<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<br>
<br>
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">bits and pieces
At 05:33 AM 7/21/2007, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">That's incorrect. It's exactly the same in RV as in Approval. In
your example, with B at your Approval cutoff, it doesn't matter how you rate B.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
In what I wrote, B was not at the voters "approval cutoff." I didn't
give an approval cutoff. Approval cutoff is an artificial insertion;
it's a device for converting range ratings to approval votes.
This is the situation described:
The voter prefers A>B>C, with the preference strength between A and B
being the same as the strength between B and C.
There is nothing here about Approval cutoff, there is nothing that
says that the voter does or does not "approve" of *any* candidate.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I think we safely say that max-rating a candidate is equivalent to
"approving" that candidate. <br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Ossipoff confused the fact that the candidate was intermediate
between A and C in sincere rating, i.e., being midrange, with being
"at your Approval cutoff."</pre>
</blockquote>
If the preference strength between A and B is weaker than that between
B and C then with<br>
the winning probabilities being equal (or unknown) then the voter's
best strategy is to max-rate<br>
A and B. If instead the preference strength between B and C is weaker,
the voter does best to<br>
min-rate B and C (and of course max-rate A). <br>
<br>
Since the situation you describe is at the border of these two
(max-rate B or min-rate B), we can<br>
say that "B is at your approval cutoff".<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">And, quite clearly, it *does* matter how
you rate B in some scenarios; for example, if the real pairwise
election is between A and B, then the optimum vote is to rate B at
minimum. And if it is between B and C, then the optimum vote is to
rate B at maximum.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Of course it can "matter" after the fact, but with both possible "real
pairwise elections" being<br>
equally likely at the time of voting, in Abd's scenario it
probabilistically makes no difference what<br>
rating the voter gives B.<br>
<br>
Chris Benham<br>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>