[EM] RV comments

[Michael Ossipoff]

[Note to list members: Lomax isn’t noted for his brevity, being one of the 
few people who post longer messages than I do. So you could say that this 
reply is a lot to be sending to your inbox. I’m aware of that, and so I’m 
assuring you that I won’t do it often. Not daily or weekly. If there are 
more of these messages and replies, they’ll only show up here maybe monthly. 
Likewise, if Lomax replies to this, he‘ll probably delay his reply for the 
same reason. Besides, the delay allows time to write a better reply. 
Discussion postings‘ frequency should vary oppositely to their length.]

I’d said:

>The Rangers believe in social utility, its maximization, as the literal 
>be-all and end-all of criteria.

Lomax replies:

Ossipoff is arguing as if we have a political situation

I reply now:

Come again? Though proposed for political elections, RV isn’t a political 
issue.

Lomax continues:

, "our" side
and "their" side....

I reply:

…but only Lomax has put it in those terms. Forgive me for naming the group 
who espouse beliefs and make claims that I’m commenting on.

Lomax continues:

If there are a handful of Range Voting supporters who believe as he
claims, well, I'd be hard put to name more than one.

I reply:

In reply to that, let me quote something that Lomax says, a few paragraphs 
down:

“But SU, properly considered, can *measure* the *relative* success of
election methods. And, frankly, I don't see, yet, any alternative,
beyond assuming that this or that Criterion is superior…”

So thank you, Lomax, for demonstrating the accuracy of my statement. Are you 
that “one” Ranger who believe as I claim?

Lomax continues:

The one of us
who seems to have such a "belief" is someone quite like Ossipoff: a
tenacious and highly argumentative individual. Most of us, though,
see "social utility" as a *measure* of election success, which is far
more than a criterion.

I reply:

A silly thing to say. Every criterion is a measure of election success, 
because all criteria (at least the ones that are any good, the “results 
criteria”) judge methods according to what they will or won’t do. A 
criterion failure is the opposite of success. By a criterion, success is not 
having a failure.

Lomax continues:

Election criteria, generally, are pass-fail
measures. A method either satisfies the Condorcet Criterion or it
does not, at least if the Criterion is sufficiently well-defined.

I reply:

Just what we need--an arrogant newcomer to tell us what a criterion is.

Lomax continues:

But SU, properly considered, can *measure* the *relative* success of
election methods.

I reply:

Of course, if that’s what you value and want to measure. That your measure 
of method-merit is a matter of degree instead of yes/no doesn’t make it 
better, as you seem to want to imply.


Lomax says:

The Approval measure maximizes
"approval" of the candidate. While I haven't see this from Approval
advocates, I would define this as the voter would rather elect the
candidate than see the office go vacant.

I reply;

I have to admit that Lomax has a creative, original, new, and unrecognizable 
definition :^)  Refusal to give someone an approval vote says “I don’t want 
that candidate in office.” The voter isn’t asked to choose between other 
alternatives such as “no one in office”. If you approve Smith and not Jones, 
then you’re obviously saying, “I don’t want Jones in office, but I accept 
Smith’s offer to govern.” Smith instead of Jones, if it’s necessary to say 
it more explicitly. One could turn in a ballot with no approvals, saying 
that none of the candidates are acceptable, implying that there should be 
another election with better candidates.

Lomax continues:

However, if we want to test how voters behave with regard to the
Approval measure, aside from using real-world polls, we would need,
probably, to do the *same* kind of simulation as was described above,
because the various utilities generated randomly in the simulation
can be used to estimate whether or not the voter will approve of the 
candidate.

I reply:

There could be a number of uses for simulations with Approval, to compare 
its strategies, or to compare Approval to other methods. I don’t know how 
Lomax would generate utilities, but typically one randomly positions voters 
and candidates in issue space of 1 or more dimensions, usually normally 
distributed in each dimension. Then the merit of a candidate for a voter is 
measured by the distance between candidate and voter--either city block or 
Pythagorean distance. I prefer city-block, for reasons that I’ve described 
here an on the Approval list. Briefly, it’s because I claim that a 
candidate’s various issue distances from you are meaningfully additive.

Whether a voter will approve a candidate of course depends on those 
distances, and on what strategy that voter is using. It may therefore depend 
also on such things as vote totals in the previous election.

