At 08:49 PM 8/29/2005, Warren Smith wrote:
>Do you suggest the election system should rather declare one of the
candidates which are not approved by anyone the winner than to demand a
new election because of lack of approved candidates. (I certainly don't
agree to that.)
--yes I do. The job of a single-winner election system is to
produce a single winner.
It is not to say "I refuse to do my job" and then the voters try
again. Assuming
the voters produce the same votes for the same candidates (and why
should they not?
can you produce examples from history when they have not?) the same
thing then
happens ad infinitum.
First of all, there is an obvious assumption here: that the
candidates for the second election would be the same as for the
first. When run-off elections are held, I've never heard of it being
the same election de novo. And even if it were, the conditions would
surely be different, i.e., more time for arguments, and candidates
and those who support them might well tailor their arguments based on
the first election. While this would be no guarantee that the
election would not again fail, if it is at all a decent method,
failure is not likely.
So the run-off might be, as it normally is, for a subset of the
candidates for the first. If a run-off is between two candidates, and
no other votes are allowed, there will be a majority winner (if
abstentions are not counted). A runoff will also bring voters out who
did not vote the first time, especially if the election was close....
So a complete election method would include defining what happens if
a runoff is necessary. Top two? Approval winner, Condorcet winner, if
any, Range winner? And, of course, the runoff might have different
rules, designed to guarantee a winner.
Now, as to the argument that it is "the job" of the system to produce
a winner, the system is a cold and unintelligent machine. It does not
have a job, it is not a responsible being, it is merely a mechanism,
and artificial intelligence has in no way come to the point where we
could "give it a task" and expect it to complete it well under all
circumstances, unless we have designed it perfectly, something which
is possible with simple tasks, and rarely with complex ones.
This is why the best election methods, in my view, incorporate
deliberative process. Of those listed on the EM wiki, I only have
noticed Mr. Smith's Asset Voting and the delegable proxy election
process I contributed to the wiki. But, of course, elections in many
bodies involve some deliberative process....
Alcoholics Anonymous has an interesting process by which delegates
were (are?) elected. If no candidate gets a 2/3 majority, they
continue voting. I think they might drop the lowest candidate. I
don't know if they use Approval, they might. (My guess is that AA
members would be averse to discarding ballots, I don't know if the
ballots are written or not, I've never witnessed an AA election). If,
after a certain number of ballots, no candidate has reached the
required majority, the delegate is chosen by lot from among the top two.
It's interesting because it provides a certain level of
representation for what might be a minority faction....
(AA is the model Free Association, and the Conference to which the
delegates go is mostly an advisory body; the legal authority is in
Alcoholics World Services, Inc., a board-controlled nonprofit. As I
recall, board members *are* elected by the Conference, but only a
certain number are alcoholics, the bylaws require a certain number of
non-alcoholics -- it used to be a majority, but that was changed. And
I don't know if the Board has to accept Conference-elected delegates,
though certainly they routinely do. The true power that the members
of AA would be to withhold the regular contributions on which AA
World Services depends, since it is prohibited from building or
maintaining more than a small reserve. And I'm not aware of any
serious controversies between the Conference and the Board. But I
might not necessarily know....)
> 1. Can you explain to me the difference
>between assigning 64 or 65 points to the middle candidate?
> 2...there is no such thing as Util(A) or Util(B).
--1. Why should anybody have to explain it? Why should you have
to understand it? Why should anybody have to feel they understand it?
Well, perhaps if we are considering working for it?
2. There is such a thing. I have explained how to try to define it
in terms of
money, or brain chemicals, or neuron events. The latter (or even the former)
may not be easily measureable. (And I did not claim it was.) But
what we definitely
know is a false claim is that there "is no such thing."
What Warren is calling a "thing" may actually be more than one thing.
It hasn't been defined.
3. Furthermore, some Condorcet advocates - including, I think, you recently,
go too far in trying to deny utility, and thus cause grevious harm
to humanity.
I think that utility is a useful concept, but calculating utility is
a hazardous enterprise. Sometimes it is better than nothing,
sometimes it can be misleading. There are irrational factors....
[...]
>So you suggest that when candidate A gives $200000 to 1 voter and
nothing to the other 99 voters, but candidate B gives $1000 to each of
the 100 voters, then candidate A should be considered best for society.
--YES!! (at least, if utility=money.)
>That's strange, isn't it?
--NO!! And in fact the very fact that money is fungible (I
assume we both are
allowed to ignore, or have already factored in, inflation...) makes it quite
clear A is better - if it were non-monetary utility this would be less clear.
The example is backwards and might as well have been designed to
confuse. In a rational use of money as a measure of utility, it would
be the voters paying the society as a whole for the privilege of
electing a candidate. So candidate A bribes 1 voter. What do the
voters do? Presumably they make an offer stating the utility of the
election of their preferred candidate. So the voter A, wanting to
make a buck (literally) makes an offer of $100,000 to elect
candidate A. The B voters also offer $100,000 plus whatever personal
value they assign to the election. Given the average tax burden of
citizens, it might be well over $1,000 each. Candidate B was merely
defraying their expense.
The B candidate wins. But let's presume that the value to B voters is
$1,000 each, and the value to the A voter was 0, but he decides to
turn over (i.e., bid) the entire amount, $200,000. So A wins. But the
$200,000 is distributed to all the voters, giving each of them
(almost) $2,000. Since this is worth more to them than preventing the
election of A, they have all profited by the generous contribution of A....
If you are going to consider a money-value election process, at least
make it a sensible one! Value in such an election is not merely a
*stated* value, but an actual bid.
Warren, you have work to do. I suggest you stop wasting your time in
pursuing arguments over details....
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