[EM] High Resolution Inferred Approval version of ASM
C.Benham
cbenham at adam.com.au
Sun Jun 23 12:57:46 PDT 2019
On 24/06/2019 3:13 am, John wrote:
> The single-election approach simply cannot provide a good election on
> its own for statistical reasons, and mixing bad rules into good rules
> won't make better rules.
John,
"Bad rules" give bad results. Instead of this dismissive philosophical
hand-waving, why don't you be so kind as to furnish an example where VIASME
gives a result that you consider to be bad (and where your specified
preferred method gives a better result)?
Chris Benham
On 24/06/2019 3:13 am, John wrote:
> My point is mostly that score is useless, and hybrid methods are
> essentially trying to cover for Score by incorporating it while
> avoiding it's use in practice. It's kind of like saying you have a
> new ear infection treatment where you use amoxicillin, and if that
> doesn't work you attach leeches to the earlobes.
>
> I have found that even e.g. Tideman's Alternative resisits burying,
> although I cover it with a robust candidate selection via a
> proportional primary election specifically to prevent formation of
> useful oligarchy coalitions. Someone should quantify "resists
> burying" for all these methods one day.
>
> Note that resistance doesn't mean burying does nothing. In some
> 4-candidate examples, I had to inflate a candidate's voter base (to
> about 31% in one example) to eliminate the Condorcet winner, and the
> practical result was if 4% of voters whose first choice was the
> Condorcet winner preferred a candidate less-desirable to the burying
> coalition, that candidate was elected. In simple terms, it produced
> worse results for the tactical voters than if they had voted honestly.
>
> The single-election approach simply cannot provide a good election on
> its own for statistical reasons, and mixing bad rules into good rules
> won't make better rules.
>
> On Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 12:50 PM C.Benham <cbenham at adam.com.au
> <mailto:cbenham at adam.com.au>> wrote:
>
>
> On 22/06/2019 9:15 am, John wrote:
>
>> The great purported benefit of score systems is that more voters
>> can rank A over B, yet due to the scores score can elect B:
>>
> John,
>
> Is every method that uses score ballots a "score system"? My
> suggested VIASME method meets Smith and therefore avoids
> the "benefit" you refer to.
>
>> Wrapping it in a better system and using that information to make
>> auxiliary decisions is still incorporating bad data. Bad data is
>> worse than no data.
>
> As it relates to VIASME, I'm afraid you've lost me. A few years
> ago James Green-Armytage proposed a Condorcet method that asked
> the voters to both
> rank the candidates (with equal ranking and truncation allowed)
> and also give each of them a high-resolution score and the ranking
> and the scoring
> had to be consistent with each other. If there was a Condorcet
> winner the scoring was ignored.
>
> Well it seems to me that the ranking is a redundant extra chore
> for the voter because it can be inferred from the scoring. That is
> what I propose for
> VIASME. The Green-Armytage method was called Cardinal-Weighted
> Pairwise and was designed to try to resist Burial strategy. He
> had a simpler-ballot
> version called Approval-Weighted Pairwise. One of the reasons I
> don't much like it is that it can elect a candidate that is
> pairwise-beaten by a more approved
> candidate.
>
> https://electowiki.org/wiki/Cardinal_pairwise
>
> On 22/06/2019 8:57 am, Felix Sargent wrote:
>
>> That's not even going into what happens when a voter ranks an
>> ordinal ballot strategically, placing "guaranteed losers" to 2nd
>> and 3rd places in order to improve the chances of their first
>> choice candidate (in IRV at least).
>
> Felix, the Burial strategy you describe doesn't work in IRV
> because your 2nd and 3rd place preferences won't be counted if
> your first choice candidate is still alive.
> It is methods that fail Later-no-Help (such as all the Condorcet
> methods) that are vulnerable to that, some more than others.
>
> Chris Benham
>
> On 22/06/2019 9:15 am, John wrote:
>> The error comes when you make inferences.
>>
>> The great purported benefit of score systems is that more voters
>> can rank A over B, yet due to the scores score can elect B:
>>
>> A:1.0 B:0.9 C:0.1
>> C:1.0 A:0.5 B:0.4
>> B:1.0 A:0.2 C:0.1
>>
>> A=1.7, B=2.3, C=2.2
>>
>> Both B and C defeat A, despite A defeating both ranked.
>>
>> If the first voter scores B as 0.7, C wins.
>>
>> Whenever a system attempts to use score or its low-resolution
>> Approval variant, it is relying on this information.
>>
>> So why does this matter?
>>
>> The voters are 100% certain and precise that these are their votes:
>>
>> A>B>C
>> C>A>B
>> B>A>C
>>
>> We know A defeats B, A defeats C, and B defeats C. A is the
>> Condorcet winner.
