[EM] Outcome Design Goals

[David L Wetzell]

Some thoughts.

1. You need to consider the difference between Cardinal and Ordinal Utility.
You presume the existence of Cardinal utility.  Ordinal utility can be
monotonically positively transformed so long as it preserves the order.
 For example, if the original scale is between 0 and 100 then one could
randomly generate a real number a from the normal distribution, transform
it by taking b=E^a, and then transform the utility to become X^b
*100^(1-b).  This would not change the rank-orderings of candidates, but it
would change the approval or score-ratings given to candidates and it'd
muddy the water about your example.

2. In real life, parties/candidates choose their candidates/positions to
enhance their likeability, so what is taken as exogenous in most of our
thought experiments are in fact endogenous.  This is also another reason
why it's hard to grow the number of competitive candidates, because good
ideas from a not-so-competitive candidate will tend to get coopted by
already-competitive candidates.

3. It seems that your self-described magical certainty as to voter prefs is
at worse chimerical and at best a useful fiction.  It also is similar to
the work by Warren Smith using Bayesian
Regret<https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&ie=UTF-8#sclient=psy-ab&q=warren+smith+bayesian+regret&oq=warren+smith+bayesian+regret&gs_l=hp.3..0i22i30.102.153444.0.153747.35.30.0.0.0.1.365.5918.0j20j8j2.30.0.epsugrpqhmsignedin%2Chtma%3D120%2Chtmb%3D120..0.0.0..1.1.17.psy-ab.FsjX8OuCjSc&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.48572450,d.aWc&fp=e16824eab702e431&ion=1&biw=1366&bih=659>,
which also presumes cardinality of utilities.  I think that there might be
scope for probabilistic valuing of candidates so that in examples like what
you give, a certain candidate has a certain probability of getting elected.
 I also think that there will be some sort of Mean-Variance evaluation of
election rules, not unlike how stock-portfolios are evaluated by a
combination of mean and variance criterion.

4. If there is a multi-dimensional issue-space (plus a je-ne-sais-quois
character dimension) then these inevitably would tend to get collapsed into
a single-dimension and the issue is in large part how the different
dimensions get collapsed, plus the inevitable problems with noise being
propagated by the campaigns and voters putting less time/energy into
researching all candidates so and so forth.  I favor IRV in part because it
lets non-competitive candidates bring up otherwise neglected issues and
subvert some of the noise spewed by the main candidates.  These are things
that are hard to model, they are quite indeterministic.  The same is likely
true for other rules, but their probabilities of getting adopted in the
short-run are low and my args are geared not at proving IRV is objectively
better than the other rules, just that the diffs between the alternatives
are less strong than often purported and so it makes more sense to focus on
short-term probabilities of adoption in the short-run at least.

5. If some people feel strongly on an issue, there are other ways to
manifest this preference other than what is given them in the ballot that
serve to move swing/low-info voters.  This reduces the mandate to
incorporate the capability to express strength of preference in the ballot.

dlw

 This is not unlike why I stated that I have epistemic diffs with Kristofer
M.  He doesn't have access to much real world experimental data and so to
compensate
dlw
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