[EM] 3 or more choices - Condorcet

[Michael Ossipoff]

>He determines how often strategy (of any kind) works for the
> voters engaged in the strategy

In academic writing, there's a popular fallacy that strategy is a
bane, something to be thwarted.

Academics don't seem to get that strategy is an inherent part of voting.

Yes, it's desirable that certain offensive strategies be thwarted or
deterred. But that's only secondary, a result of the strategy needs
caused by the risk of successful offensive strategy.

Examples: Burial, and chicken dilemma defection.

The primary concern with regard to strategy is this:

It's desirable that the optimal strategy not not distort voters'
preferences and their intention to express them.

That wording covers FBC, LNHa, LNHe, chicken-dilemma avoidance, the
Condorcet Criterion, and probably any other desirable strategy
properties too.

That's why FBC is important, because it distorts and conceals the most
important preferences, the ones at top-end.

LNHe is still important, though it's a bottom-end strategy criterion.
The fact that, in a u/a election, Strong Condorcet gives a strategic
need to rank the unacceptable candidates in reverse order of
winnability is a nuisance, but not a fatal or prohibitive problem, for
example.

Avoidance of the chicken dilemma affects the ability to support a 2nd
choice, and is another example of what I'm referring to. It too, is
only about avoiding a nuisance, since Approval and Score easily deal
with it, in various ways.

> Is an utilitarian approach best? Sum-of-utilities? Mean-utilities? Is
> for candidates everybody thinks is "good enough" in favor of
> those some love and some hate? equality and fairness valued in itself, thus possibly leading to a
> preference Or is utility hidden or incommensurable to
> begin with?

Utilitarianism is a discredited moral philosophy. I don't know the
name of what Rawls was advocating, but it made a lot more sense, was
much better justified.

The idea was that, instead of maximizing the sum of happiness, it
would be much better to minimize the maximum harm from the social
choice.

When Approval or (optimally-voted) Score elects the candidate who is
acceptable to the most people, in a u/a election, or the candidate
liked or trusted by the most people, in a non-u/a election, Approval
and Score do uniquely well by that moral philosophy.

Mike Ossipoff