[EMAIL PROTECTED]">I reply:Something I like about margins, and that is also relevant to the concerns
You just can't let go of Richard & his diagram, can you. Richard told
me that it had nothing to do with how the diagram looked, and so
I acknowledged that it was more about Margins resulting in a diagram
that Richard liked better. Richard said the diagram was just an
illusstration. What had he thought that I thought the diagram was?
Ok, the diagram was an illustration of something that Richard likes
about Margins.
of a voting public. Mike had stated he prefers a method that overrules
fewer voters. My illustration relates overruling to a distance on the
diagram. The distance Mike chooses to measure is much farther than the
true distance involved in dropping a defeat. To drop a defeat, you only
need to move it as far as the tie line. Mike would move it all the way to the
no-winning-votes line, which gives a distorted measure of the amount
of overruling that takes place.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">Now Anthony says "It had nothing to do with what voters want."Mike has taken Anthony out of context here. Anthony was referring to
Yes, Anthony, that was my point. You've gotten it right again. Very
good.
Mike's statement about margins looking "nice on a certain diagram"
when he made that statement. Mike's original approach to criticising
my illustration was to trivialize it. So Mike's original criticism was
not really about voter concerns, was it?
Personally I think this matter has been beaten to death already, which
is why I haven't posted on it in the last few days. Clearly there are
differences of opinion. Mike is more concerned about protecting
the sincere CW than about voter overruling. For me the priorities are
reversed. Based on my different priorities I rate margins somewhat
higher than winning votes. In spite of what Mike said in an earlier
post, I never contradicted him on the possibility of strategic collapse
in margins. I do think collapse and reversal are high-risk strategies
(done to increase chances of best-case utility while at the same time
making the worst case more likely, without necessarily achieving an
overall increase in utility expectation), so they probably won't be
as prevalent as Mike thinks. Besides, I don't elevate these problems
to the same level of importance Mike does.
Approval or any form of Condorcet will be so much better than the
silly IRV or Borda alternatives to single-mark Plurality, and the
differences between various forms of Condorcet are small compared
to the differences between Approval or Condorcet and the silly
methods. Those who agree on this point should at least unite behind
any wasted "reform" effort such as IRV.
Richard
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">