Lomax continues:


However, Approval is, in fact, a Range method.

I reply:

Dueling definitions? Rangers use “Range” to encompass all Cardinal Ratings 
methods. But, especially since the Rangers are pretty much the main users of 
the “Range” term, it seems useful to let CR cover the broad class of 
points-assignment methods, and let “Range” denote the CR methods with more 
than two rating levels.

Lomax says:

We can expect that,
generally, the SU maximizer will also maximize Approval

I reply:

Certainly not. A ridiculous statement. Often all the methods used will give 
the same winner. For instance, Nader won all of EM’s presidential polls, by 
Approval, 0-100 RV, Condorcet, and Bucklin. Probably by almost every 
proposed rank count that we didn’t try, too.

But often different methods will give different results. AV and RV look at 
different standards, count different things, and there’s no reason to expect 
them to give the same result, though, as I said, different methods sometimes 
do.

Lomax continues:

, though bare
Approval, being binary in expression, loses data and thus cannot be
accurate with respect to *relative approval

I reply:

So, Approval loses accuracy in measuring RV scores. Amazing. Could that be 
because AV isn’t RV, and we aren’t interested in RV scores? If we wanted to 
accurately measure RV scores, we’d join the Rangers.

Lomax continues:

Lomax says:

Let's see what Ossipoff does:

>  Say, for the moment, we disregard the fact that the SU claims depend on 
>sincere voting, and that sincere voting is nearly always suboptimal in RV.

Ossipoff continually makes this claim. It's false. "Suboptimal" is
the trick. It is suboptimal, true, from the point of view of the
individual voter maximizing his or her own personal utility

I reply:

Yes, that’s usually what means by “suboptimal.


Lomax continues:

, *in some
scenarios.* In others, it is clearly optimal to vote "sincerely."

I reply:

Sure, sometimes your best utility-maximizing strategy coincides with a frank 
expression of how you feel. So what? For instance, in AV or RV, I’d 
bottom-rate Hillary, Obama, and Edwards, because they don’t deserve any 
better. My sincere opinion expressed on the ballot. But maybe if most voters 
would disregard their tv, and would with the judgment they were born with, 
for their strategic voting, or would get some honesty and sincerely express 
their opinions of the candidates’ merit, then my way of voting would be a 
practical instrumental utility-maximizing strategy--in addition to being the 
honest expression of my opinions of the candidates. Well, in fact, I 
consider the above-stated ratings to be instrumental for me even under 
currently existing conditions, so low are the merits of those candidates.


Lomax continues:

There are a series of problems. First of all, "sincere" vote requires
some serious work to define. It is far from clear what a "sincere"
Range vote is.

I reply:

…but that’s your problem as a Ranger, not mine. But let me tell Lomax what 
he means by a sincere RV vote: Your voted ratings are proportional to the 
candidates’ value for you (as nearly as you can estimate that value).

Lomax says:

We can defined a "clearly insincere" vote as being one
where the range ratings reverse preference.

I reply:

Don’t be silly. The opposite of a sincere RV vote is a strategic vote that 
differs from a sincere vote in order to maximize expectation, or accomplish 
some other strategic goal.

Lomax continues:

What Ossipoff is talking about is voting "Approval style," in Range.
But this isn't "insincere,"

I reply:

Lomax’s dueling definitions game again. We all know that when we speak of a 
sincere RV vote, we mean it as I defined it above. “An RV vote that is other 
than sincere” means a strategic vote that differs from a sincere vote. As I 
said, sometimes frank expression and strategic optimality coincide, in which 
case none of us would call the ballot insincere.
Lomax continues:

[With preferences A>B>C]

Where do I rate B? Well, if the B utility is midway between A and C,
we can define a "sincere" rating of B as 50%.

I reply;

That’s consistent with everyone’s definition of a sincere RV rating.

Lomax continues:


But what if the *real* pairwise election is between A and B? And C is
actually irrelevant, C has no chance of being elected. Well, then I'd
rate B min also.


And in the reverse case, i.e., the real election is
between B and C, then I'd rate B max.


I reply:

You’d be a strategic voter, voting Approval strategy. So why do you want 
intermediate ratings?

Lomax continues:

And if the real election is
between A and C, I might as well rate B sincerely, i.e., 50%, it's
not going to hurt me.

