[EM] Score DSV

[Jameson Quinn]

2009/8/30 Terry Bouricius <terryb at burlingtontelecom.net>

>  Jameson,
>
> You asked: "The part about other partisans not caring about utility seems
> strange to me. Why not?"
> ...
>
Because the principle of Bayesian regret is in direct conflict with the
> principle of majority rule, many people reject it. Individuals can differ on
> the value of majority rule vs. utility, but it is a reason often cited.
>

I understand a little better, but still find this odd. Aren't voting
theorists used to trying to maximize on contradictory goals already? And, if
you're looking for a single overarching principle, "best utility in spite of
strategy" is much clearer than piling up some set of other criteria which
only talk about specific situations.

Clearly, any system which allows minority rule in the name of utility is
inevitably badly manipulable, and thus will end up with worse overall
utility in the long run. But that's no more reason to reject utility as a
valid comparison, than Arrow's theorem is a reason to reject
non-dictatorship.


>
> There are of course many other considerations that cause many scientists to
> reject utility as a meaningful measuring system, such as the proven natural
> non-linear logarithmic scoring tendency of the human brain, the
> unreliability of scoring compared to ranking and either or comparisons
> (which is why eye doctors use Condorcet logic and ask whether lens 1 or 2 is
> better repeatedly, rather than asking you to score all the lens options),
> etc.
>

Again, valid points. Still, they arguably don't apply to a computer model
based on utility. It does seem clear that, whatever preference system is
inside voters, it something that does not fit into a simple rank-order
model, so a more-general utility model is likely to capture it better (if
not perfectly). And it would be surprising to find some other quality metric
that got worse as the model improved.

Jameson
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