[EM] MJ, Kristofer

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Kristofer:

MJ's defenders like to say that it takes a huge majority of strategizers to affect the election. Often repeated, never verified.

In my 1st posting about MJ, I showed how one strategizer could defeat one sincere voter.  ...Or a strategizing faction can defeat
an equal-size sincere faction.

And if the election is at all close, even fewer strategizers could defeat sincere voters.

You said or implied that you wouldn't like Approval because, with it, you'd have to use the "frontrunners plus" strategy.

No one has to say "Who are the frontrunners?"

Surely you've heard here that there are many Approval strategies. Which one you use depends on what your information is.

We discussed them perhaps a month or so ago, at EM.

If it's a u/a election, then just approve all the acceptables and none of the unacceptables.

We discussed many non-u/a Approval strategies, too many to describe again in this reply.

If it's non-u/a, and you have no information, then just vote for all of the above-mean candidates.

Tell me what kind of information you have, and I'll suggest an Approval strategy.

You seem to think that with MJ you have no need for information, for voting optimally. Sincere ratings isn't optimal, in MJ
or RV.

Yes you could get away with it.

People often think that their method is better than Approval, and that supposed improvement over Approval is illusory.

In Laraki's & Balinski's poll, what were people voting on? 

Maybe they didn't strategize because they were instructed to rate the candidates according to perceived merit. Having agreed
to do that, strategic voting would be dishonest, and would be perceived as violating the conditions of the experiment, spoiling the
experiment.

I make no promise to try to rate sincerely in an RV or MJ election.

Somewhere in your post you asked if the conditional methods were ranking methods rather than rating methods.

Yes, if you regard 3-slot methods as ranking methods too.

We speak of top, middle, and bottom ratings in 3-slot methods, but no one has to assign utility-numbers to candidates, and
so, for that reason, you might want to call the 3-slot methods ranking methods.

So yes, in that case, all of the conditional methods are ranking methods rather than rating methods, because no one
has to try to assign merit-proportional ratings to candidates.

But you know, the distinction between ratings and rankings blurs. With 3 rank positions, shall we call them 1st, 2nd and 3rd ranks, or shall we call
them A, B and C ratings?








 		 	   		  
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