[EM] a response to Kristofer Munsterhjelm re: Fuzzy Options.

[David L Wetzell]

On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 9:14 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km_elmet at lavabit.com
> wrote:

> David L Wetzell wrote:
>
>  And I don't think the Condorcet criterion is /that important/, as I think
>> in political elections, our options are inherently fuzzy options and so all
>> of our rankings are prone to be ad hoc.
>>
>
> If opinions are fuzzy, that means that the voters' true distribution
> within political space would differ somewhat from the distribution you
> would infer by looking at the votes alone.
>

it could also mean that political spaces are at best somewhat useful
constructs and that the "true" distribution is something that's constantly
being manipulated, not taken as given.   This understanding makes me tend
to be more middle-brow than most people on this list.

>
> KM:In terms of the 2D Yee diagrams, this means that if the voters are
> centered on a certain pixel, their votes might behave as if it was centered
> on one of the neighboring pixels (since each pixel in a 2D Yee diagram
> gives who would win if the population were normally distributed around that
> point in political space and preferred candidates closer to them). So in a
> Condorcet method, this might sometimes lead to the wrong candidate being
> elected. It would do so in the case where the true distribution is on one
> side of the divider between two Voronoi cells, and the distribution
> inferred from the votes alone is at the other side.
>
dlw:Yup, getting the condorcet winner all of the time isn't the slam-dunk
it's purported to be.

>
> KM:However, fuzzy opinions can cause greater problems with IRV. Because
> IRV is sensitive to the order of eliminations, it doesn't just have the
> clean cell transitions of Condorcet; it can also have disconnected regions
> near the edges or in the middle of one of the regions. In essence, these
> are the same as the "island of other candidates" artifacts, but in two
> dimensions rather than one.
>

dlw: I'm afraid you lost me there.

>
> KM:It may be the case that voters are not centrally distributed in
> political opinion-space, but I think the observation can be generalized. If
> I'm right, why put up with a method that, by sensitivity to the elimination
> order, amplifies the fuzziness of the votes?
>

dlw: Well, 1. IRV3 doesn't let folks rank all of the options and so it
hopefully has more quality control on which options are ranked.
2. by not always giving us the "center", it does permit learning about the
different viewpoints.  Remember, since I'm middle-brow, I don't put as much
significance on optimizing within the distribution of political opinion
space.
3. It introduces some uncertainty in the circulation of the elites, which
can give alternative viewpoints a chance to get a better hearing.  When a
new third party gains ground, it'll get a serious hearing and hopefully the
de facto center will be moved.

dlw
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