>feels (if one feels like voting in a way that happens to be the 
>strategically necessary way), with CP. On the other hand, however,
>there´s 
>nothing complicated about intending to give fullest protection to a set
>of 
>candidates, as AERLO & ATLO offer. Then it´s a matter of placing a line, 
>rather than strategically, often insincerely, manipulating one´s cardinal 
>ratings in CP.

	I think that both AERLO/ATLO line placement and cardinal pairwise rating
assignment should be understood to incorporate strategic thinking, rather
than being "purely" derived from voters' sincere attitudes toward the
candidates outside of the context of specific poll results.
>
>So I´d say that both approaches have something that can be said for them. 
>I´m not criticizing CP.

	Glad to hear it. For my part, I don't think that AERLO/ATLO is bad
either; I'm just suggesting that cardinal pairwise is preferable when it
is practical to use rating ballots. To me, cardinal pairwise is still
somewhat more elegant, although I have lately gained more appreciation for
the elegance of AERLO/ATLO. 
>
>
>What do you mean by "burying strategy"? 
>Insincerely voting someone lower? I 
>assume that you´re referring to an offensive strategy, but burying is the 
>defensive strategy in Plurality and IRV. One could express the
>distincition 
>by saying "oiffensive burying". Then one would be using "burying" as a 
>synonym for the previously long-used term "order-reversal". Is that what 
>you´re doing? I´m just trying to clarify the meaning.

	My definition of "burying" is a slightly modified version of Blake
Cretney's definition. Quoting from my paper:
	"Insincerely ranking an option lower in order to increase the probability
that a more-preferred option will win. For example, if my sincere
preferences are R>S>T, a burying strategy would be to vote R>T>S or R>S=T,
lowering S’s ranking in order to increase R’s chances of winning. (The
drawback is that this often increases T’s chances of winning as well.)"

	"Compromising", on the other hand, I define as follows:
	"Insincerely ranking an option higher in order to decrease the
probability that a less preferred option will win. For example, if my
sincere preferences are R>S>T, a compromising strategy would be to vote
S>R>T or R=S>T, raising S’s ranking in order to decrease T’s chances of
winning. (The drawback is that this often decreases R’s chances of winning
as well.)"

	I've never fully understood the difference between your terms "offensive"
and "defensive". Someone once told me that a strategy is offensive if it
seeks to elect someone other than the CW, but I feel that this is a
somewhat awkward way to look at things, because the CW/Smith set is not
always known before the election.
>
>Well, several of us told you why Condorcet wv won´t have a strategy
>problem. 
>Every suggestion that you made about a Condorcet strategy problem was 
>answered by me and others.

	I don't think that this is true.

>Of course. But when we make statements, we can fairly be asked to justify 
>them. And when our claims are answered, then the answers should be
>answered 
>before the claims are re-stated.
>
	We disagree also on which of us has best supported our claims more
effectively. I believe that I effectively supported my claims on this
issue. You believe that I failed to support them adequately. Again, I'm
not sure that this is a fruitful line of discussion at this particular
time.
	I will continue to meditate on this issue. In this process, perhaps I
will visit the archives to review the comments made by yourself and others
who disagreed with my point of view.

>Condorcet has been used on a small scale in many polls, here and
>elsewhere 
>on the Internet. Condorcet has been in use in organizations, and, from
>what 
>I´ve heard, the results have been very satisfactory.

	That's good. Which organizations use Condorcet?
>
>1. plurality or runoffs
>2. equal-rankings IRV
>3. minimal dominant set completed by IRV.
>4. cardinal pairwise??
>
>Well, we´ve already got Plurality and Runoffs, so hopefully we could soon
>be 
>out of stage 1.
>For #3, why not use ERIRV instead of IRV to choose from the minimal
>dominant 
>set (Smith set?)?

	I meant that to be implied. 
	By the way, I'm not really devoted to that progression or anything...
there are several other possible progressions that I might find attractive.
>
>It doesn´t seem so to me, because it would be enough for voters to 
>understand that AERLO & ATLO can be used to give fullest protection to a 
>favored set of candidates.

	Okay, fair enough. Let's say that the voting method is AERLO/ATLO
Condorcet, and I'm a voter who doesn't know much about voting methods, and
my choices in order of preference are C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, and my
"favored set of candidates" is {C1, C2}. How do I give full protection to
these candidates using the AERLO/ATLO lines? Can I do it just with the
AERLO line, or do I need to use the ATLO line as well?
>

>Ok, and for those advantages it would be necessary to read the paper. I 
>don´t get much time on the computer, but I´ll check out the paper, first
>in 
>its short version. Which of those links is to the short version?

http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/cwp13.pdf
>
Sincerely,
James Green-Armytage
http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/voting.htm




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