[EM] Kristofer: Addenda

[Michael Ossipoff]

Two things that I should add, partly in answer to possible objections:

1. I'd said that it's the Approval voter's own business how s/he uses here
approvals.S/he needn't justify it. Don't concern yourself
with hir motivation.

But then it occurred to me that you might say that the same could be said
about Pl/urality: "It's the voter's own business whom s/he designates
favorite. Don't worry about hir motivation. (such as the matter of whether
s/he is favorite-burying)"

The difference is that the Plurality voter doesn't have a choice. What you
call hir voting power isn't fully hirs. S/he doesn't have the power to
choose
how to rate each candidate. So a comparison to Plurality wouldn't have
validity.

2. When answering your comments about electing the candidate given
operational approvals by the most voters, I should have mentioned
Approval's other optimizations.

Even if people are voting strategically:

Of course, in a u/a election, Approval elects the candidate who is
acceptable to the most voters.

In a non-u/a 0-info election, Approval elects the candidate who is
above-mean for the most voters.

If it's neither of the above, Approval elects the candidate who is
better-than-expectation for the most voters.

Consider that last one: Approval's general better-than-expectation strategy
says to approve the candidates who
are better than what you expect from the election.

In other words, approve optimistically. If a candidate is exactly what you
expect, merit-wise, then it would be reasonable
to approve hir too. But, in general, you're approving
better-than-expectation candidates.

So Appreoval elects the candidate who is, to the most voters, better than
what they expected from the election.

...the candidate who whose win is an optimistic prospect to the most voters.

...the candidate whose win is good (even if at least a little unexpected)
news to the most voters.

...the candidate who was, to the most voters, at least a little too good to
be true.

I know I've discussed that before, but I wanted to go into a little more
detail, and it seems relevant, since
you're claiming that the "most opertional approvals" optimization says
nothing about whether one of the
strategies was used in choosing the approvals.

This optimization that I described above is based on strategic voting. All
of the Approval strategies are special
cases of better-than-expectation.

Mike Ossipoff
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