[EM] Eric Maskin promotes the Black method (fsimmons at pcc.edu)

[Warren Smith]

I already emitted various criticisms of Eric Maskin...
   http://www.rangevoting.org/MaskinArrow.html
   http://www.rangevoting.org/Maskin.html
   http://www.rangevoting.org/NewSciMcKenna.html
Maskin sometimes has favored Black's method (e.g. in a Scientific
American piece he wrote which actually refused to specify the voting
method he was "advocating" but by reading between the lines I think he
meant Black, see middle URL above); but he also has been quoted as
instead advocating Copeland's method, e.g. see the last URL above.

As far as I can tell, Maskin thinks (and/or others think) he is
incredibly wise in the ways of voting, since he got a Nobel Prize in
Economics and was a student of Arrow's.  But actually, he knows very
little about voting and the few things he has written on the topic are
(a) unimportant and (b) rife with errors and massive omissions.
Furthermore, whenever somebody actually expert on the topic tries to
correspond with him, i.e. me, he never replies.  Your mileage may
vary, but I've been highly disappointed in Maskin so far.

Range voting produces more Condorcet winners than Condorcet methods
produce (in simulations involving strategic voters).  This is a
refutation of Maskin's argument, or at least highly impactful on it
(anyhow at the very least, it needs to be discussed).  Maskin, of
course, ignores it, as he has ignored essentially every communication
from me.   I just have a hard time taking him seriously as a voting
scientist when he behaves in that fashion.

The "Nobel Prize" in Economics has caused a lot of damage (certainly
amounting to the
equivalent of killing thousands of people).

[And it actually is not a Nobel prize, although it commonly is claimed
to be.  I have a sneaking suspicion if Nobel could be reincarnated
he'd be furious they created a "Nobel Prize in Economics."]


-- 
Warren D. Smith
http://RangeVoting.org  <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)
and
math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html