<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2011/11/3 David L Wetzell <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:wetzelld@gmail.com">wetzelld@gmail.com</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 9:14 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:km_elmet@lavabit.com" target="_blank">km_elmet@lavabit.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
David L Wetzell wrote:<br>
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And I don't think the Condorcet criterion is /that important/, as I think in political elections, our options are inherently fuzzy options and so all of our rankings are prone to be ad hoc. <br>
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If opinions are fuzzy, that means that the voters' true distribution within political space would differ somewhat from the distribution you would infer by looking at the votes alone.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>
it could also mean that political spaces are at best somewhat useful constructs and that the "true" distribution is something that's constantly being manipulated, not taken as given. This understanding makes me tend to be more middle-brow than most people on this list. </div>
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<br>KM:In terms of the 2D Yee diagrams, this means that if the voters are centered on a certain pixel, their votes might behave as if it was centered on one of the neighboring pixels (since each pixel in a 2D Yee diagram gives who would win if the population were normally distributed around that point in political space and preferred candidates closer to them). So in a Condorcet method, this might sometimes lead to the wrong candidate being elected. It would do so in the case where the true distribution is on one side of the divider between two Voronoi cells, and the distribution inferred from the votes alone is at the other side.<br>
</blockquote><div>dlw:Yup, getting the condorcet winner all of the time isn't the slam-dunk it's purported to be. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>KM:However, fuzzy opinions can cause greater problems with IRV. Because IRV is sensitive to the order of eliminations, it doesn't just have the clean cell transitions of Condorcet; it can also have disconnected regions near the edges or in the middle of one of the regions. In essence, these are the same as the "island of other candidates" artifacts, but in two dimensions rather than one.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: I'm afraid you lost me there. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>KM:It may be the case that voters are not centrally distributed in political opinion-space, but I think the observation can be generalized. If I'm right, why put up with a method that, by sensitivity to the elimination order, amplifies the fuzziness of the votes?<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: Well, 1. IRV3 doesn't let folks rank all of the options and so it hopefully has more quality control on which options are ranked. </div><div>2. by not always giving us the "center", it does permit learning about the different viewpoints. Remember, since I'm middle-brow, I don't put as much significance on optimizing within the distribution of political opinion space. </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Balinski and Laraki studied a number of rules, and found that IRV and Plurality elected an extremist almost 100% of the time; Condorcet and Range elected a centrist almost 100%; and only Majority Judgment elected both centrists and extremists with about equal balance. So "learning about the different viewpoints does not favor IRV, but rather MJ.</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="gmail_quote">
<div>3. It introduces some uncertainty in the circulation of the elites, which can give alternative viewpoints a chance to get a better hearing. When a new third party gains ground, it'll get a serious hearing and hopefully the de facto center will be moved. </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Again, this actually argues for MJ more than IRV.</div><div><br></div><div>JQ </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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</div><br><font color="#888888"><div>dlw</div>
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