I reply:

Wrong. If A is much more likely to outpoll C than vice-versa, then you 
should bottom-rate B. Admittedly, if it’s almost surely between A and C, it 
matters little what you do with B.

Lomax continues:


But what if the voter does not know who the two frontrunners are?
What if the probability of election is equal for all three
candidates? Well, in this case, the optimal vote is clear: rate B
sincerely, i.e., at 50%.

I reply:

If there’s no predictive information, then,  the optimal strategy, the 
0-info optimal strategy, is Above-Mean: Top-rate all the candidates whose 
merit is above the mean. Bottom-rate the rest.


You say that B is halfway between the other two candidates. So it’s 
undecided whether s/he should be top or bottom-rated. Sure, then a middle 
rating would be appropriate in RV. In Approval you could flip a coin. Of 
course, the net result of lots of voters flipping a coin for B is as if 
they’d all given B a middle rating.

So that’s one instance where a middle rating has value: It saves you the 
trouble of flipping a coin in that one particular undecided situation. So 
CR3 (CR with 3 rating levels) has a kind of justification not possessed by 
the CR versions with more rating levels. I’d almost like to define RV as CR 
with more than 3 rating levels, but I hesitate to ask people to accept new 
definitions of existing terms.

Lomax continues:

So the kind of voting that is optimal depends on the relative
probabilities of election, as estimated by the voter.

I reply:

All we needed was a newcomer to point out that amazing discovery to us. :^)

Yes, probability estimates influence Approval strategy, and, consequently, 
RV strategy.

Lomax continues:

Sometimes it is
what we might call "sincere," but it is *never* insincere. It is
merely, in some circumstances "magnified," or "truncated."

I replyZ:

If, as he admits, it’s only sometimes sincere, then it must sometimes be not 
sincere. That’s insincere, by most people’s definition of “insincere”. Again 
we have Lomax’s new and unrecognizable definitions.

But must we quibble about whether a not sincere RV vote should be called 
“insincere”?

Lomax quotes me:


>  Even then, even in principle, RV advocacy is really only based on a 
>subjective personal opinion.

Lomax replies:

That's a subjective personal opinion, and not only about election
methods, but about people, and Ossipoff is a notoriously bad judge of 
people.

I reply now:

I was referring to your opinion that it’s more important to maximize the sum 
of everyone’s happiness than minimize the number of people who call the 
outcome undeserving of approval, unacceptable in a meaningful sense.


Lomax quotes me:

>  The opinion that it's more important to maximize the sum of everyone's 
>happiness than it is to minimize the number of people to whom the outcome 
>is unacceptable.

Lomax replies:

It's true that it is an opinion; however, it is an opinion that is
almost the definition of sanity

I reply:

Notice that one of Lomax’s arrogant habits is to state his own idiosyncratic 
and unrecognizable definitions as if they were standard.

No, the opinion that I referred to is not anyone’s (but Lomax’s) definition 
of sanity. It’s merely the Rangers’ definition of how election-result 
satisfaction should be distributed.

Lomax continues:

not caring about the satisfaction of
others is sociopathic.

I reply:

Lomax is inclined toward substituting namecalling for argument. Neither I or 
any other non-Ranger has said that we didn’t care about the satisfaction of 
others. However, I’ve questioned the Rangers’ dogmatic belief about how that 
satisfaction should be distributed. Maximizing the number of people who 
consider the winner acceptable (worthy of acceptance in the form of an 
approval), minimizing the number who do not, is what I consider a better 
goal than trying to maximize the sum of everyone’s happiness with the 
outcome. Fairer, I claim. And much more feasible, when you consider 
strategic voting in RV.

Lomax says:

Ossipoff is here slipping in "the number of people" argument, which
is based on the old assumption that preference strength doesn't
Matter

I reply:

Wrong. “Unacceptable, in the sense of being unqualified for my approval” is 
a statement about preference level--a low preference level. If one is a 
Ranger, then one wants to express intermediate preference levels too. No one 
claims that Approval is Range. Approvalists consider it ok that Approval is 
not Range.

Lomax says that I don’t understand people. Well, if he votes for the 
usual-quality Democrat nominee in presidential ‘08, that tells us something 
about his judgment of character.

