[EM] To Condorcetists:

[Michael Ossipoff]

On 05/15/2012 09:10 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

> In fact, under certain circumstances you, too, would favorite-bury in 
> Condorcet. I certainly would. (contrary to what I've said in the past, 
> I
> admit)
>
> Suppose that it's a u/a election. The method is Condorcet. It's pretty 
> much certain that Compromise, an acceptable, but not your favorite, is 
> the only candidate who can beat Worse, an unacceptable. What do you 
> do? You rank Compromise alone at top, that's what you do.  As would I.

You wrote:

In an Nader-Bush-Gore type of u/a, I would say like this:

- Okay, this is an election in the inception of a transition of the method. 
Therefore, it is u/a. If this had been some time after the people had got
used to the new method, it would no longer be u/a.

[endquote]

Incorrect. u/a has nothing to do with whether or not people are used to a
new method. The election is u/a for a voter if, for that voter, there are
unacceptable candidates who might win. If you object to "unacceptable", then
an election is u/a for a particular voter, if, for that voter, the
candidates can be divided into two sets such that the merit differences
_within_ the sets are negligible in comparison to the merit difference
_between_ the sets.

Nothing about that changes if the voter is familiar with the method.

You continued:

- Therefore, there will be a few "frontrunners", perhaps two or three. 

Not necessarily. A pair of pre-election frontrunners are two candidates who
are expected to get the most votes, to be the two candidates most in
contention for the win.

There might not be such. Maybe people don't have a perception or feel about
that, and no one wants to try to guess who the top two contenders are.

Ok, maybe you're saying that Bush, Gore and Nader are the frontrunners
because the election is, by assumption, known to be between them.

You said:

These are the ones that will end up in the Smith set in the worst case -
certainly none of the minor parties will.

[endquote]

"Minor parties" being defined as parties other than those of the 3
candidates you've assumed will be the relevant ones in this example, I take
it. Ok.

You said:

- Since I can't push someone off the Smith set by ranking someone not in the
set above him
, and Favorite isn't one of the frontrunners, I'm free to rank Favorite
first.

[endquote]

Yes, but other voters, without you psychic powers, wouldn't know that.

You continued:

- (alternately) If Favorite and Compromise are in the Smith set and Worse
isn't, then I should make it count: vote Favorite first so as to help
maximally against Compromise.

- Only when all three are or will be in the set might I gain a strategic
advantage by betraying Favorite, and I might not even need to (depends on
u/a FBC). 

[endquote]

u/a FBC isn't ready to use yet. It's still in the early examination stage.
And you don't know for sure who will be in the Smith set. 

You said:

Here I *think* the probability would be so low that I wouldn't betray
Favorite. However, that might sound like rationalization, so I'll explain at
the bottom*.

[endquote]

Sometimes I use an asterisk when I don't want to lengthen or complicate a
paragraph with a parenthetical remark. I put the asterisk reference directly
below that paragraph, where it is easily found. 

On a printed page, where the whole page is simultaneously visible, it's
different, and convenient to put the referred-to remarks at the bottom.

You'd betray Favorite if the merit differences within sets A and B were
negligible in comparison to the merit difference between those sets, and if
Compromise is the only acceptable who can beat Worse.
Expectation-maximizing strategy in Condorcet would call for voting
Compromise alone in 1st place.

You said:

Now you might say that this is cheating because I'm refining u/a further to
a Nader-Bush-Gore situation. 

[endquote]

Not at all. That would be a u/a election for me. Set A would be {Nader}. Set
B would be {Gore, Bush}.

But, for some people who aren't clear about their own feelings about what
they regard as acceptable or unacceptable, they actually believe that set A
is {Nader, Gore} and that set B is {Bush}. You might say that it's a
subjective matter. Maybe, but when you talk to most people who vote
Democrat, they express disgust for the corrupt, sold-out, bribed
(Republocrat) politicians. How bizarre, then, if they say that Gore is
acceptable.

