[EM] 2nd Abd reply

[Michael Ossipoff]

Abd says:

Range is, essentially, the benchmark. Range was designed to maximize social 
utility, whereas the other methods were designed to satisfy criteria that 
were *presumed* to be associated with benefit to society.

I reply:

Forgive me for presuming that letting people vote sincerely, and electing 
C.W.s without perfect information, would benefit society. And RV-ists make a 
big presumption if they believe RV will have enough sincere voting to really 
maximize SU. The notion that RV will maximize SU, or even do so as well as 
Condorcet wv, is a fantasy. RV-ists live in La-La Land.

Abd continues:

Range, in a sense, is designed to satisfy the utility benchmark quite 
directly. It uses the utility benchmark to choose a winner!

I reply:

…based on the contra-factual assumption that sufficiently many people will 
vote sincerely.

Abd continues:

What's interesting here, though, is we now have some measure of *how much* 
it is better. And under what conditions it is better. How much is Range N, 
with N>2, better than Approval. How much is Range 100 better than Range 10? 
 > Of >course, I did the same thing with my sims ( http://bolson.org/voting/ 
 >sim.html ) way back 4-5 years ago. I designed a simulator that could 
 >measure the social utility of election results, and naturally the >best 
result came from the election method which just summed up >voter's 
personal-utility-votes and picked the overall best. That's an >awful lot 
like ideal range voting. And indeed it's great and >expressive and better 
than Condorcet _when everyone is honest_. Right. And this has to be 
understood. Range is ideal with honest voters. Now, what happens when voters 
aren't honest? We have a lot of *theory* about this, most of it rather 
abstracted from any kind of real-world measurement.

I reply:

That voters will be afraid to sincerely rate Favorite over Compromise, 
because they feel strategically forced to fully vote Compromise over Worst 
isn’t some abstract theory. It’s obvious based on how people vote now. 
Pluarality isn’t RV? Sure but the lesser-of-2-evils need that voters 
demonstrate now will be there with RV too, and will have predictable results 
in voting.
Abd continues:


Simulations are also abstracted, to a degree, but should correlate with 
real-world performance much better than determining what "criteria" methods 
satisfy. A criterion may seem reasonable but may be utterly inapplicable in 
the real world.

I reply:

Where does Abd get his assurance about this? He sure doesn’t give any 
justification for it. When it’s been shown that a method meets a criterion, 
then it’s known that there is something that that method will never (or 
always) do in actual genuine real-world elections. T hat’s more than you can 
say for the results of a simulation, especially if it’s based on ridiculous 
assumptions, as Warren’s simulations are.

Abd continues:

Do the strategic voters make out unfairly well vs the honest voters? Again, 
this is another version of the standard objection to Range. If strategic 
voters under Range reverse preferences, they gain no advantage by it.

I reply:

A straw-man. I’m not aware of RV critics claiming that offensive 
order-reversal will be a problem in RV.

Abd continues:

They *may* gain an advantage by voting Approval style, but I would expect 
that advantage to be small, and, in particular, the "harm" done to less 
melodramatic voters is, practically by definition, small.

I reply:

Abd is barking up the wrong tree. If someone gains advantage by voting 
Approval style in RV, that isn’t a bad thing, in the sense of messing up the 
result (unless you believe in the fairy-tale of RV’s SU maximization). Some 
people emphasize strategy as something that the method has to combat, in 
order to not let strategizers wrongfully influence the result. I claim that 
that is a worthless approach. The genuine strategy problem is when voters 
are strategically forced to conceal their genuine preferences.




Abd continues:


I use the pizza election example. A group of people must buy one kind of 
pizza. They hold an Approval election. A majority prefer Pizza A, in fact, 
but they also find B acceptable, and they so vote. A minority prefer B and 
detest A, and they so vote. B, of course, wins under Approval. The B voters 
gained, the A voters lost (compared to sincere preferences, which, to 
express, we should really use Range.) But it would not be appropriate to say 
that the A voters "made out unfairly well." They consented. Only if the B 
voters were being deceptive, they actually had only a small preference for 
B, but just wanted to get their own way, could we reasonably state that 
there was some unfair advantage taken. Even then, though, most functional 
groups would still say, "If you want it that much, fine. I'm okay with B, if 
I wasn't, I wouldn't have approved it."


I reply:

No one denies that RV would maximize SU under the Fantasy-Land assumption of 
sincere voting.

Mike Ossipoff