[EM] part 2 of Re: approval doesn't meaningfully meet majority or mutual majority

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

James--

You say:

I think that it is meaningful to say that approval
meets criteria like participation, consistency, monotonicity, etc. As for
IIA, it depends on whether you assume that voters base their approvals on
the relative merit of the candidates in the race, or whether they consider
each candidate in isolation.

I reply:

It depends on this:

Deleting a losing candidate from the ballots, and then recounting those 
ballots, should never change who wins.

[votes-only IIAC definition]

You continue:

Approval passes votes-only IIAC.

You continue:

	To sum up, I think that approval generally does not meet majority
rule-related criteria, but usually does meet "continuity" criteria.

I reply:

Approval indeed fails three out of five of the majority defensive strategy 
criteria. Approval meets WDSC and PMC, and fails SFC, GSFC, and SDSC.

Approval passes the traditional votes-only MC.

It isn't surprising that Approval, and even Plurailty, meet MC and PMC:

A majority is a uniquely powerful group of voters, one that can get its way, 
whether that means electing some particular candidate, or ensuring the 
non-election of some particular candidate.

The former of those two goals is easy, with nearly every method. The latter 
of those two goals is the more demanding one, the one that distinguishes 
between methods. It often requires some degree of strategy, the drasticness 
of which depends on the method. That's what SFC, GSFC, WDSC and SDSC measure 
for.

Criteria about the election of a candidate who is favorite of a majority are 
extremely easy to meet, extremely weak criteria. It isn't surprising that 
Borda is the only proposed method that I know of that fails PMC.

You continue:

	I'm not interested in comparing approval to plurality.

I reply:

Oh, excuse me. I thought that you were making such a comparison when you 
said that, by FHC, Approval does worse than Plurality. In any case, criteria 
that are any good compare every pair of methods, whether or not you yourself 
are interested in the comparison of that pair of methods. FHC, when 
comparing Plurality and Approval, says something ridiculous, something that 
you know has no validity. FHC obviously malfunctions when comparing 
Plurality and Approval.

You continue:

Approval is
better. I am interested in comparing approval to IRV and ER-IRV. And in
that comparison, it is meaningful to say that IRV passes the majority,
mutual majority, and Condorcet loser criteria, while approval fails.

I reply:

Approval fails MMC, but I told you why IRV's better MMC showing, as compared 
to Approval, is meaningless because those very examples tend to be IRV WDSC 
& FBC failure examples,bringing out how Approval is better than IRV by 
criteria much more general than the "fortuitous special case" criterion MMC. 
We discussed that before, and there's no need to start that discussion up 
again.

I don't have time to start explaining that to you all over again. If you 
contest the issue again, I won't reply.

Yes Approval fails Condorcet Loser, a bottom-end criterion for pessimists. 
But Approval also fails criteia that I value, such as SFC, GSFC, and SDSC. I 
don't claim that Approval is as good as wv.

But Approval passes WDSC & FBC, two desirable criteria that IRV fails.

You continue:

[In regards to the name of FHC]


	Well, I was using that particular majority criterion definition to
compare approval to plurality, but the same criterion can be used to
compare approval to any other method, e.g. IRV, ER-IRV, WV, Borda, etc. So
the criterion itself is not limited to, and hence not solely defined by,
the approval-plurality comparison.

I reply:

FHC's big failure, its big malfunction, the notable thing about FHC, is in 
its comparison of Plurality with Approval. Therefore I named FHC based on 
that failure.

You continue:

ER-IRV and WV offer the voters
more freedom than approval, and still pass the criterion, so there's no
necessary connection between satisfaction of the criterion and limitation
on voter expression.

I reply:

I refer you to what I just said.

You continue:

Furthermore, we agree that CR fails the majority
criterion

I reply:

We agree that non-Approval CR fails MC and FHC, but not PMC.

You continue:

, and so if approval passes any cooked-up version of the majority
criterion

I reply:

Approval passes the traditional votes-only MC. The only MC version that 
Approval fails is your obviouslyk malfunctioning FHC, in an obvious 
malfunction of FHC.

Cooked up? As the person who cooked-up FHC, you're not in a position to 
complain about PMC being cooked-up.

You continue:

, it must be as a result of reducing the voters' freedom by
giving them only two scoring options (0 and 1) rather than 101 (0-100) or
whatever CR scale you use.

I reply:

Approval and the non-Approval CR versions pass PMC.

But you have a point when you say that for Approval to pass, and for 
non-Approval CR to fail, as a result of CR giving more freedom to voters, is 
a malfunction. Certainly a less serious malfunction, but still a 
malfunction. Less serious because the extra freedom given by CR, in 
comparison to Approval, isn't strategically valuable.

But yes, you've told why MC malfunctions when it says that Approval passes 
and CR fails. Since FHC malfunctions even more blatantly, that leaves PMC as 
the non-malfunctioning majority criterion.

I'd said:

>But CR isn't subject to the 1p1v illusion. By proposing CR instead of 
>Approval, we completely avoid that public misperception.


You say:

	To me, it seems that it would be harder to convince people that CR
satisfies 1p1v than it would be for approval.

I reply:

...only because you'd first have to find someone (who hasn't heard these 
discussions) who rejects CR because of perceiving CR to violate 1p1v.

I've talked with many people about Approval and CR, and many object to 
Approval because of the 1p1v fallacy. Not one has objected to CR in that 
regard. One person recently, who objected to Approval because of 1p1v, 
agreed that CR is a more practical public proposal becasuse it won't have 
that problem.

You continue:

But that's just my opinion.

I reply:

An opinion based on experience, or a careless shooting-off-your-mouth 
expression of opinion?

James, your postings are so full of obvious factual errors that replying to 
you is like correcting a paper from a particularly sloppy student, giving 
the paper back to you with corrections all over it.

But it's worse than that, because you're more like a whole classroom of 
sloppy dunces, because of the sheer number of errors per week that you post.

I didn't join EM to play Sidney Poitier's teacher role, or to be in 
_Blackboard Jungle_,  or _Up the Down Staircase_, etc.

You say that you're pursuing academic studies. Are you pursuing them as 
sloppily as you're posting here? If so, then you're flunking out, or should 
be.

Are you a campus party-animal, majoring in getting drunk at parties? Are you 
at college with your father's money, a spoiled rich kid who thinks that he 
already has the academic authority and prestige that he's presumably 
studying for, though he's thoroughly sloppy and negligent?

If your paper and your website have writing as in your postings here, you 
should be fervently hoping that I won't comment on EM about your paper or 
your website.

Mike Ossipoff

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