[EM] Kristofer, April 3, '12, Approval vs Condorcet

[Michael Ossipoff]

Juho and Kristofer:

Just a few preliminary words before I continue my reply to Kristofer that I
interrupted a few hours ago:

We all agree that Approval would be much easier to propose and enact than
would Condorcet. Therefore, we must also agree that, given the same level of
effort, the expected time needed to enact Approval is quite a bit less than
the expected time needed to enact Condorcet.

Now, given that, there are two reasons why you could say that we should try
for Condorcet instead of Approval:

1. You don't believe that Approval would bring the benefits that I've spoken
of in my recent postings and in my article.
2. You don't think that those benefits would be significant (But, if not,
then maybe you should look at them again).

So which is it?

Exactly why is it that you think that we should pursue a course that will
require a much longer expected wait-time, with no improvements ?

On another subject:

You like Condorcet better? Fine. _You_ propose and try to enact Condorcet.
But if you want to suggest that others shouldn't propose Approval, then you
need to give a good reason.

Now, to resume my Kristofer reply:


-----Original Message-----
From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm [mailto:km_elmet at lavabit.com] 
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2012 6:06 PM

I'd said:'

> That's so, regardless of why voters gave their approval. That is 
> _their_ business, and their business only. Don't worry about why. Just 
> note that the winner is someone to whom the most voters have given an 
> approval, by marking hir "Approved". And recognize their right to do 
> so, without accounting or justifying it to anyone.

You reply:

As you said, yourself: the same argument can be applied to Plurality. 
You then went on saying that the difference is that in Plurality, the
voter's voting power isn't fully his.

Nobody is forcing the voter to vote a particular way in Plurality, so I
presume you mean that the voter feels constrained to pick within a
particular subset of the votes because otherwise, something bad will happen.
In Plurality, the constraints are usually "vote for one of the two, or the
other guy wins".

[endquote]

No, that wasn't what I meant. I shouldn't have to keep repeating this. If
you read my Approval article I wouldn't have to repeat it:

Plurality is a points assignment system. But it's a most peculiar points
assignment system--one in which the voter must give 0 points to all but one
of the candidates. S/he gives 1 point to one candidate, and Plurality's
special rule says that voter must give 0 points to all of the candidates but
one. That's a remarkable and bizarre rule. But what if you don't rate all of
the candidates but one at bottom together? Maybe you'd give the top rating
to some, and the bottom rating to others. That's for _you_ to decide, since
they're your points to assign, right? Wrong. In Plurality they aren't yours
to assign. Plurality decides for you that you will give 0 points to all but
one.

It is in that sense that your vote isn't fully yours in Pluralty.

In Approval, the situation is a little different. The voter has a subset of
votes among which it's only reasonable for him to vote (e.g. if he's
Democratic, he wouldn't pick the vote that Approves the Republican but not
the Democrat)

[endquote]

You're saying that certain aspects of someone's Approval ballot are
predictable. Maybe sometimes. In general, don't be too sure.

You continue:

, but it's not always very clear what he should pick. 

[endquote]

Excuse me, but why should it be clear to you what he should pick? You aren't
he.

As I've said many times, most voters won't need strategy. Vote for the
candidates that you like.  But almost certainly there will be unacceptable
candidates who could win, and so just vote for all of the acceptables and
for none of the unacceptables.

Condorcetists seem to think that they will have a terrible strategic dilemma
in Approval. No one else will. In fact, you don't know that _you_ will
either.

You see, that's because you haven't voted in political Approval elections.
You haven't a clue what it would be like to vote in a political Approval
election. We did a number of such mock elections on EM, before you were on
EM. Kindly don't tell me what it's like to vote in Approval.

And this is repetition, but your supposed strategy-free-ness of Condorcet is
a myth, illusory. I've told why.

Your counter-arguments amount to saying, "Yes, but Condordet wouldn't have a
strategy problem if everyone ranked sincerely." :-)


You continue:

For this, he can take a chance that his dithering

[endquote]

Speak for yourself. You may see yourself dithering in Approval. Others won't
be. Remember what I said: Vote for whom you like. In u/a, vote only for all
the acceptables. Read the other strategy suggestions if you want to.  And
don't forget that there will be strategy problems in Condorcet too.

Or dither if you want to, but don't blame it on the voting system.

I'll try pointing this out to you, but I don't know if it will do any good:
You're comparing Approval to your mythical and illusory ideal for Condorcet.


