[EM] Countering FairVote propaganda on Wikipedia

[Closed Limelike Curves]

These are great suggestions, thank you :)

For organizing the criteria, my proposal is to replace the current table
with maybe 5 numbers:
1. Condorcet efficiency
2. Social utility efficiency
3. Spoiler resistance (IIA compliance)
4. Participation satisfaction
5. Monotonicity satisfaction

(Is Jameson Quinn on this email list? I know he had some relevant
simulations.)


On Sun, Mar 17, 2024 at 4:39 AM Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km_elmet at t-online.de>
wrote:

> On 2024-03-16 20:45, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:
> > If y'all want to understand why FairVote has been so successful, the
> > most widely-read Wikipedia pages on voting systems+theory are all
> > extremely soft on IRV/Hare for a system with so many pathologies.
>
> I haven't had much time to dedicate to Wikipedia of late, but here are
> some comments and ideas about how the examples could be corrected.
>
> >
> >  1. "Comparison of electoral systems" is a complete mess. ~0 help to
> >     anyone who wants to understand which systems are better or worse.
>
> The problem is that we can't have all of the criteria at once. That
> doesn't mean that every method is equally good, but if the table is
> meant to give an indication of which methods are better than others, it
> would have to be reorganized.
>
> I'm not sure how though? We could argue that elections with Condorcet
> cycles are rare and thus Condorcet is important. Or reorder the columns
> by how much Wikipedia traffic their respective articles get as a proxy
> of how serious/interesting people think the criteria are?
>
> Or have a section with arguments about what criteria are important.
> IRVists would probably say LNH. Condorcet proponents would say
> Condorcet. rb-j would say summability, approval and cardinal guys would
> say weak FBC.
>
> Maybe people can agree that clone independence is pretty important.
> There might be a room for more general strategic nomination incentive,
> too, and then we could link to Green-Armytage's results showing IRV to
> have significant exit incentive despite its clone independence.
>
> >  2. Tables, charts, etc. provide information overload with tons of
> >     columns but ~0 information on how common these failures are. Most
> >     people would think twice about Hare if they knew it has /even/
> >     /more/ pathologies than FPP (under impartial culture, when counting
> >     monotonicity and participation failures).
>
> Ideally, we'd pick some sensible default ballot distribution and then
> give information about how often failures occur. Impartial culture is a
> useful "worst case" or pessimist distribution: if things can go wrong,
> they likely will go wrong in IC, but it should be clear that that's what
> it's used as a proxy for.
>
> Spatial distributions are more realistic.
>
> Then we could run simulators to get the failure probabilities and report
> them. But as Wikipedia is not a place for OR, we would have to get them
> published elsewhere first.
>
> >  3. The "Criticism" section under IRV has zero criticism except from
> >     right-wing nutjobs saying it's a way to rig elections. None of the
> >     major problems with IRV (monotonicity, frequent spoiler effects) are
> >     mentioned in the lead at all.
>
> That ought to be the easiest one to fix. Make a reference to center
> squeeze (see my reply to rb-j), one to monotonicity (IIRC there are
> already references to sources about IRV nonmonotonicity), and one to
> general exit incentive as indicating spoiler effects.
>
> -km
>
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