Forum Council

I wanted to bring up something from the past that never came to fruition, which was the idea to vote on voting systems. The idea was to have users include a ranked score-carrying ballot in their forum signature (you can see mine below as an example), and to intermittently compare them to see what users thought. All that was ~discussed here:

https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/237/proposed-options-for-voting-on-voting-methods/25?_=1785984453512

Anyway, after digging through the old forum threads, I tried to reconstruct a “metaelection” from the score ballots that various users have put in their signatures or explicitly posted.

So far I’ve recovered commensurate ballots from only a small collection of users:

• cfrank (myself)
• Jack Waugh
• multi_system_fan
• Marylander
• Andy Dienes (former user)
• Keith Edmonds

(I also found evidence that rob had a ballot in his signature, but I haven’t yet recovered the actual scores.)

While this is not necessarily representative of all users or even voting theory enthusiasts in general, and does not include all voting methods one might in principle prefer, I wanted to see what the results were from the limited scope and “turnout.”

To make the ballots comparable, I grouped together the various rated/cardinal Condorcet methods (e.g. Score Sorted Margins, generic cardinal Condorcet, rated Condorcet), rescaled Marylander’s 0–100 ballot to 0–10, and then compared the common methods.

The aggregate score totals are:

• Cardinal Condorcet: 55.0
• STAR: 48.0
• Approval: 42.9
• Score: 39.1
• IRV: 12.8
• Choose-one/FPTP: 4.0

Pairwise, cardinal Condorcet defeated STAR, Approval, and Score by 4–2, making it the Condorcet winner of the metaelection as well.

It also won under Score, STAR, Borda, Plurality, and IRV. Under Approval, the outcome depended on the approval threshold: using the suggested threshold of 5 gave a three-way tie between cardinal Condorcet, Approval, and STAR, while a stricter threshold (>5) elected cardinal Condorcet outright.

At least from the ballots I could recover, the collective ordering was:

1. Cardinal/rated Condorcet
2. STAR
3. Approval
4. Score
5. IRV
6. Choose-one/FPTP

If anyone knows of additional signature ballots (or can recover rob’s old ballot), it would be interesting to incorporate them.

We can compare with an external poll on Reddit (this poll is not a vote, but asks which single-winner system among alternatives is most preferred):

https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1cukxrz/what_singlewinner_method_do_you_support_the_most/

Interestingly (or perhaps uninterestingly?), if we pool together all Condorcet methods, our small toy election matches quite well with the top preferences in the Reddit poll.

I would also like to hold that kind of election not in terms of the most preferred voting method outright, but in terms of what the most feasible reform target to implement would be. That’s a bit vague—for example, would that mean implement state-based/federal approval voting? Or to push for proportional representation in districts?

Based on this preliminary outcome, a cardinal-Smith method with a STAR-style fallback or completion rule might be worth considering, although that specific composite was not itself included uniformly on the ballots. I was also surprised to find that, unless I overlooked something, this specific hybrid had not been proposed before now on this forum. It has been proposed elsewhere, including within various Reddit threads.

Finally, on the subject of voting for voting methods, I wonder if it would make sense to have the electorate vote on their preferred method along with their ballots, or to vote for their preferred method in advance. That’s probably a different topic.

@clay I have watched that video, so thanks for that. But the bottom line is that I am making an argument about semantics, not ethics. And you insist that it's an argument about ethics. There's nowhere to go from there.

@clay, this appears to undermine itself at several important points. You claim to have completely debunked Kant, but then concede that your definitional move yields only a stalemate, that the genealogical critique cuts equally against your own foundation, that “free and fully informed” may smuggle in normativity, and that Kantian constitutivism remains a live dispute. Those concessions are incompatible with the claimed total refutation. I recommend writing the argument as explicit premises and implications; the problems should become apparent.

Even if we admit preference sovereignty, its own formulation is severely self-limiting. It applies only where all affected parties would freely and unanimously choose an outcome while fully informed, which is already immediately divorced from any dilemma that involves conflicting interests. Consequently, that principle in itself does not imply aggregate utility maximization in cases of conflicting interests.

