[EM] Fwd: Coombs. Elimination Examination.

[Michael Ossipoff]

Kristofer says:

…

[quote]

On 9/25/23 20:41, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
[quote]
…

> Some academic authors have high praise for Coombs. One say that, with
> sincere ranking, & fewer than 5 candidates, Coombs always elects the CW.
[/quote]
…

That can't be right:

…
1: A>C>B>D
1: B>C>A>D
2: A>D>B>C
1: A>C>D>B
3: B>C>D>A
1: D>A>C>B
…
A is the CW but has highest last preference count and so is eliminated
first.
…
However, it *is* true for three candidates.

[/quote]

…

That’s probably what the author actually said.
…
[quote]

[quote]

> But Coombs is obviously vulnerable to east burial strategy. In
> particular, trust & betrayal perpetrated by the voters of a “
lesser”-evil.

[/quote]
…
Clearly then, knowing this fact, the voters who propose and enact Coombs
must be tough voters who would never ever bury. Therefore Coombs' burial
incentive is no problem wherever it would be proposed.

[/quote]

…

Well, maybe not quite so “clearly”. How does not ever burying equate with
“tough”ness?

…

I must confess that I haven’t heard about proposals to enact Coombs.

…

How very odd, that people who would never bury are the (only) people who’d
want to enact a method that incentivizes burying & could well lead to
rampant routine mutual burying !!

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Isn’t science amazing!

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[quote]
I jest :-)

[/quote]

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…&, by so doing, you waste our time, & space at the postings-page, & send
your substandard attempt at humor to everyone’s e-mail.

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You’re aware that your bullshit is going to the e-mail of every
list-subscriber, right?

…

[quote]
My real point is "beware arguments that are too powerful; they might
just lead to absurdity".

[/quote]

…

Kristofer must still be jesting  :-)

…

The only absurdity is in his sloppy attempt at an analogy, which has
nothing in common with what it’s supposed to be an analogy for.   …& his
equally sloppy & absurd conclusion from it (which he expressed as a serious
“real point”, rather than as “jest”);

…

…suggesting the question: Does Kristofer understand the difference between
a jest & a “real point”?

…

Evidently Kristofer believes that an electorate that enacts RCV does so
because they can’t wait to bury their favorite under a disgusting
lesser-evil.. :-)

…

…Oh, but wait--they can already do that in Plurality, & don’t need to enact
RCV for that purpose.

…

Go figure.

…

…but we wouldn’t want to say anything absurd  :-)

…
[quote]
Amusingly, according to James Green-Armytage, if we don't care about
strategic susceptibility

[/quote]

…

I didn’t say or imply that I don’t care about “strategic susceptibility”.  I
said that an electorate who has enacted RCV wouldn’t do so because they’re
inclined to bury their favorite under a lessesr-evil.

…

Since the start of EM, strategy-need has been my  emphasis here. …& remains
so. Perhaps Kristofer didn’t read my posts that said that RCV’s
disadvantage is that it strongly depends on the electorate not being timid
lesser-evil giveaway-voters.

…

…or when I said that I prefer the versatile & foolproof Condorcet because
it accommodates & reassures even the most cowardy oversompromiser.

…

At no time did I say that optimal voting in RCV never involves strategy. I
spoke of an electorate that obviously wants to rank sincerely (& says so).  …&
said that they therefore weren’t enacting RCV in order to bury their
favorite under a despicable lesser-evil. I didn’t say that they’d optimally
*always* rank sincerely.

…

Based on policies, there’s just no way that a Democrat or Republican could
beat Jill Stein in an honestly-counted 2-way contest, following a debate
that clarifies their policy-differences & reminds of whatever habitual
dishonesty a candidate or party has had.

…

I’ve never heard of a Condorcet poll in which the Green wasn’t the CW.

…

I prefer a method that always elects, when one exists, a candidate who’d
beat each of the others in a 2-way election, as indicated by pairwise
beating everyone in a pairwise-count election.

…

With RCV, that candidate usually wins. But not always. Sometimes strategy
is needed in order to achieve that.

