[EM] language/framing quibble

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Fred Gohlke wrote:
> Good Morning, Kristofer
> 
> Thanks for the link.  I'll check it as soon as I can.
> 
> re: "If the council is of size 7, no opinion that holds less than
>      1/7 of the voters can be represented, so if the opinion is
>      spread too thin, it'll be removed from the system; but if
>      you have an extreme of a single layer with PR, elected
>      nationally, then the number is much lower."
> 
> If an opinion is not held by the majority of the electorate, what is the 
> rationale (from the point of view of a democratic society) for not 
> removing it from the system?

The rationale is that it enables compromise. The compromise on a 
national level might be different from the compromise on a local level, 
meaning that the entire spectrum should be preserved to the extent that 
it is possible. Otherwise, you can get effects similar to primaries 
where the primary electors elect those that are a compromise within 
their own ranks, and then the general election turns out to have 
candidates that are more extremely placed than the voters.

> Holders of minority views who wish their view to gain ascendancy have an 
> obligation to persuade the majority of their compatriots that their 
> (currently minority) view is advantageous for all the people.  If they 
> can not do so, they have no 'inherent right' to representation in a 
> democratic government.
> 
> The problem of democracy is not to provide representation for minority 
> views, it is to select representatives with the judgment and intellect 
> to contemplate minority views in a rational fashion.  The only reason 
> this seems improper is that we have been subject to partisan rule for so 
> long it's difficult to see beyond partisanship and the contentious 
> society it produces.  A wise electorate will realize their best 
> interests are served by electing people with the wit and wisdom to 
> listen to, consider, and, when appropriate, accept fresh points of view.

Yes, but to do so, they need the big picture.

> re: "... each reduction of many triads to one triad has to, by some
>      measure, aggregate minority opinion."
> 
> I'm not sure the word 'minority' is proper.  I think it would be better 
> to say 'aggregate public opinion'.

That's right. What I meant is that even if you could magic up an 
election method, there will be som reduction of minority opinion. There 
simply isn't enough room in a 200-seat legislature (to use example 
numbers) to perfectly represent opinions that are held by less than a 
200th of the people; if the method tries, then some opinion held by a 
greater share will suffer. On this I think we agree, whether we look at 
things from a PR or majoritarian point of view (with exceptions 
regarding people who can have multiple opinions, or find the best way of 
combining and compromising).


> re: "In the worst case, only the majority counts ... and the minority
>      preference ... gets shaved off."
> 
> Why is that the 'worst' case?  This seems to lead back to my original 
> comment on this thread to the effect that there is less interest in 
> democracy than in schemes to empower minorities.

The majority /of that council/. That need not be the majority of the 
people at large. If the real majority is thinly spread, it can get 
successively shaved off until nothing remains.

> re: "Since the reduction is exponential, even more gets shaved off at
>      each instance, and these slices may in the end constitute a
>      majority."
> 
> This assertion seems based on the assumption that because someone 
> inclines toward a given view they are incapable of responding to any 
> other view.  People are not like that.  Political views are a continuum. 
>  They range from one side to the other and from mild to extreme.  The 
> method we are discussing will reject extremes and advance people with a 
> broader perspective.  The attempt to preserve the 'slices' overlooks the 
> improvement in the quality of the people selected to advance and their 
> ability to grasp and be responsive to the advocates of those 'slices'.

That does weaken the argument, particularly because we can't model the 
aggregating behavior of the councilmembers in any simple way. As long as 
councilmembers in councils with a majority for X will tend towards X 
(and a compromise is going to contain more X than non-X), then the 
effect would persist, but weakened.

But let's say that the members of a council (or triad) can change their 
opinions. Let's also say that the initial triads are randomized in the 
manner you say. Then it seems you'll face a variant of the sortition 
problem mentioned earlier: if a candidate says "Okay, I'll try to 
compromise" and gets the votes of the rest of the triad, and then 
escalate, then what's keeping the candidate from turning on his promise? 
Presumably you'd expect most people to be honest, but there's still an 
uncertainty, and that uncertainty appears at every level.

> re: "There's a question that has a yes or no answer. The concils are set
>      up like this:
> 
>      L1  YYN YYN NNN
>           |   |   |
>           Y   Y   N
>           |   |   |
>           +---+---+
>      L2      YYN
> 
>      Here there are four ayes that overrule the five nays, simply
>      because they're better positioned. If you look at the second level,
>      it even seems like the ayes have 2/3 of the public support, when
>      that is clearly not the case."
> 
> One can construct a scenario to support virtually any thesis, but 
> there's no reason to imagine such a result would occur throughout an 
> entire electorate.  Using the Church Ward in Sefton (from the Practical 
> Democracy description) as an example, there are 9,000 people in the 
> ward.  At level 1, they constitute 3,000 triads.  If the N's have the 5 
> to 4 advantage shown in your example, there are 5,000 N's and 4,000 Y's 
> in the ward.  It is difficult to describe a circumstance that would 
> produce a result with a preponderance of Y's.

Alright, so your objection is essentially that the scenario I have shown 
is too unlikely to ever happen to be of any concern. Worst-case analysis 
may not show the real picture, so let's see what happens with average 
case simulation.

The simulation seems to show what you're saying, at least in the binary 
issue situation. An excerpt, for triads:

(all below have majority flip frac < 10^-5)
p = 0.425: pp: 0.424935  cp avg: 0.000663  majority flip frac: 0
p = 0.45 : pp: 0.449931  cp avg: 0.01373   majority flip frac: 0.00029
p = 0.475: pp: 0.474928  cp avg: 0.13378   majority flip frac: 0.0409
p = 0.5  : pp: 0.500076  cp avg: 0.501023  majority flip frac: 0.49855
p = 0.525: pp: 0.525072  cp avg: 0.866927  majority flip frac: 0.04144
p = 0.55 : pp: 0.550069  cp avg: 0.985987  majority flip frac: 0.00036
p = 0.575: pp: 0.575065  cp avg: 0.999357  majority flip frac: 0
p = 0.6  : pp: 0.600061  cp avg: 0.999983  majority flip frac: 0
(all above have majority flip frac < 10^-5)

where pp is the Y-fraction of the people, and cp is the Y-fraction of 
the last triad (all averages over 100 000 trials). Majority flip frac is 
the fraction of the times that the last triad had a majority for one 
position where that position was in a minority among the people.

The population size (number of voters per try) was 6561, or 3^8, so that 
the randomization didn't come into play.

So I'll grant that; at least for the binary issue case with a randomized 
  bottom level (people are randomly assigned to the initial councils).

> re: "... the least minority that can end up with a majority of the final
>      triad 'representatives' is one that holds an opinion shared by
>      13.4% of the people."
> 
> I do not believe that to be true.  Opinions, like ideologies, are only 
> "Y/N" at the extremes.  The vast majority of people are not at the 
> extremes.  Their views vary in intensity and change with circumstances.
> 
> Ideas and opinions are not static, lifeless things.  They are the 
> essence of humanity.  In terms of the Practical Democracy we're 
> discussing, the rawest, tiniest seed can be implanted in an individual 
> at a low level, germinate in succeeding levels, be tested in later 
> levels, and appear full-grown in the final phase.  Indeed, that very 
> development may be a prime factor in the individual's advancement.  To 
> imagine that, because humans have opinions, they must bear them like 
> crosses their whole lives (or throughout an election cycle) is a 
> grievous error.

Let's then hope that the members can combine the opinions better than 
the limitations of the system squeeze out minority opinions that may be 
influential. The councils that appear in the end have near consensus 
(averages > 90% for a position), so they really have to.

This is not something that I can test, though.