[EM] Re : Toy election model: 2D IQ (ideology/quality) model

[Jameson Quinn]

2011/11/9 Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk>

> On 9.11.2011, at 10.06, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>
> 2011/11/8 Kevin Venzke <stepjak at yahoo.fr>
>
>
> All that said, I would be interested to hear if someone has made an
>> argument that majority rule, as a sensible principle, depends on some other
>> more fundamental principle.
>>
>
> OK, here goes: utility is happiness and is the true goal. Majority rule is
> just the most strategy-proof principle which tends to agree with maximum
> utility.
>
>
> Here's another approach to justifying majority rule. The target is to
> achieve a stable state in a society that respects the one-man-one-vote
> principle. If we elect the Condorcet winner, then the society will be happy
> with that choice in the sense that there will always be a majority
> supporting that candidate against changing him to someone else. In the old
> days one-man-one-vote could have meant also one-man-one-veapon, meaning
> that there would be no mutiny.
>

That's what I meant by "strategy-proof". You said it better.


> Today we may just think that even if some people do have stronger feelings
> than others, we should consider all of them to have equal strength.
>

I agree with that. I think that in this case "stronger feelings" is just a
special case of strategic exaggeration, where you've convinced yourself
that it isn't strategic.


>
> I think both approaches (majority, utility) have their problems and
> paradoxes. There are different needs in different situations, and we could
> use different criteria in different elections / decision making situations.
>
> Utility example:
> - There are two alternatives. A) One person will lose $10000, others will
> not lose anything. B) All will lose some equal small amount, so that the
> sum of losses will be $10001. The point is that if we use utilities, let's
> not use the sum of utilities as the criterion.
>

Money is not utility. Almost anyone will tell you that utility is not
linear in money; this simple fact will mean that a utility-based
calculation will always have more of an egalitarian tendency than a
money-based calculation. In fact, you can make it as egalitarian as you
could reasonably want by deciding how nonlinear your utility model is.


> - In the same way we might assume that in a situation where one person
> hates all the others, and all persons are candidates, we should not elect
> the person that hates all others although that might give us the highest
> sum of utilities.
>

Unlikely that the hater would not be at least disliked. Also, see above
about certain emotions themselves being exaggerations rather than honest
utility assessments. Obviously, a voting system can never specifically know
which emotions (as expressed on ballots) are exaggerated (either
consciously or unconsciously, it doesn't matter); but it can minimize the
incentives to exaggerate. I don't think that it's at all obvious that
Condorcet does a better job of minimizing those incentives than, say,
MJ<http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/MJ>
.


>
> These examples are just intended to demonstrate that there is no easy way
> out from the problems of both approaches.
>

I'm not claiming that the utility paradigm has no problems or
contradictions. But they're not quite so obvious as you suggest.


> Different situations may benefit of different criteria. There is no single
> ideal and best method that should be used in all elections.
>

Wait until you see my vaporware... It will basically implement a "what
system should I use" flowchart. So I certainly agree here.


> Overall utility can be measured in many different ways (including also
> some majority oriented approaches).
>
> Juho
>
>
>
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20111109/1e24b6be/attachment-0004.htm>