Quadratic Voting (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#101

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 03, 2015, 4:38 AM UTC

jmount wrote: post #64

glenweyl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an equilibrium; the down-winders would not vote unless they thought that vote mattered. In any case we have a nominating process to avoid this sort of manipulation; see http://ssrn.com/abstract=2321904 or http://ssrn.com/abstract=2343956 .

My point is: it is a bad situation, equilibrium or not. And some down-winders have to vote if the factory votes a little bit each time. Or even if the factory threatens to vote (and then doesn't). If all the magic is in the nominating process- then we really don't need the voting mechanism.

[deleted]

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#102

Post by malandrew » Sun, May 03, 2015, 5:11 AM UTC

jmount wrote: post #52

With all due respect, it sounds like while it might fight flaws common to other voting systems, pay-back based voting will have its own gamesmanship. Consider 1,000 voters upwind of a factory and 1,000 more voters downwind. Suppose the factory wants to stop scrubbing its exhaust for a savings of $1,000 (to itself) and cost of $10 to each down-wind voter (in health costs). All the factory has to do is propose the same…

Possibly, but it's an alternative that could have promise and is worth experimenting with in more contexts as the paper suggests. Such experimenting could disprove its utility and we on with the systems we currently have, or it could show promise and we keep experimenting with it in more and more contexts.

Just because it could be gamed is not a reason to wholly dismiss.

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#103

Post by BendertheRobot » Sun, May 03, 2015, 5:50 AM UTC

Key phrase is.... Collective good. How do they figure what will accomplish that?

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#104

Post by PepeGomez » Sun, May 03, 2015, 7:36 AM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #61

rosser wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Billionares are vastly outnumbered by thousandaires. While true, the billionaires' liquid and un-accounted-for dollars vastly outnumber the thousandaires'. If Joe Average has to choose between voting on something and paying his mortgage, while Jim Squillionaire is choosing between voting and buying another jet (yes, hyperbole; my point still obtains), guess whose votes you're more likely to see...

I just explained why spending $1 billion on votes won't affect the outcome of politics, in the other sentence of my post, that you didn't quote. That's part of the reason the cost of votes is nonlinear in this scheme.

You didn't explain anything, you only provided a cryptic analogy.

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#105

Post by trumpete » Sun, May 03, 2015, 8:20 AM UTC

jmount wrote: post #65

panic wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paper covers this. The solution is to force a commitment of votes before you can propose a vote on an issue.

So factory votes $1 each time (small commitment, forcing some fraction of the down-winders in unless they can form a coalition).

...as in an actual financially significant amount

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#106

Post by stormbrew » Sun, May 03, 2015, 8:35 AM UTC

cge wrote: post #93

I'm interested to know what the authors think about the problem that could be called vote splitting or support buying, which would be akin to vote buying in one-person-one-vote system. This seems particularly relevant because, unlike most systems, buying the support of small numbers of voters could be useful. Consider the case given elsewhere in this thread of 10,000 voters willing to pay only $1 against a proposal,…

> In a one-person-one-vote system, buying the votes of individuals requires mass fraud to have an impact.

More specifically, even if you do go to the trouble of outright buying people's votes, since secret ballots are generally considered the way to go (though they haven't always been, even relatively recently), it's extraordinarily difficult to have confidence in the value of your 'purchase' because you have no way of knowing if the person you paid off did it.

In this system, the scaling may make it a lot easier to identify that a person followed your directions and spent a particular amount on the vote...

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#107

Post by stormbrew » Sun, May 03, 2015, 8:36 AM UTC

trumpete wrote: post #105

jmount wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So factory votes $1 each time (small commitment, forcing some fraction of the down-winders in unless they can form a coalition).

...as in an actual financially significant amount

Setting that amount to something that's actually a barrier and allows for grassroots movements to actually participate could be quite difficult.

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#108

Post by nullc » Sun, May 03, 2015, 8:47 AM UTC

glenweyl wrote: post #89

pas on vote buying, linear vote buying is bad according to the same theory that predicts QV is good. The only equilibrium under linear vote buying is that the single most intense (or wealthiest) individual has her way at everyone else's expense. This intuition seems to underly much of the discussion here, but only applies when vote buying is linear. The logic, as cwp pointed out, is Tullock's. So while QV is much bet…

This is assuming that quadratic voting isn't really linear voting. Participants in a process like this aren't "honest" they can't be counted on to follow the rules.

In a QV system one can bypass the quadratic penalty by buying people's votes directly for a small premium.

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#109

Post by beefield » Sun, May 03, 2015, 9:13 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #99

How does quadratic voting get around Arrow's Theorem?

Arrow's Theorem applies only for voting on ordinal scale. QV allows degrees of preferences in voting so Arrow should not apply. (This actually is why I do not understand all the fuss about Arrow)

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#110

Post by goodmachine » Sun, May 03, 2015, 9:15 AM UTC

Since QV appears, on the face of it at least, to be a single-round blind auction, why would it not be vulnerable to bad signalling and consequent price distortion? As another poster commented below, all players are blindly speculating on the real price of a win.

Take any vote as an example. One side announces they will pay a mighty sum (or have already marshalled a sufficiency) towards a vote Con to scare off those supporting an opposing vote Pro.

Pro voters may react either by believing this signal (and not voting/ buying in at all) or issuing their own claims - all are strongly incentivised to exaggerate their own preferences and strength of support prior to the vote.

Bad signalling is bound to occur AFAICT

1. To win the vote cheaply with FUD by scaring off both the apathetic (apathetes, let's call them that) and some percentage of the previously committed.

2. To punish the winning side financially (maximising Winner's Curse) in case of my side losing. This benefits the losers by weakening the winners as a precautionary measure for the next round of voting on some other issue too. That is, I may be likely to oppose the opponents of gay marriage on other issues too, for example. So it's 'worth it' to hurt them.

As an aside, QV appears to have a limited concept of time and the irrational (pre-vote FUD, post-vote revenge) alike. There is a distinct taste of 'rational actors' acting rationally (when will they learn?) underpinning the scheme generally.

3. To benefit from maximising pro-rata payout if you are a canny apathete.

I must be missing something very obvious here and would be delighted to be corrected. Otherwise QV looks like a fascinating, useful and interesting probe for tabletop scenarios (using virtual currencies for expressing trivial preferences, say).