[Election-Methods] delegate cascade

[Juho]

On Jul 26, 2008, at 12:41 , Michael Allan wrote:

> OK. The dynamic is complex, and hard to predict.  I'm curious to see
> what happens in reality.  Marcus Pivato said there's no way to model
> this stuff in vitro (simulations), we have to run it in vivo.

I think it is possible to find and study many of the features of a  
method on paper. But only real life will show how people will  
actually behave. The psychological process is often too complex to  
address using few theoretical measures. Also different societies may  
be very different (e.g. strategic behaviour accepted vs. not).

> I've since split it into 2 parallel networks of positive
> (trust) and negative (doubt) signals, in order to prevent an unstable
> mixture - escalating signal warfare among voters.  I'll post it later,
> when the design is documented.  (It's already coded.)

Careful with the negative signals/votes. Well known figures might get  
more of them than what they "deserve".

>> Here's one more potential problem case. If some candidate receives  
>> votes
>> from too many directions then some of the voters should switch to not
>> voting this candidate directly (to make the tree structure less  
>> flat). If
>> many of them have about the same number of incoming votes they may be
>> reluctant to change their vote since they'd prefer other voters  
>> making the
>> move first and thereby letting them stay closer to the root of the  
>> tree
>> (instead of ending up close to the leaves).

>    (4)
>
>
>      \      \  |  /      /         \  |  /
>       \      \ | /      /           \ | /
>
>    ---  E -->  C  <-- D  ---     ---  X  ---
>
>       /      / |  \     \           / |  \
>      /      /  |   \     \         /  |   \

Your description was a good explanation on how things should work  
when they work well. Maybe here real life use will show us how much  
people will behave as expected and where they start first seeing  
problems.

In my "potential problem case" I was maybe most interested in a  
situation where we would have three different D clones, D, D2 and D3.  
Their opinions would be relatively similar and their agenda towards  
influencing C would be quite similar. Maybe the ambition of all of  
them is to one day become a central figure like "C" or "X". They need  
to reorganize to be able to influence C better (otherwise E is too  
strong with his opposing opinions). They could organize themselves  
either C<-D1<-D2&D3 or C<-D2<-D1&D3 or C<-D3<-D1&D2. They all wonder  
which one of them will get the best seat here. (My point was just  
that this kind of interests may keep the tree flatter than what would  
be optimal.)

Juho




	
	
		
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