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U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing iPhone

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Re: U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing iPhone

#361

Post by eru »

ClayShentrup wrote: post #359
eru wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, OK. I am arguing for Approval Voting because it's the simplest voting system up from FPTP, and easy to explain. Borda Count really invites the gaming, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count#Potential_for_tact...

Borda is better than Plurality and IRV regardless of the amount of tactical voters. http://ScoreVoting.net/BayRegsFig.html

Interesting. I'd have to look at that simulation.

What about cloning candidates? The simulation only looks at strategic voting.

Re: U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing iPhone

#362

Post by eru »

winstonewert wrote: post #357
eru wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, OK. I am arguing for Approval Voting because it's the simplest voting system up from FPTP, and easy to explain. Borda Count really invites the gaming, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borda_count#Potential_for_tact...

I get where you are coming from on Approval Voting. The simplicity of the system is very attractive.

Other systems might be slightly better. But Approval Voting is dead simple to explain, and you don't even need new ballot papers compared to plurality.

Re: U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing iPhone

#363

Post by ClayShentrup »

winstonewert wrote: post #315
ClayShentrup wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a problem. Numerous contentious Approval Voting elections and exit polls have been held with Approval Voting, showing voters can certainly cast a vote without being paralyzed by indecisiveness. If YOU can't make up your mind, then just don't vote. Seriously. You can get Approval Voting and just not even show up and vote. You'll still get massively better election outcomes because of all the people who do s…

I didn't intend to suggest someone wouldn't vote because they are "paralyzed by indecisiveness." My concern is that people will vote sub-optimally due to poor information about other voters preferences and poor understanding of the strategy involved.

That's a common logical fallacy. What's important is not "how much utility did I lose by not casting the most optimal vote in Voting System X?" What's important is, "how much utility did I lose by not _using_ Voting System X?"

Explained here with a simple graphic to visualize it. www.electology.org/topic/tactical-voting

Re: U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing iPhone

#364

Post by ClayShentrup »

eru wrote: post #350
winstonewert wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't intend to suggest someone wouldn't vote because they are "paralyzed by indecisiveness." My concern is that people will vote sub-optimally due to poor information about other voters preferences and poor understanding of the strategy involved.

That's a valid concern. http://www.electology.org/score-voting-threshold-strategy argues that in approval voting an honest ballot would give you (by some measure) at least 91% of the impact of a perfect tactical ballot. An honest vote in first-past-the-post, say for your awesome friend Bob for President, would give you approximately 0% return compared to the proper strategy of voting for the lesser evil of Clinton.

This is a common logical fallacy. I'll explain.

Suppose Approval Voting gives you a utility ("happiness") of 10 if you're tactical, or 9 if you're honest.

Now suppose Voting System X, in which a sincere and tactical vote are obviously identical (ignore the fact that this requires the system to use randomness), gives you a utility of 7.

Now do you _really_ want to take the latter system because there's no disparity in your happiness based on whether you knew the best strategy? Or would you rather take the system that gives you a better result?

More details here. www.electology.org/topic/tactical-voting

Re: U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing iPhone

#365

Post by ClayShentrup »

eru wrote: post #360
ClayShentrup wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approval Voting is Score Voting on a 0-1 scale. I tried to be clear about the distinctions as they apply. If you can cite any specific sentences that you think could be made clearer, please let me know.

I think I confused myself there. If you want your site to be usable for drive-by-quoting in an Internet discussion, perhaps you want to make two copies of that text, one specifically for Approval Voting and one for score voting in general? PS Overall nice website, I am reading more.

Thanks. We've changed platforms a couple of times and have lost some pages and introduced some broken links and "CSS" issues along the way. We need more manpower to make it pretty, but no one cares enough about democracy to give us the millions to invest in such things. :)

This was the original site from years ago: https://sites.google.com/a/electology.org/www/approval-votin...

Re: U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing iPhone

#366

Post by ClayShentrup »

eru wrote: post #360
ClayShentrup wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approval Voting is Score Voting on a 0-1 scale. I tried to be clear about the distinctions as they apply. If you can cite any specific sentences that you think could be made clearer, please let me know.