Lomax says:

"Unacceptable" is an expression of strong preference.

I reply:

Thank you. That’s what I said above.

Lomax continues:


Range, dealing
with strong preference, is Condorcet compliant. So what in the world
is Ossipoff talking about?

I reply:

What in the world does that pair of sentences mean? Range does not comply 
with the Condorcet Criterion, if that’s what he means.

Lomax quotes me:

>  There's a good case for saying that opinion is wrong. Do we really want 
>to make the outcome unacceptable to more people, as long as, by so doing, 
>we increase the benefit for someone already well-benefited more than we 
>reduce it for those to whom we make it unacceptable?

Lomax replies:

Range maximizes, as well as we can tell, "the number of people who
find the outcome acceptable."

I reply:

That ridiculous statement again. If you ask people where they draw the 
“acceptable” line, then there’s no reason to expect the most accepted 
candidate to be the RV winner.

Lomax continues:

Ossipoff is slipping in his argument by
avoiding defining what "acceptable" means.

I reply:

As I said, I’m not interested in your philosophical definition of 
“acceptable”. I use a simple operational definition: Someone indicates that 
something is acceptable to them if they accept it. It’s reasonable to say 
that a voter accepts a candidate if s/he votes Yes on that candidate’s offer 
to govern in hir behalf.


Lomax continues:

And voters in Range are totally free to vote Approval style; if they
do not, they are clearly granting permission to elect someone whom
they rate at more than minimum.

I reply:

Fine. And they’re sacrificing their own expectation maximization for the 
greater good. But doe we really need to legislate that into our voting 
statutes? Shall we recommend that people do that? Or shall we just not tell 
them that they’re suckers if they do? Are you honest when offering RV to 
people?

Lomax continues:

However, we do know that if voters vote sincerely, the *overall*
outcome is improved.

I reply:

No, you believe that to be so. In your arrogance, you believe that what you 
believe is something that we all agree with you on. When everyone votes RV 
sincerely, some are sacrificing their expectation to increase the summed 
satisfaction of the electorate. Compared to Approval, a greater number of 
those are thereby getting an outcome that they’d vote “No” on, if asked to 
vote up/down on the candidates. You could say “Of course--RV isn’t 
Approval“. Sure, but more people are getting a result that they consider to 
deserve a “No”. I claim that that is worse. RV’s result is worse.


Lomax says:

Not always the individual outcome

I reply:

Correct. The voter lowers hir expectation by sincere RV voting.

Lomax continues:

; however, this
is the point that Ossipoff will not mention:

When the individual outcome declines by voting sincerely, it always
does so by a small amount, not a large amount, and that decrease is
generally more than matched by an increase with other voters.

I reply:

I “will not mention” that? I dramatized it with my financial proposal. Those 
“declined outcomes” will result in the outcome being unacceptable to more 
people, as I’ve operationally defined that term.

Lomax asks:

Now, if it cost you $1 to create a $1000 benefit for your friends,
what would you choose?

I reply:

It depends on how much money I have, and how badly I need it. Likewise about 
the friends.

Lomax continues:

If voters vote as Ossipoff would have them vote, we have the tragedy
of the commons. In each individual election, it seems that I'm
maximizing my outcome, but if everyone acts that way, we all are losing.

Lomax is living in LaLa Land. A Utopian land where everyone wants only to 
maximize the summed happiness of the population.

What happens if some, but not all, rate sincerely in RV? They’re had. 
They’re suckers.

But I emphasize that Lomax’s Utopian SU maximization isn’t, I claim, really 
maximizing fairness even when everyone rates sincerely. I claim that it 
loses fairness because the outcome is unacceptable to more people.

Want a voting system for Utopia? Use Approval, and ask people to honestly 
indicate, by approval or non-approval, which alternatives are acceptable to 
them in some important sense. The voter would decide what is bad enough to 
draw the unacceptable line, and would do so honestly, because we’re talking 
about Utopia.

Lomax continues:

I'd recommend googling Traveler's Dilemma for a very good explanation
of this, and some real studies have been done on how people behave in
such circumstances, where individual game theory predicts one kind of
behavior, and real people behave quite differently, the result being
that, usually, everyone benefits.

