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

[Jameson Quinn]

2011/11/3 David L Wetzell <wetzelld at gmail.com>

>
> 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.
>

Balinski and Laraki studied a number of rules, and found that IRV and
Plurality elected an extremist almost 100% of the time; Condorcet and Range
elected a centrist almost 100%; and only Majority Judgment elected both
centrists and extremists with about equal balance. So "learning about the
different viewpoints does not favor IRV, but rather MJ.


> 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.
>

Again, this actually argues for MJ more than IRV.

JQ

>
> dlw
>
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