[EM] Juho: Sincere ranking, contd.

[Juho Laatu]

On 17.11.2012, at 22.29, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

> Voters here have made it abundantly clear that they're instrumental
> voters: They vote only to optimize their outcome in the current
> election, based on their predictive and acceptability beliefs.
> 
> Yes, for finding the CW, of course it's desirable for people to rank
> all of the candidates. TUC(margins) is the method that meets the
> Condorcet Criterion and 0-info Sincerity. The problem is that there
> will be strong enough predictive feelings at top end so that people
> won't rank sincerely. That's why I say that the goal of sincere
> rankings and electing the CW must be abandoned.

Did you mean that there will be strong enough predictive feelings at top end so that large number of people will *irrationally* rank insincerely?

>> Sure, there's a case for saying that people would enjoy indicating who
>> is worst. I just don't think that the Democrats and Republicans
>> deserve to be ranked at all. Not ranking them at all is better than
>> dignifying them with rank positions--even last and 2nd-to-last.
> 
> That sounds like you are talking about implicit approval of all the
> ranked candidates.
> 
> [endquote]
> 
> I'll guess that "implicit approval" means ranking the same candidates
> whom I'd approve if it were an Approval election.

Yes, or if ranking (marking) has some other approval like meaning to the voter.

> I'm just saying that I feel that your goal of entirely sincere
> rankings, even at top-end, is unattainable, due to predictive
> information, genuine or perceived.

What we need is sufficient number of sincere rankings and sufficiently random strategies in the strategic votes, so that the strategic votes are likely to be just random noise. Predictive information might be genuine or perceived, strategies might be rational, semi-rational or irrational, and the number of different kind of strategic voters may be hard to predic.

Juho