>>
>> For score votes, 1.0 is always 1.0. It's the first rank, the
>> measure. This is of course another source of information
>> distortion in cardinal systems: how is the information meaningful
>> as a comparison between two voters?
>>
>> How do you know 10 voters voting A first at 1.0 aren't half as
>> invested in A as 6 voters voting B 1.0, this really A=5 B=6?
>>
>> Ten of us prefer strawberry to peanut butter.
>>
>> Six of us WILL DIE IF YOU OPEN A JAR OF PEANUT BUTTER HERE.
>>
>> Score systems claim to represent this and capture this
>> information, but they can't.
>>
>> (Notice I used the negative: that 1.0 vote is an expression of
>> the damage of their 0.0-scored alternative.)
>>
>> Even setting that aside, however, you have a problem where an
>> individual might put down 0.7 or 0.9 or 0.5 for the SAME
>> candidate in the SAME election, solely based on how bad they are
>> at creating a cardinal comparison. Humans are universally bad at
>> cardinal comparison.
>>
>> So now you can actually elect A, B, or C based on how well-rested
>> people are, how hungry they are, or anything else that impacts
>> their mood and thus the sharpness or softness by which they
>> critically compare candidates.
>>
>> It's a sort of random number generator.
>>
>> Wrapping it in a better system and using that information to make
>> auxiliary decisions is still incorporating bad data. Bad data is
>> worse than no data.
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 7:27 PM Felix Sargent
>> <felix.sargent at gmail.com <mailto:felix.sargent at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> I don't know how you can think that blurrier data would end
>> up with a more precise result.
>> No matter how you cut it, if you rank ABCD then it translates
>> into a score of
>> A: 1.0
>> B: .75
>> C: 0.5
>> D: 0.25
>>
>> There's no way of describing differences between candidates
>> beyond a straight line between first place and last place.
>> Even if the voter is imprecise in the difference between A
>> and B they will never make the error of rating B more than A,
>> whereas the error between a voter's actual preferences and
>> the preferences that are recorded with an ordinal ballot has
>> the liability of being massive. Consider I like A and B but
>> HATE C. ABC does not tell you that.
>> That's not even going into what happens when a voter ranks an
>> ordinal ballot strategically, placing "guaranteed losers" to
>> 2nd and 3rd places in order to improve the chances of their
>> first choice candidate (in IRV at least).
>>
>> Your analysis depends on the question of how intelligent you
>> believe the average voter to be.
>> If voters can use Amazon and Yelp star ratings, they can do
>> score voting.
>>
>> Felix Sargent <https://felixsargent.com>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 2:14 PM John <john.r.moser at gmail.com
>> <mailto:john.r.moser at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Cardinal voting collects higher-resolution data, but not
>> necessarily precise data.
>>
>> Let's say you score candidates:
>>
>> A: 1.0
>> B: 0.5
>> C: 0.25
>> D: 0.1
>>
>> In reality, B is 90% as favored as A. C is 70% as favored
>> as B. The real numbers would be:
>>
>> A: 1.0
>> B: 0.9
>> C: 0.63
>> D: etc.
>>
>> How would this happen?
>>
>> Cardinal: I approve of A 90% as much as B.
>>
>> Natural and honest: I prefer A to win, and I am not just
>> as happy with B winning, or close to it. I feel maybe
>> half as good about that? B is between C and D and I
>> don't like C, but I like D less.
>>
>> Strategic: even voting 0.5 for B means possibly helping B
>> beat A, but what if C wins...
>>
>> The strategic nightmare is inherent to score and approval
>> systems. When approvals aren't used to elect but only for
>> data, people are not naturally inclined to analyze a
>> score representing their actual approval.
>>
>> Why?
>>
>> Because people decide by simulation. Simulation of
>> ordinal preference is easy: I like A over B. Even then,
>> sometimes you can't seem to decide who is better.
>>
>> Working out precisely how much I approve of A versus B is
>> harder. It takes a lot of effort and the basic
>> simulation approach responds heavily to how good you feel
>> about A losing to B, not about how much B satisfies you
>> on a scale of 0 to A.
>>
>> Score and approval voting source a high-error,
>> low-confidence sample. It's like recording climate data
>> by licking your finger and holding it in the wind each
>> day, then writing down what you think is the
>> temperature. Someone will say, "it's more data than
>> warmer/colder trends!" While ignoring that you are not
>> Mercury in a graduated cylinder.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 3:10 PM Felix Sargent
>> <felix.sargent at gmail.com
>> <mailto:felix.sargent at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Valuation can be ordinal, in that you can know that 3
>> is more than 2.