…

Do you do that when your 2nd choice compromise is a sleazy corrupt POS?  I
hope not.

…

But that doesn’t mean that doing so is never optimal in RCV:

…

Suppose that (as I’ve claimed, & still claim, is how things are in our
elections), there are the Sleazy POS candidates, &, in contradistinction,
the excellent & fully acceptable candidates. But what I’m saying doesn’t
depend on it being that stark & well-defined.

…

So, say that some set of candidates is your excellent, or at least
fully-acceptable ones. They’re the (only) ones that I’d suggest approving
in an Approval election.

…

Say the method is RCV, & the most winnable member of your excellent or
fully acceptable candidates isn’t your favorite member of that set.

…

You should rank the excellent or fully-acceptable candidates in order of
winnability, & then, below them, rank the other candidates in order of
preference (i.e. in reverse order of degree of
unacceptableness/despicableness).

…

…because RCV meets Later-No-Harm, & so there’s no instrumental reason not
to rank the unacceptables.

…

So, yes, RCV’s optimal voting will sometimes or often be strategic.

…

I never said that RCV meets FBC.

…

Condorcet’s FBC failure is so rare, unpredictable as to make it
strategically-irrelevant.

…

RCV’s FBC-failure is much more significant & strategy-causing.

…

But I still like RCV, because the top-end defensive strategy that I
described isn’t a problem.   …compared to the problem that RCV *won’t* have
(for the reason I’ve been stating) with disgusting lesser-evils.

…

…& of course RCV has its special advantages, such as:

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No Chicken-Dilemma

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No offensive-strategy whatsoever

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Later-No-Harm

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Later-No-Help.

…

You know, the fact that RCV’s only strategy is defensive means that there’s
no need to try to prevent it.  i.e., when using show-of-hands instead of
written writings, where voters’ vote in any round could be influenced by
events so far.

…

In fact, defensive strategy could be facilitated, by letting people in a
public-election change their votes if desired, after the 1st full
election-count, & then doing a 2nd full election-count with the changed
rankings.

…

…or by reporting the result of each round of counting, allowing votes to be
changed, after which that round would be repeated.

…

…or even by automation (optimal for each voter).

…

…suggesting a possible procedure that could have a set of desirable
properties & criterion-compliances not ordinarily possible.

…

Those enhancements probably would overcomplicate a first proposal.

…

[quote]

If we don’t care about strategic-susceptibility, then Coombs has a better
VSE than IRV. So if
we can simply discard strategy by the (too general) argument that
strategy will never come into play

[/quote]

…

As explained above, I said no such thing about RCV.

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You didn’t read my post(s) that you’re replying to, did you.

…

You know, it might be best to not comment on or reply to what you don’t
read.

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Oh, & BTW, has SU’s name been changed to VSE?  :-)

…

Yes, & it’s been long known, from many simulations, that cardinal methods,
voted sincerely, give high SU/VSE in simulations. Of course, if the voters’
candidate-ratings are determined by the same spatial-distances that are
used for determining the SU of the result, it’s hardly surprising that
cardinal methods would have spectacular success in simulations with sincere
voting.

…

It hardly needs a simulation to establish that.

…

But sincere voting of course isn’t what we’ll get under current conditions
with cardinal methods. As I’ve previously described here, Approval, Score &
STAR encourage a voter to do giveaway.  …as a matter of course.

…

Timid voters can be expected, in Approval, to approve Disgusting
Lesser-Evil to protect against Greater-Evil

…

Likewise, to some degree, with Score & STAR.

…

A provided balloting, due the possibilities that it offers that Plurality
doesn’t offer,  encourages & suggests to the voter a way of voting.
Rankings suggest & encourage sincere ranking. Cardinal ballots suggest &
encourage spreading-it-around generously giving partial points “sincerely”
to everyone, including Sleazy-Lesser-Evil….to show that you sincerely rate
him higher than Greater-Evil.

…

…So Cardinal methods will result in Evils (the Lesser kind) getting a lot
of help to use against Favorite.
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