[EM] another reason to avoid strategic motivations

[Juho Laatu]

This is in a way a positive message. It says
also that people tend to make independent
decisions, and that many such strategic threats
that require coordinated and systematic
behaviour are not dangerous in this kind of
environments.

One reason behind the "non-mathematical" answers
is of course also that people want to give
meanings to different things, they want to play
with the idea, and they want to influence. They
were actually asked to "imagine that...". It is
maybe more fun to play with the theme. The
pessimism may be interpreted as modesty too (or
as a joke in the "everything will surely go
wrong" spirit).

I kind of like these "voters". In elections they
could maybe be a bit more optimistic, although
that is dangerous too (gives too much space to
politicians to sell rosy pictures to them).

Juho



--- On Tue, 2/12/08, Jonathan Lundell <jlundell at pobox.com> wrote:

> ...or at least to avoid methods that encourage strategic
> voting, is that voters are so bad at it.
> 
> I blogged a rather dismaying study the other day on the
> subject of people's tendency to irrationally misjudge
> probabilities when they have a stake in the outcome. I
> wouldn't want to draw too close a parallel between this
> and any particular election method. Rather, it's
> something to keep in mind when we talk about voters trying
> to make strategic calculations that they're not really
> competent, in general, to make.
> 
> Notice also that there's a systematic bias; it's
> not just that the subjects are wrong in a random way that
> might tend to cancel out.
> 
> 
> http://pragmatos.net/2008/11/29/pessimistic-voters/