>> There are two questions before us: Which voting
>> method collects more data? Which tabulation method
>> picks the best winner from that data?
>>
>> Which voting method collects more data?
>> Cardinal voting collects higher resolution data than
>> ordinal voting. Consider this thought experiment. If
>> I give you a rating of A:5 B:2 C:1 D:3 E:5 F:2 you
>> should create an ordered list from that -- AEDFBC. If
>> I gave you AEDFBC you couldn't convert that back into
>> its cardinal data.
>>
>> Which tabulation picks a better winner from the data?
>> Both Score and Approval voting pick the person with
>> the highest votes.
>> Summing ordinal data, on the other hand, is very
>> complicated, as to avoid loops. Methods like
>> Condorcet or IRV have been proposed to eliminate
>> those but ultimately they're hacks for dealing with
>> incomplete information.
>>
>> Felix Sargent <https://felixsargent.com>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 5:23 AM John
>> <john.r.moser at gmail.com
>> <mailto:john.r.moser at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Voters can't readily provide meaningful
>> information as score voting. It's
>> highly-strategic and the comparison of cardinal
>> values is not natural.
>>
>> All valuation is ordinal. Prices are based from
>> cost; but what people WILL pay, given no option
>> to pay less, is based on ordinal comparison.
>>
>> Is X worth 2 Y?
>>
>> For the $1,000 iPhone I could have a OnePlus 6t
>> and a Chromebook. The 6t...I can get a cheaper
>> smartphone, but I prefer the 6t to that phone
>> plus whatever else I buy.
>>
>> I have a higher paying job, so each dollar is
>> worth fewer hours, so the ordinal value of a
>> dollar to me is lower. $600 of my dollars is
>> fewer hours than $600 minimum wage dollars. I
>> have access to my most-preferred purchases and
>> can buy way down into my less-preferred purchases.
>>
>> Information about this is difficult to pin down
>> by voter. Prices in the stock market set by a
>> constant, public auction among millions of buyers
>> and sellers. A single buyer can hardly price one
>> stock against another, and prices against what
>> they think their gains will be relative to
>> current price.
>>
>> When pricing candidates, you'll see a lot like
>> Mohs hardness: 2 is 200, 3 is 500, 4 is 1,500;
>> but we label things that are 250 or 450 as 2.5,
>> likewise between 500 and 1,500 is 3.5. Being
>> between X and Y is always immediately HALFWAY
>> between X and Y, most intuitively.
>>
>> The rated system sucks even before you factor in
>> strategic concerns (which only matter if actually
>> using a score-driven method).
>>
>> Approval is just low-resolution (1 bit) score voting.
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 12:01 AM C.Benham
>> <cbenham at adam.com.au
>> <mailto:cbenham at adam.com.au>> wrote:
>>
>> Forest,
>>
>> With paper and pencil ballots and the voters
>> only writing in their numerical scores it
>> probably isn't very practical for the
>> Australian Electoral Commission
>> hand vote-counters.
>>
>> But if it isn't compulsory to mark each
>> candidate and the default score is zero, I'm
>> sure the voters could quickly adapt.
>>
>> In the US I gather that there is at least one
>> reform proposal to use these type of ballots.
>> One of these, "Score Voting" aka "Range Voting",
>> proposes to just use Average Ratings with I
>> gather the default score being "no opinion"
>> rather than zero and some tweak to prevent an
>> unknown
>> candidate from winning.
>>
>> So it struck me that if we can collect such a
>> large amount of detailed information from the
>> voters then we could do a lot more with it,
>> and if we
>> want something that meets the Condorcet
>> criterion this is my suggestion.
>>
>> Chris Benham
>>
>> https://rangevoting.org/
>>
>>> *How score voting works:*
>>>
>>> 1. Eachvote
>>> <https://rangevoting.org/MeaningOfVote.html>consists
>>> of a numerical score within some range
>>> (say0 to 99
>>> <https://rangevoting.org/Why99.html>)
>>> for each candidate. Simpler is 0 to 9
>>> ("single digit score voting").
>>>
>>
>> On 21/06/2019 5:33 am, Forest Simmons wrote:
>>> Chris, I like it especially the part about
>>> naive voters voting sincerely being at no
>>> appreciable disadvantage while resisting
>>> burial and complying with the CD criterion.
>>>
>>> From your experience in Australia where full
>>> rankings are required (as I understand it)
>>> what do you think about the practicality of
>>> rating on a scale of zero to 99, as compared
>>> with ranking a long list of candidates? Is
>>> it a big obstacle?
>>
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