In both cases, however, the voter is trying to attain a given result by
carefully considering the effects of what he does. He shouldn't have to do
that. 

[endquote]

Maybe he should vote in an Approval election before he tells us what it's
like.


You continue:

Yes, G&S dashes that hope in the absolute, criterion satisfaction sense, but
within common settings, he shouldn't have to do it either. If he wants to
"play the game", sure, then it makes sense that strategy should take some
power of mind, but if he doesn't... if it's a left-vs-right, he should just
rank and get the right result. 

[endquote]

Evidence suggests that many won't rank sincerely. And, contrary to what you
said, the fact that sincere voting elects the CW doesn't mean that the
co-operation/defection problem isn't still fully there with Condorcet.

You continue:

If someone does offensive strategy, perhaps then he has to make use of
counterstrategy, but not before.

[endquote]

Where do you get that??  Explain that to my Condorcet favorite-burier (the
one whose voting I observed), or to the other persistent favorite-burier
with whom I spoke.


As for offensive vs defensive: Without improbably accurate polls, you often
won't know whether you're an A or B voter, in the Approval bad-example
(ABE). So, if you defect, you won't know whether you're using offensive
strategy, or deterrent defensive strategy.

You're confusing the legitimate mathematical study of how to count sincere
rankings, with practical voting matters in the real world.



> But that statement about operational approval was only part of what I
said.
>
> I also pointed out that  there are many ways a voter could choose whom 
> to approve. In all of those ways, the voter will always approve 
> candidates s/he likes better than those s/he doesn't approve.
>
> Usually, maybe nearly always, people should, and will, just approve 
> the candidates whom they like, trust, or consider deserving of their 
> support. No strategy there.

So if the Greens become larger, Nader voters will know when to vote Nader
alone or Nader+Gore depending on their trust?

[endquote]

Yes, that's a good way to decide. If you like and trust Gore, then why
wouldn't you want to Approve him, support his win? 

You like Nader a little more? So what? If you think they're both very good,
then why not Approve them both?

You seem to be saying that you consider Gore acceptable. Do you consider
Bush unacceptable? If Gore is acceptable to you, and Bush is unacceptable to
you, then do you really need me to tell you what to do, after what I've been
saying all this time?

Don't dither too long.

A few details: 

Though I used to think that Nader deserved support, I never thought that
Gore did.

Read Jim Hightower's account of environmental hero Al Gore in East Liverpool
(Ohio, I believe).

I find it difficult to believe that Greens would vote for someone like that
or consider him anything but unacceptable.

You're talking about the 2000 election, of course. This year, I haven't
heard anything about Nader running. Roseanne Barr is a candidate for the
GPUS nomination. Maybe she's been nominated; I don't know. If so, then it
will be Romney, Obama, Barr, and various others.

> If it's a u/a election (there are unacceptable candidates who could 
> win), then we'll simply approve all the acceptables, and none of the 
> unacceptables.

Right.

> In the rare instances where we don't  just know whom to approve 
> because we like or trust them, I've described some strategy suggestions.

Yes, you've described how to reduce preferences to a two-level ballot by the
use of either preference alone or by external data (such as polls)
-- what I've called "dithering" in analog to how you can turn a grayscale
picture into black-and-white.

[endquote]

As I said before, you can dither, if that's what you like. Your word doesn't
apply to simply voting for whom you like. In your haste to dither, you're
missing something simple and obvious.

You seem to be dithering because you think that there is one right way to
approve,  and that you must know what it is. Is that it? So you dither and
dither, trying
to find the _right_ way to approve.

Just to try to make the kind of election that would make you dither, let's
say there are no unacceptables who could win. And say that, somehow, you
either like all the candidates, or dislike them all, and so you can't
approve only the ones you like. Well, for one thing, if you like them all,
or dislike them all, then just stay home, have a beer, and watch the game.

But maybe you want to do strategy. Nothing wrong with that. So, say you're
going to use one of the strategies that I listed. Ok, start with the first
one, approving whom you'd vote for in Plurality, and everyone better. Now, I
can't guarantee you won't dither about that, because maybe you'd dither in
Plurality. If you really believe that the Democrat and the Republican are
"the two choices", then you won't have any trouble choosing to Approve the
Democrat, and everyone better. That's in accordance with the above-stated
strategy, and also with the best frontrunner + strategy. Most people know
whether they're that kind of voter, you know. You won't have to dither very
hard. 