(As I said before, check out Jim Hightower's account of Environmental Hero
Al Gore in East Liverpool, Ohio.)

Anyway, for me, and also (or so they believe) for the Anyone-But-Bush voter,
it is a u/a election.

You said:

But consider your reasoning for a moment. You say you're concerned about
voters favorite-betraying in u/a

[endquote]

A u/a election is one way to write an example in which favorite-burial is
expectation-maximizing strategy.

You continued:

, and you say current political elections in the US are u/a. 

[endquote]

Yes.


So I don't think I have to consider u/a elections with n-way races n>3
because by the time that many parties would be viable, people would have got
over their overcompromise anyway.

[endquote]

Condorcet's optimal favorite-burial strategy is found in 3-candidate
elections too. I don't know when you think that more than the Republocrats
would become viable, but maybe you've been listening to the U.S. news too
much. Do they have CNN and Fox tv over there?  

And I don't know how you're deciding how soon people will get over
overcompromising. Remember that I've described a scenario in which
favorite-burial is the optimal strategy in Condorcet.

> But, maybe you _don't_ know that Compromise is the only acceptable who 
> can beat Worse. Maybe you have no idea which one can beat Worse. Then 
> what do you do? You top rate all the acceptables.  The problem, of 
> course, is in the majority of circumstances, when it's somewhere in 
> between those two circumstances.

You said:

Only if they're all in the Smith se

[endquote]

As I said, the people who don't have your psychic powers won't know who will
be in the Smith set.


You said:

, and then only if you want to escalate - to bet the advantage after you
push the method to weirdness is greater than the loss at doing so in the
first place.

[endquote]

Come again?  I'm not quite sure what the above phrase means. 

I'd said:

> It's hardly rare for a majority to be mistaken. It's common.
>
> You rely too much on polling. As I said, the configuration of advocacy 
> on EM is but a snapshot of something that's constantly changing.

I would hardly call the discussions on EM mere "polling".

[endquote]

Then call it whatever you want to. You are depending quite heavily on
quoting which opinion is held by more people. You were doing it before, and
you still are.

You said:

If they are "polling", then your discussions with the favorite-betrayers
upon which you build most of your idea of FBC's necessity is also mere
"polling" -- and polling with a much lesser sample size at that.

[endquote]

...And I told you that Approval has done pretty well in comparison to
Condorcet, opinion-wise.

I'd said:

> As I've mentioned, Approval won the most recent EM poll on voting systems.
> Approval won by every method that we used. Approval was the CW, the 
> Approval winner, and the Range winner.
>
> In the short list of Declaration signers, more people mention Approval 
> than Condorcet, even if you count VoteFair as Condorcet. And one of 
> the people who mentions Condorcet ranks it below Approval.

True enough. You keep returning to Plurality vs Approval. 

[endquote]

Wrong. We're talking about Approval vs Condorcet. 

But yes, I do refer to Approval vs Plurality when I advocate replacing
Plurality with Approval. 

You said:

My point, however, was that if otherwise reasonable people just so seem to
happen to have a big hole where their judgement of Condorcet vs Approval is
located
, then it has to be awfully specific (and convenient) for them to be thus
blind.

[endquote]

Where to start?  :-)

1) When someone resorts to namecalling as a substitute for actually
supporting their claims, that's a strong indication that, with their
namecalling, they have just shown to us the best argument that they have. 

2) So Kristofer thinks that all of the people who expressed preference for
Approval over Condorcet did so because their judgment wasn't as good as
Kristofer's.

3) In fact, he says that it's "awfully specific and convenient", meaning
that the the people who expressed preference for Approval over Condorcet are
in a conspiracy to mis-represent their  preferences.

You said:

And if favorite betrayal really is so rampant

[endquote]

It is rampant, but, to know what's going on here, it would help to live
here.

