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Collusion is prevented in the same way that vote buying is prevented now -- you can't verify how other people have voted. This means that you could tell your f

Collusion is prevented in the same way that vote buying is prevented now -- you can't verify how other people have voted. This means that you could tell your friend you'll vote for B, but actually still vote for A and A will get more votes. Since you can't verify that collusion has worked, the best strategy is to not do it.

samatman 5y ago
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss here. Collusion in 'linear' voting loses the voter their preference in exchange for some reward, double-dipping is a simple defection. GP is talking about personal force multiplication through collaboration, it's win-win so you have a genuine prisoner's dilemma. Being unable to verify cooperation doesn't mean it won't happen in other ways. I don't know that this is actually bad just that a simple comparison to linear votes doesn't hold up.
- ekelsen 5y ago
  Let's say we agree to cooperate because it's win-win. Then I go into the voting booth, do I have any incentive _at all_ to not vote for my preferences as opposed to yours? No. Why would I not defect and gain more votes for my preferred causes?
  - breuleux 5y ago
    Some people don't like lying about what they are doing, even if they can't get caught. Small scale cooperation between honest people would probably work for that reason. On a large scale, it probably wouldn't be very efficient, but insofar that both sides would defect or cooperate at roughly the same rate, you would still expect it to be somewhat beneficial if the cooperation rate is nonzero (but maybe not enough to be worth the trouble).
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      > Some people don't like lying about what they are doing, even if they can't get caught. Unfortunately, some people do like lying, or at least they don't mind it as much, and if you create a system which rewards liars more than honest people, you shouldn't be surprised if the liars end up winning and you create more liars.
  - samatman 5y ago
    My "defects reliably when protected by incomplete information" T-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my T-shirt?
  - comex 5y ago
    This is the same situation as prisoner’s dilemma and has the same possible answers. One is, as others have said, that some people will choose honesty for personal moral reasons. Another is superrationality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality#Prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality#Prisoner's_di...
  - notahacker 5y ago
    In certain scenarios (bloc votes) the defection is fairly obvious afterwards, so the standard conclusion that always defecting is a bad strategy if the prisoner's dilemma is iterated and [probable] defection can be established over time applies. The quadratic maths tends towards making the gains from collusion very large, which means there is incentive not to defect even if detection is uncertain. And bloc votes and ballots which aren't necessarily secret do represent some of the more plausible use cases for quadratic voting (corporate governance)
    - samatman 5y ago
      The more I think about it, I'm not even comfortable calling this collusion. Vote-buying is bad (some people disagree!) because we don't want people selling the decision, we want them to make it themselves. But a conversation like "I was thinking four points on A but I see why you're all in on B now, tell you what how about we go two for two on it" strikes me as a good outcome in a voting system. The fact that linear voting doesn't have an equivalent of it doesn't imply we should consider this 'collusion' rather than 'cooperation'.
      - notahacker 5y ago
        If the theoretical [economic] rationale for quadratic voting is that it incentivises voters to apportion votes perfectly in accordance with the relative intensity of their preferences, the fact they can achieve better outcomes by colluding/cooperating to vote not in accordance with the intensity of their preferences is a pretty major weakness.
- lukifer 5y ago
  Preference collusion in linear voting isn't completely unheard of. I've seen projects where voters in safe states swap with voters in a swing state [0]. (Obviously these are unverified, so they still contain a prisoner's dilemma.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_pairing#United_States_presidential_election,_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_pairing#United_States_pre...

samatman 5y ago

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss here. Collusion in 'linear' voting loses the voter their preference in exchange for some reward, double-dipping is a simple defection. GP is talking about personal force multiplication through collaboration, it's win-win so you have a genuine prisoner's dilemma. Being unable to verify cooperation doesn't mean it won't happen in other ways. I don't know that this is actually bad just that a simple comparison to linear votes doesn't hold up.

ekelsen 5y ago
Let's say we agree to cooperate because it's win-win. Then I go into the voting booth, do I have any incentive _at all_ to not vote for my preferences as opposed to yours? No. Why would I not defect and gain more votes for my preferred causes?
- breuleux 5y ago
  Some people don't like lying about what they are doing, even if they can't get caught. Small scale cooperation between honest people would probably work for that reason. On a large scale, it probably wouldn't be very efficient, but insofar that both sides would defect or cooperate at roughly the same rate, you would still expect it to be somewhat beneficial if the cooperation rate is nonzero (but maybe not enough to be worth the trouble).
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    > Some people don't like lying about what they are doing, even if they can't get caught. Unfortunately, some people do like lying, or at least they don't mind it as much, and if you create a system which rewards liars more than honest people, you shouldn't be surprised if the liars end up winning and you create more liars.
- samatman 5y ago
  My "defects reliably when protected by incomplete information" T-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my T-shirt?
- comex 5y ago
  This is the same situation as prisoner’s dilemma and has the same possible answers. One is, as others have said, that some people will choose honesty for personal moral reasons. Another is superrationality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality#Prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality#Prisoner's_di...
- notahacker 5y ago
  In certain scenarios (bloc votes) the defection is fairly obvious afterwards, so the standard conclusion that always defecting is a bad strategy if the prisoner's dilemma is iterated and [probable] defection can be established over time applies. The quadratic maths tends towards making the gains from collusion very large, which means there is incentive not to defect even if detection is uncertain. And bloc votes and ballots which aren't necessarily secret do represent some of the more plausible use cases for quadratic voting (corporate governance)
  - samatman 5y ago
    The more I think about it, I'm not even comfortable calling this collusion. Vote-buying is bad (some people disagree!) because we don't want people selling the decision, we want them to make it themselves. But a conversation like "I was thinking four points on A but I see why you're all in on B now, tell you what how about we go two for two on it" strikes me as a good outcome in a voting system. The fact that linear voting doesn't have an equivalent of it doesn't imply we should consider this 'collusion' rather than 'cooperation'.
    - notahacker 5y ago
      If the theoretical [economic] rationale for quadratic voting is that it incentivises voters to apportion votes perfectly in accordance with the relative intensity of their preferences, the fact they can achieve better outcomes by colluding/cooperating to vote not in accordance with the intensity of their preferences is a pretty major weakness.
lukifer 5y ago
Preference collusion in linear voting isn't completely unheard of. I've seen projects where voters in safe states swap with voters in a swing state [0]. (Obviously these are unverified, so they still contain a prisoner's dilemma.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_pairing#United_States_presidential_election,_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_pairing#United_States_pre...