Or, because you know that the Plurality frontrunners are entirely irrelevant
to an Approval election,  you aren't interested in whom you'd vote for in
Plurality. So you just use the better-than-expectation strategy: Approve
optimistically. Approve the candidates who are at least a little better than
(or at least as good as) what you expect from the election. Approve the ones
you hope for, maybe at least a little too good to be true.

I know, that will make you dither. But it shouldn't. It will because you
think you should know the _right_ candidates to approve, in some objective
material absolute sense. And it
bothers you that you can't know that because you don't have perfect
information about the other voters. Tear your hair out. Or maybe not,
because you don't have to know that. All you have to judge is who _seems or
feels_ right to approve. _That_ is who is right for you to approve!  Read
those two sentences again. Hopefully now you won't have to dither. 

In a previous letter to you, answering the same objection, I said: I look at
the top card of a deck of cards, but I don't show it to you. To you there is
a 1/52 probability that it's the ace of spades. To me there is zero
probability that it's the ace of spades. I ask you what is the probability
that it's the ace of spades. Your right answer is: 1/52.  The wrong answer
is:" I don't know, because I didn't see that top card."  You _do_ know the
probability. For you, it's 1/52. So, say "1/52", instead of dithering
endlessly about and bemoaning your imperfect information.

In another version of the story I shuffle, remove a card, and shuffle again.
You don't know what card I removed. My information is better than yours. I
know that the card that I removed wasn't the ace of spades. To me the
probability that the top card is the ace of spades is 1/51. To you it's
1/52. I ask you what the probability is. Instead of bemoaning the fact that
your information isn't as good as mine is, just answer the probability as it
is for you, 1/52. Don't make it harder than it is.

Ok, done dithering?


You continue:

I'd rather not have to do it, though.

[endquote]

Good! That's a start!

You said:

Hmm, now that I look at it, I might see a better idea of where we are. 
If people are honest or semi-honest (enough are honest that offensive
strategy can't gather sufficient strength or work), then the dithering
becomes additional burden on the voters and so isn't needed. If, on the
other hand, the voters readily look to take advantage of each other, then
dithering and poll synchronization would be better than having to go all
"defensive strategy, offensive strategy, counterstrategy,
counter-counter-strategy".

[endquote]

I'm not sure I follow. But if you're referring to Approval, did I say
anything about polls? Sure, listen to polls, if you really trust the
pollsters....only if they're done by an organization or political party that
you trust.

[So it's a half-empty vs half-full thing, and that might be why we keep
disagreeing without getting anywhere. When we look upon a situation where
"doing dishonest thing X sometimes helps but usually has no effect either
way", you think that voters will do X because it *may* help -- half-empty. I
think that they'll generally not do X unless it's obvious they need to or
knowing when it works is really obvious -- half-full. 
It's like that with FBC, and it's like that with ranking Approval style in
MJ. I also think I see it in how we talk about the chicken dilemma in
Approval: you consider it the case of strategists having to figure out where
to put the line, but I consider it in the case of mostly-honest voters
facing noise that could throw the election the wrong way

[endquote]

"Noise" like the fact that you don't know what card I looked at or removed
from the deck? Forget that, and just go with your own card probability, or
your own
expectation-impression.

As for sincerity vs strategy in Approval, it will definitely be strategic if
there's a co-operation/defection problem. But it also will be if you
_choose_ to approve strategically. Maybe you like to.

As for Condorcet, yes, many will do favorite-burial strategy because it
_may_ help. That's reason enough for them. In a C/D (co-operation/defection)
situation, there are strategies that will help overall, though some of them
won't make your candidate win each time.

> You continued:
>
> To make it really obvious, consider a similar pitch for Plurality. "In 
> Plurality, the candidate who is favorite of the most voters win!".
> Sounds reasonable enough, doesn't it?
>
> [quote]
>
> No, it doesn't. Not to someone who lives here. Plurality dosn't elect 
> the candidate who is favorite to the most voters.

That's the point. You know the voters are burdened and constrained in
Plurality, because you've seen the elections and the dynamics that
constrains the voters. But there haven't been all that many Approval
elections. For all you know, there might have been more
1800-presidential-election cases.

[endquote]

A Condorcetist is in no position to object to Approval's C/D problem.