I think I confused myself there. If you want your site to be usable for drive-by-quoting in an Internet discussion, perhaps you want to make two copies of that text, one specifically for Approval Voting and one for score voting in general? PS Overall nice website, I am reading more.

Ironically, my startup just got through YC and my fingers are crossed that we're successful enough for me to one day fund such reforms, so we'll never be threatened by a Trump again.

Re: U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing iPhone

#367

Post by winstonewert »

ClayShentrup wrote: post #364
eru wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a valid concern. http://www.electology.org/score-voting-threshold-strategy argues that in approval voting an honest ballot would give you (by some measure) at least 91% of the impact of a perfect tactical ballot. An honest vote in first-past-the-post, say for your awesome friend Bob for President, would give you approximately 0% return compared to the proper strategy of voting for the lesser evil of Clinton.

This is a common logical fallacy. I'll explain. Suppose Approval Voting gives you a utility ("happiness") of 10 if you're tactical, or 9 if you're honest. Now suppose Voting System X, in which a sincere and tactical vote are obviously identical (ignore the fact that this requires the system to use randomness), gives you a utility of 7. Now do you _really_ want to take the latter system because there's no disparity in…

I'm sorry, but you've completely missed the point. Nobody is talking about the "disparity in your happiness based on whether you knew the best strategy."

Obviously, if the honest approval ballot give me 9 utility points, and the strategy approval ballot gives me 10 utility points that's better then the system that always give me 7 utility points.

However, it seems to me that the situation is much more along the lines that an honest approval vote gives me 2 utility points, and a strategic one gives me a utility of 9.

See, I hold to political positions that almost always put me in the minority. If I only approved those candidates that that I actually liked, I'd only approve candidates with effectively zero chance of winning. This would let my least favorite candidate win, thus granting me very little utility.

Hence, I'll probably take System X, even if approval voting might, in theory, do better if everyone applied the strategy correctly.

Re: U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing iPhone

#368

Post by ClayShentrup »

eru wrote: post #362
winstonewert wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you are coming from on Approval Voting. The simplicity of the system is very attractive.

Other systems might be slightly better. But Approval Voting is dead simple to explain, and you don't even need new ballot papers compared to plurality.

The only system that's generally better is Score Voting aka Range Voting. But you want to _avoid_ ranked voting methods.

http://ScoreVoting.net/NESD.html

Re: U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing iPhone

#369

Post by ClayShentrup »

eru wrote: post #361
ClayShentrup wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Borda is better than Plurality and IRV regardless of the amount of tactical voters. http://ScoreVoting.net/BayRegsFig.html

Interesting. I'd have to look at that simulation. What about cloning candidates? The simulation only looks at strategic voting.

The simulation uses random utility generators, which sometimes create situations where two candidates are highly similar and thus "partially" clones. The point is to model reality.

Compliance with "independence of clones" is in this property chart. http://scorevoting.net/CompChart.html

Re: U.S. Drops California Case Against Apple After Accessing iPhone

#370

Post by eru »

ClayShentrup wrote: post #364
eru wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a valid concern. http://www.electology.org/score-voting-threshold-strategy argues that in approval voting an honest ballot would give you (by some measure) at least 91% of the impact of a perfect tactical ballot. An honest vote in first-past-the-post, say for your awesome friend Bob for President, would give you approximately 0% return compared to the proper strategy of voting for the lesser evil of Clinton.

This is a common logical fallacy. I'll explain. Suppose Approval Voting gives you a utility ("happiness") of 10 if you're tactical, or 9 if you're honest. Now suppose Voting System X, in which a sincere and tactical vote are obviously identical (ignore the fact that this requires the system to use randomness), gives you a utility of 7. Now do you _really_ want to take the latter system because there's no disparity in…

> This is a common logical fallacy. I'll explain.

No, it's not. I agree with you. (But perhaps didn't express that right.)

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