[EM] C//A (was: Remember Toby)

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi Juho,

--- En date de : Mar 14.6.11, Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk> a écrit :
> >>> The explanation may not be not much more
> complex. It
> >> is the strategy where
> >>> I say MinMax is more complicated and, more
> >> importantly, hard to grasp.
> >> 
> >> I recommend sincere voting. Teaching multiple
> strategies to
> >> regular voters is far too difficult.
> > 
> > I'm not sure this is the same question. You can
> recommend whatever you
> > want, but this is not what I think is sought at the
> stage where you are
> > trying to propose something.
> 
> Do you mean that MinMax without strategic guidance would be
> a strategic mess, or what?

No, I'm saying advice from some advocate of the method probably won't be
(and I doubt should be) sufficient for the person trying to come to an
understanding of the proposal. It's better if explaining the method's
rules is enough (or close) to understand the strategy.

> > With both methods we have to explain the same concept
> to start with. I
> > think the difficulty of explanation is about the same.
> The difference is
> > that the strategy implications of Minmax's "part two"
> are much more
> > opaque.
> 
> Ok, you seem to refer also to strategic implications that
> maybe (?) should be explained and included as part of the
> general definition of the method. Or maybe the idea is that
> otherwise strategies will confuse the voters after they
> start wondering about them (?).

No, I am (almost) saying that if you have to explain the strategy
separately then that's bad. I think people will want to understand the
strategy in the sense that they can understand *how* they come to that
conclusion.

I guess even a child could point out gross errors of Approval strategy
(if the method were used in an understandable context).

> > The theory that this opacity makes it harder to
> strategize under
> > Minmax is not obvious to your audience either. All
> that's obvious is
> > "I'm not sure I get it." That is what I see as a
> liability.

> > I'm just saying, if people could use equal ranking, I
> don't believe they
> > normally would, if they are being *totally* sincere.
> Therefore I don't
> > need to consider the possibility that there is going
> to be equal ranking
> > on these ballots.
> 
> Yes, sincere voters could be expected to be able generate a
> preference between any two candidates, and not many have a
> need to explicitly indicate their exactly equal preference
> between some candidates. Truncation (to equal last position)
> of unknown and irrelevant candidates could be a natural
> thing to do to most sincere voters if the number of
> candidates is high.

If you're going to say that last sentence then your idea that truncation
shouldn't mean more than a split vote makes no sense to me. If voters
that you consider *sincere* may use truncation for a special reason,
why can't that phenomenon be reflected in the method? Just due to the
simplicity of the explanation when it isn't reflected?

> >>> Well, I see what you are saying, that Smith
> tends to
> >> be justified using
> >>> clone independence. And clone independence is
> normally
> >> justified due to
> >>> problems with candidate nominations. But I
> wonder
> >> whether there is any
> >>> room to use the clone concept to argue that
> clones are
> >> comparably "good"
> >>> to elect
> >> 
> >> I don't know why clones would be better than
> others, 
> > 
> > No no. I'm saying, can we propose that if candidate A
> is 86% "good" to
> > elect, then his clones are also about 86% good, and
> when Smith allows
> > us to satisfy clone independence, we are getting
> something good more 
> > often than we are losing something?
> 
> I think clones are about as good and therefore should
> typically be about as far from being elected.
> 
> There are however different kind of clones. If all clones
> are ranked equal with each others then they are very much
> like "one candidate", and their "distance from being
> elected" should be the same. But if those clones form a
> strong cycle, then we could assume that opinions within that
> clone cycle must be weak (since the clones are anyway close
> to equal), or we could assume that those clones are no good
> because there is so much controversy among them. If one of
> them would be elected, voters would be unhappy. They would
> strongly feel that another one of the clones should have
> been elected. From this latter point of view independence of
> clones is not a positive feature. Of course in a ranked
> ballot based method it is difficult to tell which indicated
> preferences between the clones were strong and which ones
> just "flips of a coin". MinMax can be said to follow the
> latter philosophy, and therefore it does not protect clones
> that are badly cyclic (being so cyclic that someone outside
> of the clone set will be elected is a very rare situation,
> but possible, and in some sense indicates what the
> philosophy of the methods is).

I'm thinking this is something you might be able to argue either way.
If they are clones, we guess they are comparably good. If decloning the
election means you would elect one of the clones, because he's good,
then in the original election you should elect a clone.

Your argument assumes inherent unhappiness when voters are overruled,
and measures this as the quantity of voters. But I am tempted to see
my argument above as more concrete... We already know something about
the candidates' comparability and might want to assume that the clone
supporters don't have a strong preference.

> I also note (second time) that methods that use the
> pairwise matrix to count the results may give clone
> protection also to non-clones. And of course (this is also
> just a reminder) members of the Smith set need not be
> clones.

Yes. And my response again is that that doesn't tell us whether we
still gain more than lose by having this protection. You can argue it
case by case if you want, but I don't think that will give you a method
definition.

> > The question is does clone independence give us
> *anything* other than
> > reduced nomination problems, and could this be enough
> to justify Smith.
> 
> If one wants the method to be 100% clone proof, and the
> method uses the pairwise matrix for making the decisions,
> then one should elect from the Smith set since Smith set may
> sometimes consist of clones. But despite of not necessarily
> electing from the Smith set methods like MinMax may not have
> any major nomination problems. One must thus balance between
> different criteria and how well to meet each one of them.

I was sort of expecting you to argue "no, clone independence gives
you *nothing* other than the freedom from nomination problems."

> >> except
> >> that since politicians try to become centrists
> there might
> >> be lots of clone like candidates around the centre
> point.
> >> Immunity of clones is a good think from nomination
> point of
> >> view. I guess real nominated clones are however
> rare. It is
> >> more typical that each party nominates just one
> candidate.
> >> or if two, then maybe two different kind of
> candidates.
> > 
> > I am a little unsure whether it matters whether there
> technically are
> > ever any clones. It might though.
> 
> The definition of the independence of clone criterion is
> very strict. Maybe no large real life election will ever
> have any clones according to that definition. But of course
> meeting that criterion quite typically (but not necessarily)
> means that the method treats also near clones nearly the
> same way.

Yes.

Kevin Venzke