Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!boulder!sunybcs!sbcs!stealth!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: ``Paradoxes'' are wishy-washy when applied to approval voting
Summary: Approval voting does not have paradoxes
Message-ID: <4046@sbcs.sunysb.edu>
Date: 26 Nov 89 00:20:39 GMT
References: <4037@sbcs.sunysb.edu> <1738@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: news@sbcs.sunysb.edu
Reply-To: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Distribution: usa
Organization: IR
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In article <1738@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
> Suppose that those in favor of sci.aquaria think that rec.aquaria is only
> marginally better than the previously existing alt.aquaria.

> It may even be that sci.aquaria would defeat rec.aquaria almost
> unanimously among those who want an aquaria group in the regular groups,
> and still lose in approval voting.

In other words, if the voters are confused and vote on different issues,
the results of the vote will be messed up. So?

> There are times that a superrational strategy can be justified, but I see no
> evidence of it in this case.

Maybe you recognize superrationality as the Kantian imperative?

There's an excellent reason that voters will use it in this case: the
superrational solution is stable. In certain cases, superrationality is
unstable; Hofstadter calls this ``reverberant doubt.'' (And those cases
are the examples used by non-Kantian thinkers.) But here it's stable.
Write out the equations if you don't believe me. (Shall we move this to
sci.math?)

Even better, run an approval vote on, say, the new newsgroup for pagan
dicussions, and observe that it works.

---Dan