I reply:

I read the Sci. Am. Article on that. It won’t apply in general RV voting, 
where the population is large, and people suspect each other’s motives and 
oppose each other to the most radical degree. But I believe that it’s 
relevant and helpful to Approval’s (and RV’s) co-operation/defection 
dilemma, when two closely-allied factions are in the dilemma. By the way, 
Approval’s co-operation/defection dilemma isn’t as bad as the prisoner’s 
dilemma, and maybe not as bad as the traveler’s dilemma.

Lomax says:

Just like Range
ratings, the acceptability of a candidate depends on the universe of
choices possible.

I reply:

Of course. Some voters will accept and reject candidates in Approval based 
on situational acceptability.

Lomax quotes me:


>  But the voter hirself can answer that for you, when s/he accepts or 
>rejects a candidate's offer to govern in hir behalf, on hir ballot.

However, if the election rules are going to produce a winner, the
voter, by rejecting the candidate, may simply be making his or her vote 
moot.

I don’t know what that means. The voter might not vote between the 
candidates who are in a pair-wise tie or near-tie? That’s ok. The voter 
maximizes hir expectation by only voting top and bottom ratings in RV.

Lomax contnues:

And, yes, the voter can answer. In Range just as well as in Approval.
If a candidate is not acceptable, period, the voter should vote
minimum rating, period. That's what the voter will do in Approval,
and that is what the voter will do in Range.

I reply:

So far so good. We’d all bottom-rate completely unacceptable candidates, 
even the most sincere RV voter will.

But, in RV, a voter would be better advised to completely reject, 
bottom-rate, candidates who aren’t quite that bad, because they don’t 
qualify for acceptance according to that voter’s maximization strategy. They 
rate a “No” according to that strategy. That voter, who wants the best for 
hirself, won’t miss the intermediate ratings if we change from RV to 
Approval.

Lomax continues:

Same system, really.

I reply:

Yes, RV is Approval with the sucker option.

Lomax continues:

Only difference: the voter is forced to *only* vote the extremes.
Forced. Coerced. Required.

I reply:

While we’re at it, maybe we shouldn’t force, coerce and require the voter to 
not doodle little drawings on his/her ballot.

If you insist on giving voters the freedom to be a sucker, are you going to 
be honest enough to tell them that sincere RV voting is sub optimal and will 
cause them to be had by other voters, and will lower their expectation?

Are people going to want the added expense and trouble of RV ballots in 
order to be a sucker?

I don’t object to some of the 2-balloting proposals. Tideman and Brams (or 
Fishburn) used a hypothetical 2-balloting Approval election to judge who 
would have won if a certain election had been by Approval. They used ratings 
from voters, maybe in an exit poll, to determine how they’d vote in 
Approval, based on Above-Mean in the first balloting, and BF-Uncertain in 
the second balloting.

I don’t object to two balloting Approval, in which voters could use the vote 
totals from the first balloting to inform their (BF, for instance)  strategy 
in the second balloting.


I go further than Ossipoff: I claim that no candidate should be
elected without majority approval. Just as he says we should do, if
approval is not clear from the original ballots, *ask the voters*!
But ask them explicitly, not under circumstances where their vote may
be strategically forced.

>  As for why the voter does that material act of accepting or 
>not-accepting, that's none of our business.

Hogwash. If the voter did it because there was a gun at their head,
we care. It wasn't approval. You want approval of a candidate, ask
the voter in a context where approval is the only possible
interpretation of the vote.

I reply:

Don’t be ridiculous. In a democracy, it’s none of your business why the 
voter chooses to vote as s/he does. If you can show that someone is 
threatening or paying hir, then the law is justifiably interested, because 
someone is controlling more than one vote. But, other than that, when s/he 
is voting only as s/he wants to, it’s none of your business. S/he says that 
s/he accepts (or rejects) candidate Jones. That’s all you need to know.

Lomax says:

Approval as a method adds nothing to the power of the voter, the
voter has exactly the same power in Range. That is what is so bizarre
about Ossipoff's claims

I reply:

And which claims would those be? I’ve never claimed that a voter has less 
power in RV. On the contrary, s/he has the added power to be an RV sucker.