Pretty much everyone who votes Democrat says that they're going to hold
their nose and vote for the lesser-evil. When Nader ran, all the Democrat
voters were furious because he was going to be a spoiler, spoiling the
election of the lesser-evil for whom they were holding their noses. And
people who said they'd vote for Nader were heavily criticized by Democrat
voters for voting for their favorite instead of for the lesser-evil "You're
splitting the vote by voting for your favorite instead of pragmatically
abandoning your favorite as we are!"

You said:

, then it is strange that so few other American EM participants have
mentioned the need for absolute FBC to guard against it.

[endquote]

I pointed out some days ago that EM is a debate club. For many  members, it
isn't about practical proposals. EM members debate whether their method is
better than yours, but few if any of them have ever discussed these matters
with members of the public who haven't heard about voting system debates.

Anyway, I told you about the instances in which more preferred Approval to
Condorcet than vice-versa.


You said:

 You don't make it out to be a contested issue like say, left vs right, but
rather something that is
obvious: something where it would be easy to see that the voters will keep
on overcompromising so nothing less than a guarantee will do. So where's the
consensus?

[endquote]

Among pretty much all who vote Democrat.  And the media who uniformly refer
to "the two choices".  That pretty much amounts to a consensus who espouse
the opinion that "supports" favorite-burial for the Democrat. 

As for whether that will stop or continue:

The burden of proof is on the one who says that a behavior is going to
change. That's you.
The burden of proof is also on the one who suggests the less cautious
assumption. The best you can say is, "Maybe it won't be a problem". But even
that maybe is largely contradicted, by:

How many more times must I repeat about the conversations and observations
that suggest that favorite-burial is so ingrained that it will continue with
Condorcet?
Do you think you could look it up in my previous postings?

That is a very small sample. But the observed agreement within that sample
would be unlikely if favorite-burial with better methods would be rare.

You said:

(Incidentally, just so I'm clear about this, if the choice was Plurality or
Approval, and nothing else was possible now or ever, then of course I'd pick
Approval. Even in the worst case where backsliding causes a repeal of
Approval

[endquote]

Everyone please note that I've repeatedly asked what kind of problems or bad
results would make people want to go from Approval back to Plurality. There
hasn't been an answer.


You said:

I just think we can get a real improvement beyond Approval too

[endquote]

Oh, you "just think...".  Oh, that's different!  :-)

You may "just think" that, but I've told you why Approval is a whole lot
more enactable than Condorcet it. Read my article, and my recent posts. As I
recently said, due to those considerations whose discussion I'm referring
you to, the expected enactment time for Approval will be a lot less,
probably many times less, than the enactment time for Condorcet.

You said:

 - and it's better to get it right the first time

[endquote]

Whoa, Cowboy--You haven't shown that Approval is wrong and that Condorcet is
right.

You continued;

...than have the opponents go "you got Approval and now you want *more*?" or
have backsliding lead to problems for reform in general.

[endquote]

I guess I have to repeat this too:

When the results of the first Approval election are available, it will
become much more difficult to exclude non-Republocrat opinion from news,
debates, talkshows, media coverage, etc. That, just of itself, will free up
discussion and the media. Additionally, the societal changes resulting from
everyone being able to fully support their favorites will further open up
media and discussion. Complicated contraption methods like Condorcet will be
discussed to, when people have become aware of voting system reform. _That_
will be when Condorcet first begins to have an enactment chance.

So, as I said, don't be like the 3 Stooges trying to hurry through a door,
but spending all of their time and effort trying to pull eachother back, in
order to go through first.
It doesn't matter who goes through first. Let's just feasibly go through the
door. 

As I said, you remind me of someone in the story of King Solomon and the
disputed baby.

I've said this before too. How many times? I too would something with
properties more than those of Approval. I'd like defection-resistance. I'd
like ICT. But, unlike you,
I'm not saying, "My ideal favorite or nothing!"  Approval is do-able. I've
told why, in my article and my subsequent postings. Are you going to insist
that I repeat it again in a new posting?

Mike Ossipoff