[EM] a response to Andy J.

[Jameson Quinn]

>
>
>> I would elaborate on Jameson's sentiment here.  I think this e-m list
>> will be very willing to discuss your method, but most of us will probably
>> end up not supporting it in the end.  That's just the law of averages,
>> since the vast majority of methods ever designed have serious problems and
>> we're pretty good at picking holes in methods here.  We're also biased
>> toward simplicity.  And we know that hybrid methods have a particularly bad
>> track record.  If you did get some of us to support it, it would probably
>> take months of light discussion and constant revisitation to do so.
>>
>
> I'm a bayesian, not a frequentist.
>

...Then you should be used to having to translate from frequentist to
bayesian terms. When Andy said "the law of averages", he meant that our
prior distribution for your intelligence is the intelligence distribution
of people who propose a new method in their first post here. We have seen
many smart people fail to make a good method on their first public try.
Perhaps you have good reasons to believe you're smarter than those people,
but we don't.

In a less-snarky tone: your method is indeed better than IRV in some ways,
including honest BR and summability. But it is worse in others, including
simplicity of description, strategic incentives, and LNH. If your goal is
to come up with an IRV-like system which is acceptable to IRV activists yet
improves on IRV's flaws, I encourage you to try again; though I've found
this goal too hard for me, you may find differently.


> My rule is simple.  2 stages: a limited form of AV to determine three
> finalists then IRV with only three candidates, which is the case when it
> typically works best.
>

This is more complicated than either IRV or approval, since it essentially
includes both of them.


> On the other hand, I think you would have a very hard time getting IRV
>> supporters to even consider this method.  They don't seem very open to ANY
>> changes to IRV at all.
>>
>
> I'm on pretty good terms with Rob Richie of FairVote.  I respect his
> organizational leadership and their skill at marketing electoral reforms.
>

So do I.


>  He has indicated an openness to my idea.
>

I am sure he would change his opinion if he realized your method violates
LNH.


>  It's not totally new.  If he were to adopt it, for the practical reason
> mentioned above, then it'd be easy to get others in line.
>
>
>> Someone once proposed a small change to IRV called IRV-BTR where the step
>> of eliminating the one candidate with the fewest first place votes was
>> replaced with taking the two candidates with the fewest first place votes
>> and eliminating the one that would lose in a one-on-one race between those
>> two.  It stands for IRV-Bottom Two Runoff and it actually meets the
>> Condorcet criterion.  It would probably be an acceptable compromise for
>> many of the Condorcet supporters here.  But it has gotten no traction among
>> IRV supporters.
>>
>
> Maybe they too are biased in favor of simplicity??
> 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.
>

Criterion-based arguments might be brittle in the face of noisy input data.
BR-based arguments, including those which attempt to account for strategic
incentives, are not. In other words: arguing that options are fuzzy does
not give a license to ignore the flaws in your proposal.

Jameson

ps. While I spend a lot more words on where I disagree with you, you seem
like a smart person and I bet I agree with you >> 80%.
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