And, I'll repeat yet again that the problem has 5 good solutions that I
listed here a few months ago. Don't worry about it so much. You worry too
much, Kristofer.


> What is Approval's distortion?

See above. Approval's distortion happens when people dither imperfectly.

[endquote]

If you still dither, after my explanation above, then it's only because you
want to.

But we're getting closer to what you mean: What does it mean to dither
imperfectly? To not perfectly know the other voters,  to not know which card
I removed?

But you don't have to be perfect! You can't have perfect information. Not
having perfect information doesn't mean that your ballot is wrong! It's the
right ballot for what you know, perceive, feel or expect. Or like. Don't
worry about it. As I said, you worry too much.

But what's the distortion? The election of someone who is at least a little
too good to be true for the most voters? Someone who is hopefully regarded
by the most voters? Kristofer, you have a strange notion of distortion.

And remember that however people draw the line, it they always like their
Approved candidates better than their Unapproved ones. No matter whether
Approval elects the candidate who is hopefully regarded by the most, or the
candidate who is acceptable to the most, or the candidate who is liked by
the most, one thing for sure is that elects
the candidate to whom the most voters have chosen to give an "Approved" mark
(For one thing, they like them better than the ones they marked
"Unapproved").

> In a non-u/a election,where it's only gradations of liked-ness, your 
> "distortion" has no meaning, because there's no objective 
> falsification. The voter likes all of hir approved better than any of 
> hir unapproved.

That's stretching it a bit. Consider again a contrived method which is like
Approval but you're forced to Approve at least half of the candidates. Your
response could be used against it, too: "distortion has no meaning because
the voter still likes all the Approved above all the not-Approved". True,
but the limitation (uncertainty in the case of Approval, uncertainty plus
external constraint in the case of the contrived method) still degrades the
result compared to what you could have got.

[endquote]

Forget your contrived version. How and in what way, exactly, is the result
"degraded" in actual Approval?

Yes, I know, uncertainty. But in what sense does that "degrade" the result?
I hope that by now you aren't still dithering about uncertainty. 

> No, Approval, ICT, and maybe a few other methods would do fine with 
> strategic voters. Yes, Approval has the defection problem, but I've 
> described
> 5 ways of solving it. ICT pretty much does away with the defection 
> problem. I suggest that ICT actually delivers on the promise of rank 
> balloting.

Would they? I was considering an extreme case, where everybody's rational
and plays the voting method like a game. ICT handles compromising, true, but
it's not strategy-proof. You can still bury in
ICT: rank the worse mainstream candidate below all the "fruits and nuts" 
because you want him to get as few votes as possible in the Plurality
tiebreaker.

[endquote]

Not ranking hir top is all that it takes to do your best to lower hir
top-count.

Burial, in ICT, will only work for the candidate who is favorite to more
people than anyone else in the IC-unbeaten set. 

As I said before, "All rank methods should have that for a problem."




As I'll mention in another post, I think ISmith,DAC/DSC (where ISmith is to
Smith what ICT is to CT) would do better than ISmith,Plurality (ICT) here.

Define those methods in detail, or tell in what archive-month we should look
for them, with what in the subject line, and posted by whom.
 (Incidentally, I think Range has too obvious a strategy. I'd prefer MJ.)

Both would be fine, because they're essentially Approval.

> Oh yeah? Millions say that they hold their nose and vote for the Democrat.
>
> They'll hold their nose and vote hir alone  at top, in Condorcet, 
> because that's the only way to _fully_ help hir against the Republican.

Like they held their noses and voted for Bush instead of Perot in '92? 
Like some smaller fraction voted for Nader in 2000 even in a swing state?

[endquote]

Like we've never had a non-Republocrat winner, for a very, very long time.
Not Nader. Practically no one
would vote for him, because they wanted to help the Democrat. Perot, as I
said, still lost, maybe because of
the spoiler problem. But he did so well only because of much money and
consequent media attention.

You said:

Here's my feedback point. All we need is that the method shows that not all
of those who compromised needed to.

[endquote]

Then support Approval. Even if, in the 1st Approval election, the Democrat
wins because of overcompromise, people will noticed that actually-liked
candidates did pretty well too and were a lot more popular than the media
had led them to believe. If someone else is winnable, it will soon be
obvious.

It's been shown that Approval will quickly home in on the voter median, and
stay there.

