Monotonicity seems wrong in practice.

[Charles Fiterman]

At 07:41 PM 10/23/98 -0700, you wrote:

>"The Monotonicity Criterion is undoubtedly one of the basic
>criteria of democratic decisionmaking. The idea of counting
>votes in an effort to determine group preference assumes that
>the more support an alternative has, the better the chance it
>has of being chosen as the socially most perfect alternative.
>Surely this sounds like a reasonable requirement. Indeed, it
>seems to be at the heart of the idea of letting the people
>choose."

History suggests that this is a mistake, people who win with
super large margins tend to be very bad with great regularity.
I have strong prejudice against ignoring repeated physical
observations in favor of simplistic ideology.

So what's wrong with this criterion?

First certainty is an emotional state. Not only is it unconnected
with the probability of the assertion there seems to be a strong
negative connection. If you are sure of something logical you
will attack doubt with reason and observation but the nature of
our minds is these things only produce more doubt. If we wish to
be very sure of something there are disciplines for getting there.
These rely on bludgeoning a starved and exhausted brain into
submission or on shouting the same thing over and over in a crowd
until you are horse. It works best with nonsense because you wont
be tempted to fight doubt with reason. If you take the things people
are most sure of you will find propositions that are nonsense to
outsiders.

Very large majorities are produced by the mechanisms that produce
certainty, screaming crowds and illogical arguments for nonsense
positions. The worst laws have the largest majorities in Congress.

Automatically overturning elections where the winner had more than
70% of the vote wouldn't be that bad a mistake. I don't really propose
that but in evaluating election methods we should remember it as a
reasonable and fair alternative.

If I vote A>B>C it may well be that my arguments for A and against C
are emotional and illogical. An approval election irons out some
of the peaks and valleys of emotion by asking the calm question
"Who can you live with".

Let me point out that last week a Republican candidate for Senator
shot his Democratic opponent. I was not surprised. I would have been
very surprised indeed if a Democrat had shot a Republican and I am
Libertarian. The Republicans have carried on their campaigns at an
emotional level that made this inevitable and they promise continued
escalation of that level.

Creating election rules like approval voting that cripple hate campaigns
and violent emotion seems a good goal. Let me add that to our goals.

Violent emotion and hate campains shouldn't be encouraged by the rules.
Given the choice of promoting yourself or attacking an opponent it should
be better strategy to promote yourself.








Charles Fiterman Geodesic Systems
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"Augusts began a campaign to promote traditional family
values with fines for adultery. But he was famous for his
adulteries often seducing the wife and daughters of the same
man. Towards the end he became obsessed with deflowering
virgins and they were brought to the palace as young as
seven." Suetonius