6 ms·

Yeah but I've seen how the typical person would actually do cardinal voting, because I've seen how Yelp, Uber, IMDB ratings work. Someone who's more thoughtful

by idrios 4y ago

Yeah but I've seen how the typical person would actually do cardinal voting, because I've seen how Yelp, Uber, IMDB ratings work. Someone who's more thoughtful about it will rank each candidate (on a scale of 0-10) at reasonable values like A:3, B:5, C:7, and someone who gets all their news from tv will rank A:10, B:0, C:0. The latter is more than canceling of the reasonable person's vote. This kind of voting rewards dumb votes over informed votes. I'd rather have ranked voting.

vintermann 4y ago
Yes, in ordinal ranking schemes, there's a strategy that's individually rational: Figure out who the two front runners are. Rate the better of them 100. Also, rate everyone else you like more than that front runner a 100.
godelski 4y ago
If you're actually concerned about this (as far as I'm aware there's been no evidence that the voting you suggest is common when experiments have been done) you can normalize the individual ballots (e.g. softmax). But I truly believe that the added complexity to this would unnecessarily complicate an effect we do not observe. (Consider that we also have an edge case of A:10 B:10 C:10 as well. Though this ballot is easy to handle in other ways: toss it) Most voters will use a scaled sincerity voting strategy and thus you'd have A:6 B:8 C:10 and our bullet voter will no longer have an advantage. It pays to be sincere. Continuing down this, you're essentially discussing bullet voting. I should EXPLICITLY state that this is a well known case and has been extensively studied[0][1]. I appreciate that you have concern with the system and I implore you to continue to search for flaws, but also to look for information discussing these ideas. The reason the bullet voting was likely so low in this study is that most voters are rational and understand that they are giving up significant leverage when bullet voting (note that the case is even worse in approval!). We often think our neighbors are far less rational than they actually are and we shouldn't make this mistake. We should probably also discuss Monotonicity[2], but maybe in a follow-up conversation. [0] https://www.rangevoting.org/BulletBugaboo https://www.rangevoting.org/BulletBugaboo [1] https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat3.html https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat3.html (called Plurality here, strategy B) [2] https://electionscience.org/library/monotonicity/ https://electionscience.org/library/monotonicity/
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
  I don't understand how normalizing the individual ballots would change anything in the example he has given?
  - godelski 4y ago
    So a standard normalization (divide by max value) wouldn't solve much but why I specifically mentioned a softmax is because you then rescale all voting preferences to have the same power. I don't think it is a good idea btw, other than the added complexity. But it does change the above example. The problem with the example was that the first voter gave no strong preferences and thus the second voter had more power. The solution is to rescale these, which is why I said that voters tend to do this automatically (give their preferred candidate on the ballot the stop score and rate all others in proportionate to them).
- idrios 4y ago
  I'm loving learning about these different voting methods. I do still stand by my point though. You're right, I was arguing that voters degenerate into bullet voting over time 100% for the candidate they liked, 0% for the ones they don't. Your article [0] contends that it's not a good strategy to vote like this if you're trying to be strategic, because if candidates are A=974, B=974, F=231 and you liked F, you'd be foolish to vote 100% F, as if you like B better than A you should vote some for B. This looks too much like the current system we have, where people don't vote for the person they like best, they cast all their votes for the person they hate the least who could beat the person they hate the most. Basically: if you normalize votes, people are going to vote 100% for the lesser of 2 evils and we're back to square 1. If you don't normalize votes, you'll get one of the other voting strategies you've already linked to in your [1]. I expect it would essentially devolve into approval voting, as it's still voting for the lesser of 2 evils of the strongest candidates, then casting additional votes for anyone who seems viable. Perhaps it finds some other equilibrium. Either way, I think it takes too much strategy and voter headspace compared to ranked voting, where you can just vote for the candidates you want, in the order you want, and you didn't waste a vote if your top candidate loses because your #2 vote didn't lose any weight.

by idrios 4y ago

vintermann 4y ago

Yes, in ordinal ranking schemes, there's a strategy that's individually rational: Figure out who the two front runners are. Rate the better of them 100. Also, rate everyone else you like more than that front runner a 100.

godelski 4y ago

If you're actually concerned about this (as far as I'm aware there's been no evidence that the voting you suggest is common when experiments have been done) you can normalize the individual ballots (e.g. softmax). But I truly believe that the added complexity to this would unnecessarily complicate an effect we do not observe. (Consider that we also have an edge case of A:10 B:10 C:10 as well. Though this ballot is easy to handle in other ways: toss it) Most voters will use a scaled sincerity voting strategy and thus you'd have A:6 B:8 C:10 and our bullet voter will no longer have an advantage. It pays to be sincere. Continuing down this, you're essentially discussing bullet voting. I should EXPLICITLY state that this is a well known case and has been extensively studied[0][1]. I appreciate that you have concern with the system and I implore you to continue to search for flaws, but also to look for information discussing these ideas. The reason the bullet voting was likely so low in this study is that most voters are rational and understand that they are giving up significant leverage when bullet voting (note that the case is even worse in approval!). We often think our neighbors are far less rational than they actually are and we shouldn't make this mistake. We should probably also discuss Monotonicity[2], but maybe in a follow-up conversation. [0] https://www.rangevoting.org/BulletBugaboo https://www.rangevoting.org/BulletBugaboo [1] https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat3.html https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat3.html (called Plurality here, strategy B) [2] https://electionscience.org/library/monotonicity/ https://electionscience.org/library/monotonicity/

ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
I don't understand how normalizing the individual ballots would change anything in the example he has given?
- godelski 4y ago
  So a standard normalization (divide by max value) wouldn't solve much but why I specifically mentioned a softmax is because you then rescale all voting preferences to have the same power. I don't think it is a good idea btw, other than the added complexity. But it does change the above example. The problem with the example was that the first voter gave no strong preferences and thus the second voter had more power. The solution is to rescale these, which is why I said that voters tend to do this automatically (give their preferred candidate on the ballot the stop score and rate all others in proportionate to them).
idrios 4y ago
I'm loving learning about these different voting methods. I do still stand by my point though. You're right, I was arguing that voters degenerate into bullet voting over time 100% for the candidate they liked, 0% for the ones they don't. Your article [0] contends that it's not a good strategy to vote like this if you're trying to be strategic, because if candidates are A=974, B=974, F=231 and you liked F, you'd be foolish to vote 100% F, as if you like B better than A you should vote some for B. This looks too much like the current system we have, where people don't vote for the person they like best, they cast all their votes for the person they hate the least who could beat the person they hate the most. Basically: if you normalize votes, people are going to vote 100% for the lesser of 2 evils and we're back to square 1. If you don't normalize votes, you'll get one of the other voting strategies you've already linked to in your [1]. I expect it would essentially devolve into approval voting, as it's still voting for the lesser of 2 evils of the strongest candidates, then casting additional votes for anyone who seems viable. Perhaps it finds some other equilibrium. Either way, I think it takes too much strategy and voter headspace compared to ranked voting, where you can just vote for the candidates you want, in the order you want, and you didn't waste a vote if your top candidate loses because your #2 vote didn't lose any weight.