[EM] Replies to various people on Condorcet vs RV

[Michael Ossipoff]

>Scott Ritchie:
So, wait, was half the Condorcet electorate strategic voting by doing
order reversal?  Are we making the assumption that strategic voting is
exactly as common in range and Condorcet in these simulations?

That seems a bit strong, exactly because the risks are different and the
information required is greater for Condorcet.

--WDS:
In IEVS, presently, equal rankings are forbidden in rank-order methods.
Hence all strategic voting in them involves some order changing whenever the 
strategic
vote is not the honest one.

M.O.:

…which (like Warren’s other assumptions) makes the results meaningless.

Warren continues:

I would not say I am "making the assumption that strategic voting is
exactly as common in range and Condorcet in these simulations."
You are free to make that assumption if you want.  I am simply computing
the data of what the Bayesian Regrets (and probabilities of electing 
true-Condorcet-Winners)
of different election methods are, at different honesty-strategy mixes in 
the voter population.
At 50-50 mix, range leads to higher CW probability than Condorcet methods.


M.O.

…which is entirely worthless without the assumption that voters are equally 
sincere in both methods.

honest voters
(whatever they are - it is rather hard in practice to tell who is who, they 
all
say they are honest if asked; and nothing stops voters from providing votes 
which include both
honesty and strategy inside the same vote)


M.O.

So use a method that doesn’t force dishonesty, a method with which the voter 
has less need for strategy.


then if you provide a good definition of it I may
include it in a future version of IEVS.  I want to incorporate help and 
advice from you all.


M.O.

I offer this help: If Warren wants to make RV look good, then he’d be 
well-advised to not compare it to Condorcet. Continuing to do so will only 
make RV look really shabby.

Wds:

I will say, though, that personally I really
do not give a damn about how "unfair" an election method is (and indeed am
not even sure what "unfairness" even is); what I care about is how much 
society benefits
or not, quantitatively, from the election result.  If election method A
causes expected societal benefit +999 and B causes benefit -999, where 
"benefit" is
a well defined quantitative thing that we all agree is better to make larger 
-
then I will prefer A even if some whiner comes along and says in his opinion 
A was
"more unfair."


M.O.

It’s been long understood on EM that “unfairness”, such as the need for 
insincere voting, is very bad news for social utility. You can’t expect to 
get good SU unless people are voting in accordance with their genuine 
preferences.

The familiar “lesser-of-2-evils problem” causes people to sacrifice 
sincerity for perceived pragmatism. What is the lesser-of-2-evils problem? 
It is the fear of fully voting X over Y, because then one can’t fully vote Y 
over Z. Guess what?: RV has the lesser-of-2-evils problem in a transparently 
obvious way, in a big way that Condorcet doesn’t have.

Mike Ossipoff