> Of course that isn't true. Voters now favorite bury without 
> organization. They think that it's their own idea. Yes, they're told 
> to by media and other misinformed progressives.
> ...as they will be when Condorcet is the method.

And again. If the Condorcet calculations show that Nader got 2% but Gore
still won, then the 2% know they can vote for Nader without spoiling it. 
It won't be only 2% next time.

[endquote]

Maybe. You'd have to show it in more detail. 

Myerson & Weber showed that two unliked parties can't keep winning at M-W
voting equilibrium in Approval. 


> You continue:
>
>> And this is really where I make my feedback claim. If it takes a lot 
>> of people to make strategy work, at least in <= 3-major-candidate or 
>> u/a elections, then the overcompromising voters can kick their habit. 
>> You seem to consider the voters to be closer to the game theory 
>> economist position than I do, in that they would compromise "just to be
sure.
>
> [endquote]
>
> It isn't a supposition. They are known to do so.

They are known to do so under a method that more or less forces them to. 
A very limited sample is also known to do so in a few Condorcet polls
without experience of how Condorcet works.

[endquote]

If she'd known how Condorcet works, it would have confirmed her choice. I'd
told her that it's unlikely that she'd benefit by favorite-burial, and she
did it merely
because she might benefit from it. The other person even was strongly
inclined to favorite bury in Approval, but, because it was Approval, it was
easy to show her
that it would serve no purpose. But the inclination was there. If the method
had been Condorcet, she couldn't have been shown that, because it wouldn't
have been true.

You said:

Yet the Range voters in Warren's Range polls didn't strategize all the time
- the results were far from identical to the Approval polls he also did.

[endquote]

You're talking about a different strategy motivation, not favorite-burial,
which is a different topic.

> I've acknowledged that maybe Condorcet can overcome its FBC problem, 
> somewhow, through long use. But Approval doesn't have the problem in 
> the first place.

Nope, but it has others, and without FBC failure being as condemning, one
might reasonably pick the Condorcet basket of advantages over the Approval
one.

[endquote]

It's much easier, isn't it, to say that Approval has problems, than to
actually specify them :-)

Your basket of advantages are largely illusory, because they depend largely
on sincere voting. Yes we disagree on the magnitude of the problem. That's
ok.
Whoever is right about the magnitude, the problems are there. And there have
been observations about the problem magnitudes.

Please read again: "I say that I don't dispute that Approval is better than
Plurality".

[endquote]

I didn't say otherwise. I merely meant, "What would _someone else_ say to
defend Plurality?"


If I were a Plurality defender, I'd probably aim low. I can't exactly use
Tammany's "Stalin Frankenstein" line, but I'd claim Approval to be
un-American (or something much alike it). 

[endquote]

Taking away freedom is un-American, like the way Plurality takes away the
voter's freedom to rate 1 or 0 as s/he chooses. Forced falsification on a
ballot is contrary to Democracy.

I'd counter, "Call Approval 'Freedom Balloting' ".  Saying that you have to
give 0 points to all but one sounds Stalinesque. I'd ask "You aren't by any
chance a Communist, are you?"

I'd further claim that Plurality has been good enough for us all this time

[endquote]

They said that about slavery too.

, and Approval is a Democratic plot 

[endquote]

I'd ask in what way it's undemocratic to give each voter equal power to rate
each candidate Approved or Unapproved, 1 or 0 points.

I'd ask what'd democratic about telling you that you have to rate all but
one candidate at bottom. Shouldn't you decide which candidates to rate how?


to weaken us all, and that we upset the two-party system at our own peril. 

[endquote]

Not valid to justify a method merely because it will  preserve two parties.
That sounds Stalinistic too.


I'd further add, like FV does, that "Approval doesn't even guarantee that
the majority winner will win" (given a certain definition of the Majority
criterion).

[endquote]

In Approval,  if a majority vote X over Y, then Y won't win. Plurality
counts can be easily shown to be meaningless in regards to public wishes.

There's ample precedent for federal courts acting for voting rights. I
suggest that repealing forced falsification is a voting rights issue.

You said:

So find the right method -- one that has some chance of withstanding the
challenges -- and then go from local to national. As a side effect, it'll
smooth out the FBC problem.

[endquote]

...and it will take much longer than the national enactment that Approval,
but not Condorcet, would have a chance for. Or the court repeal of forced
falsification.

Mike Ossipoff