Chris Benham wrote:
Kristofer,
Thanks for at least responding.
"...I won't say anything about the desirability because I don't know
what it implies;.."
Only judging criteria by how they fit in with other criteria is
obviously circular.
That's true. If we're going to judge criteria by how they fit in with
other criteria, we should have an idea of how relatively desirable they are.
It may also be the case that it the tradeoff would be too great, by
reasoning similar to what I gave in the reply to Juho about your
Dominant Mutual Quarter Burial Resistance property. But if we consider
this in more detail, we don't really know whether such tradeoffs are too
great for, for instance, cloneproof criteria (though I think they are not).
Do you (or anyone) think that judged in isolation this strategy
criterion is desirable?
It is true that some desirable/interesting criteria are so "restrictive"
(as you put it) that
IMO compliance with them can only be a redeeming feature of a method
that isn't
one of the best. (I put Participation in that category.)
In isolation (not affecting anything else), sure. It's desirable because
it limits the burying tricks that can be done.
If you're asking whether I think it's more important than being, say,
cloneproof, I don't think I can answer at the moment. I haven't thought
about the relative desirability of criteria, though I prefer Condorcet
methods to be both Smith and cloneproof.
Maybe some people would like me to paraphrase this suggested criterion
in language
that is more EM-typical:
'If candidate A majority-strength pairwise beats candidate B, then it
must not be possible for B's
supporters (pairwise versus A) to use Burial or Pushover strategy to
change the winner from A
to B.'
The mention of pushover strategy there would mean that the method would
have to have some degree of monotonicity, I assume.
"Destructive burial would be trying to make X not win,..."
Your "destructive burial" looks almost synonymous with *monotonicity*.
Hm, not necessarily. Without qualifications on the criterion,
destructive burial would be constructive burial for *any* candidate, but
also more than that. If A>X voters can cause A to win by rearranging
their ballots, then that would be a form of constructive burial. If, for
instance, some subset of the voters who place X fifth can keep X from
winning by rearranging their first-to-fourth preferences, then that
would be destructive burial.
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