[EM] Outcome Design Goals

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

I'm just picking a couple of points from this mostly waste-of-time 
post. I have not read all of it.

At 02:11 PM 7/2/2013, David L Wetzell wrote:

>On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 6:57 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
><<mailto:abd at lomaxdesign.com>abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
>At 09:22 AM 7/1/2013, David L Wetzell wrote:
>Some thoughts.
>
>1. You need to consider the difference between Cardinal and Ordinal Utility.
>You presume the existence of Cardinal utility.
>
>First of all, who is "you." David is writing to an entire list. 
>*Who* "presumes"?
>
>
>Who do you think?  Benn.

Benn is a newbie. He was just chatting and asking and exploring. 
Custom and courtesty, when one replies to an individual, is to 
address them by name. Otherwise it makes little sense. Email software 
routinely does that. And it will thread the posts as well.


>In the study of Bayesian Regret, we do *not* presume the existence 
>of cardinal utility, we *assume it.* It's a device for studying 
>voting systems, to see how they perform when we know *summable 
>cardinal utilities.*
>
>
>dlw: It's not a neutral device.  It is a non-trivial 
>heuristic/assumption, since when it is relaxed it makes the "right" 
>voter strategies with approval/score-voting indeterministic.

Bringing frog implementation dynamic conclusively.

Ahem. It is a device for study. It is neutral, but, yes, it makes 
Range (Score) ideal *if voters vote absolute utilities.* But they 
cannot, very likely, so Range is *not* ideal. It merely imitates, in 
a certain way, an ideal voting system. I am *not* proposing Range for 
public elections at this time (except as we consider Approval a Range 
method) because there is an independent value, not much studied by 
utility analysis, and not particularly amenable to it, ultimately, 
and that is the value of majority consent and the interactions involved.

>And my point is that there's no good reason not to relax the 
>presumption of absoluteness of utilities, since utility is 
>fundamentally a way to aggregate things that o.w. can't be aggregated.

Let me repeat what I wrote, since apparently David needs some 
repetition: absolute utilities are not presumed, they are, in 
simulations only. *assumed.* And we can assume them in a way that is 
commensurable, *by definition.*

Now, suppose we have a set of commensurable utilities that somewhat 
resemble real-world utilities. If they are not chosen in a way that 
is biased toward a particular voting system, and voting systems, 
through many trials, show certain characteristics with regard to 
Bayesian Regret, why would we think that a real voting system would 
do much differently? Real voting systems face many varying conditions.

Under some circumstances, it is possible to define absolute utilities 
and to expect that people would rationally vote them. How would a 
voting system perform under those conditions?

>   This point is meant to scale back claims like those that Warren 
> Smith and Clay Shentrup or Dale Sheldon-Hess have made in the past 
> that Approval/Score have been proven to be the best rule based on BR.

I don't use the term "proven." It's overstatement. How about "shown 
with reasonable certainty"? And that's not accurate. The system in 
Warren's study with the lowest BR (best), with reasonable voting 
strategy, was not Range. Do you know what it was?

Basically, David, you have not studied this issue and you have 
opinions that are clearly based on your conclusions.

>
>This system makes a basic assumption that all voters are equal, 
>equally deserve to be pleased. So the *full range* of pain/pleasure 
>for these voters is made equal.
>
>
>dlw: Yeah, and that involves assumptions found in utilitarian 
>philosophy that have been widely discredited in philosophy at 
>large.  I'm simply saying it's a heuristic and so the implications 
>from such need to be taken with a grain (or more) of salt.

I like salt. "Utilitarian philosophy" is a very different field than 
the study of utility in voting system analysis. Clay Shentrup does 
seem to somewhat adopt a Utilitarian religion. That's far from all of us.

>
>
>The utilities in the example that David is referring to seem to have 
>been utilities on a scale, perhaps, of 0 to 100. These are utilities 
>that have been transformed to representation on a scale of 0 to 100. 
>They are no longer absolute utilities in the sense described, but we 
>can still posit such utilities, for simplicity, and see how a voting 
>system performs.
>
>
>And we can relax the assumption slightly by letting someone see 
>their "true utilities" obscurely after having been transformed s.t. 
>the rankings are not changed but the relative intensities are changeable.

Blue ceilings obscure paintings below waterfalls.

>[...] [I had written:]
>
>FairVote, had they been capable of intelligent strategic thinking, 
>would *never* have chosen Burlington as a place for IRV. Bad Idea. 
>But Terry Bouricius was there, and they had LWV Vermont in their 
>pockets. They were screaming when the move was being made to drop 
>IRV. Quite simply, they were not listening. They had stuffed their 
>fingers in their ears, they were not going to recognize a problem 
>with their baby.
>
>
>dlw: I doubt they foresaw how much the progressive party would drop 
>in popularity during its first term or how strongly the anti-IRV 
>campaign would get waged against them.

Fascinating. Who waged that campaign? Why did they not expect it? 
What were the arguments in the campaign?

I've only seen a FairVote response, in the form of Terry Bouricius 
trying to fire up the Vermont LWV to stop this atrocity. No 
recognition of the problem at all. The other side was just "wrong." 
These are not deep thinkers.

And when IRV was dumped, they said nothing. Never mind. Nothing to 
see here, move along.

Anyway, I've looked up FairVote response and I'll respond separately on that.

>I'm sorry, I got some other stuff to do at this point.  Let me know 
>if you'd like me to respond to the rest of the email.

Don't waste your time.