On Jul 3, 2008, at 1:39 , Kevin Venzke wrote:
The scenario is more like "chicken." If I think you will be
sincere, then
I should bury your candidate. If I think you're going to bury my
candidate,
then (if I only care about who wins) I should vote sincerely. Or
else I
can be stubborn and bury your candidate, thereby refusing to let
you bury
my candidate and get away with it. When we both bury, then we crash
and
elect the worst candidate.
The basic difficulty in large real life elections is that it is not
"I" who can decide how to vote, and the opinions of others (as well
as "us") are uncertain to "us".
My response to Juho's last two posts is just that I think an election
method should behave properly even in simple scenarios. I don't think
simple scenarios will just disappear when Condorcet is introduced.
That scenario was the simplest I could imagine. Only three
candidates. One strong candidate but below majority, one weaker
runner-up, and third clearly weaker candidate. This was also the most
threatening scenario from burial point of view that I could imagine.
Are there simpler and more threatening ones?
Simple scenarios will not disappear but the ability to control how
people vote and clairvoyance to their plans will for the most part
disappear in large real life elections. (Or actually those simple
scenarios where there are e.g. only three groups of voters in which
all voters have exactly the same opinion and/or will react similarly
will practically disappear in large real life elections.)
I have made the request to present a credible real life scenario
where burial would really be a working strategy multiple times to
multiple experts but so far I haven't seen (or recognized ;-) any
such examples. I think this gives support to the idea that Condorcet
methods are quite safe from burial point of view in large real life
elections. I'm not sure if any counter strategies (when voting or in
polls or as modified methods) will ever be needed to defend them
(maybe not even in the most strategic societies).
Juho
P.S. The worst case I can imagine is maybe one where the voters are
happy (and maybe directed to e.g. by requiring full rankings) to vote
as told by some central management within the parties. In such
situations large elections may become more like elections of few
controlling individuals and the use of strategies thereby becomes
easier. Also the plans of others would be better known to other
controllers since the voting guidance would have to be distributed to
large masses. (This is the reason why I often mention also free
individual decision making as one criterion in addition to the
elections being large and public, when describing what is considered
to be a typical real life election.)
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