Lomax continues:

, which he has been making over and over on
the Approval Voting list. He apparently doesn't dare to do it on the
Range list

I reply:

Warren, Clay, and, yes, Lomax too, don’t draw me to the Range list. What 
these most talkative Rangers have in common is arrogance, though it’s 
expressed differently by Lomax, as compared to the identical twins Warren 
and Clay. Lomax doesn’t have their shrillness. For me, and maybe for some 
others, those three representatives make it difficult to take the Range list 
or the Range organization seriously. That’s why I don’t participate in the 
Range list.

Why would I want to go to the Range list to argue about Range with the 
Rangers? We find Rangers promoting Range on the Approval list. Are any 
Approvalists promoting Approval on the Range list? Not this Approvalist.


Lomax continues:

, where he knows he will face real consideration and real
arguments, including some from experts.

I reply:

I’m content to maybe sometimes discuss Range where the Rangers promote it 
off their list. I haven’t intended to dodge their “experts”. Are you 
referring to Warren? Also, for one thing, the Range list isn’t a public 
forum, and there would just be less point debating the subject there. EM is 
a general voting system forum. I participate in the Approval list because 
I’m an Approvalist. Not being a Ranger, should I be posting to the Range 
list?

Lomax quotes me:

>I propose that you give me all your savings. What? You say you'd have to 
>move into the slums? Yes, but my investment broker could double your money 
>for me, and it would allow me to trade up to a better Mercedes. Don't be so 
>selfish. The sum of our combined money would increase when my broker 
>doubles your money for me. I only want the greatest overall summed good for 
>us! Maybe I'd let you ride in my new Mercedes sometimes, to show you how 
>much we've gained.

Lomax replies:

What an idiotic argument!

I reply now:

That’s some rebuttal! As I said, Lomax, typical of arrogant Rangers, hopes 
that namecalling will pass for argument.

Lomax says:

No, Range is not suggesting we give all our money to some investment
broker. Rather, it *allows* voters to express weak preference. It is
never in their interest to do so if their preference is strong, but
they are not required to express weak preference, they are the ones
who decide what preferences are weak -- don't really care -- and strong.

There is no claim, at least not by us, that voters are being selfish
if they vote "approval style." It's a red herring.

I reply:

None of that addresses the point of my financial proposition. The point is a 
simple one: Maximizing total benefit isn’t the same as maximum fairness. I 
suggest that Approval is fairer, when it minimizes the number of people to 
whom the outcome is unacceptable, by my operational definition of 
“acceptable”.

Lomax quotes me:

>Some Rangers have claimed that they found out from (inadequately-described) 
>simulations that, if the percentage of strategizers is below some 
>particular number, then even RV's sincere suckers will be better off than 
>they would have been with Approval. Nonsense.

Lomax replies:

Because Ossipoff says so

I reply:

No, not because I say so. Because of the reason that I stated immediately 
after the passage that Lomax quoted above.

Lomax continues:

, not because he has actually investigated
how the simulations are done.

I reply:

Correct: My argument had nothing to do with simulations. So what? I told you 
why RV’s suckers, overall, can only be worse off than they’d be in Approval, 
voting the Above-Mean strategy. It is not my responsibility to play 
detective, and find more un-posted information about your simulations, and 
tell you what’s wrong with them. This is like a perpetual-motion inventor 
saying that his machine would work, because no one has gone over his long, 
long, description of it and his acres of blueprints, to show him where his 
error is.

Lomax continues:

I'll acknowledge, Warren's information
about the simulations is spread out, I haven't found it easy to find
it all in one place. But there *is* a paper on it, which is pretty
thorough, and, besides, the source code is available and Warren is
known to answer questions. Why doesn't Ossipoff ask, if he doesn't
understand how the simulations are done?

I reply:

I’ve asked. I’ve posted, on the Approval list, some suggested requirements 
for proving something with a simulation. Those requirements weren’t met by 
the Rangers.

Lomax continues:

Instead, he just, without
knowledge and making a host of assumptions, simply calls them nonsense.

I reply:

No, I don’t call the simulations nonsense. I call your statement nonsense. 
And if your simulations seem to support your statement, then I call your 
simulations “in error”. No, I don’t know where your error is. That’s partly 
because the simulations and their assumptions and premises haven’t been 
sufficiently described. Not even close.

Anyway, having told you why your statement can’t be true, there’s no need to 
go over your simulation program to find the error.

Mike Ossipoff