To derive aggregate utility maximization, Harsanyi introduces additional assumptions through an identity-lottery construction. That construction can make aggregate utility numerically equivalent to the expected utility of a hypothetical identity-uncertain chooser, but it does not make that quantity identical to each actual person’s utility, nor does it establish why taking Harsanyi’s hypothetical standpoint is normatively authoritative.

What you have, in effect, is a selected collection of normative operations—idealized preference under conditions of rationality, freedom, and full information; identity uncertainty; expected-utility reasoning; and interpersonal aggregation—that define your ethical framework. Choosing different operations can and does yield competing ethical theories that you have not eliminated.

To be clear, some of those operations are at least superficially appealing. The preference-sovereignty principle is almost a tautological no-brainer within its stated scope, and the arguments that follow once we accept the normative premises built into Harsanyi’s construction may be perfectly valid. But those premises are exactly where justification is lacking, where competing alternatives are abundant, and where legitimate disagreement obviously exists.

We are clearly not getting anywhere, so I’ll offer my ultimate relevant point on this subject and stop. I think the election-by-jury concept is an interesting and reasonable proposal with compelling arguments in its support, and that while there are also completely valid concerns, it’s also plausible that those concerns could be effectively addressed with more collaborative examination and careful approaches to implementation. It has controversial aspects, but it isn’t a wholly radical idea. I think there are also legitimate generalizations that are equally interesting and reasonable topics of discussion.

@clay you can plug your ears and say La La La all you like. Kantian ethics is a perfectly legitimate alternative to utilitarian ethics.

@clay Kant does a fair job of that, in direct contest with utilitarian ethics, through his categorical imperative, as one example. If you engaged with ethics as deeply as you claim, you would be well aware of that.

@clay “real philosophers” say many different things about almost everything. I’ll repeat the main point that you did not address: What you have not explained is why an “ought” proposition cannot likewise describe a higher-order property of a broader configuration involving agents, actions, alternatives, and consequences.

Youtube Video

@clay sure, if we all agree to hook ourselves up to the National Brain Swapping Initiative’s Brain-Swapper 2000 every time a new policy decision is made, you’re pretty much on the money.

@clay I think you totally missed the point of what I was saying. The thing I was disputing was:

@clay said in election by jury (www.electionbyjury.com/manifesto):

"ought" means "I would subjectively prefer that". this is ethics 101.

Ethics 101 does not determine what a word means. Words are used in English by English-speaking people in many ways, some informal, some formal and with varying degrees of vagueness etc. It does not matter if someone's meaning for a word is at bottom incoherent or that the thing they mean doesn't exist in real life. The word doesn't then not mean what they were using it to mean. Experts in ethics do not have ownership of the word "ought". So:

as i've pointed out, you cannot show me any actual objective physical law of nature that the word "ought" could possibly refer to. it's just expressing a vibe.

No, and I wasn't trying to. You just missed what I was saying. I'll repeat the example, but with a bit of added commentary for clarity.

Someone might say, "I suppose I ought to try and save those people drowning in the sea, but I don't really care about other people, so I'll just carry on eating my ice-cream."

I initially said this doesn't fit your definition of "ought" above because he's not expressing a subjective preference. You countered by saying:

that would be using "ought" as in society would prefer i do it. thus they might judge me for not doing it" or something along those lines.

(So therefore still a subjective preference.) But I then said actually, he could be referring, not to anyone's subjective preference, but to a moral framework that exists outside of his (or anyone else's) subjective preferences.

So therefore his use of the word "ought" does not refer to subjective preferences. It refers to this objective framework that he believes exists. Even if it doesn't exist. And however you cut it, it's still a long way from:

"ought" means "I would subjectively prefer that". this is ethics 101.

But I'm not sure how else to get the point across. OK, someone believes in ghosts. A ghost (by some definition) is the soul of a dead person that still in some manner inhabits our physical realm.

It doesn't matter if ghosts are real - this is what it means to be a ghost under this definition. Someone might say:

"A ghost is just an illusion. That's what it means to be a ghost."

It might be the case that all the ghosts that people have claimed to have seen are all illusions, and indeed that no "magical" ghosts exist, but this does not change the definition of what a ghost is. A definition can be of something that doesn't exist, or is at bottom incoherent.

That's all I'm saying. Words mean what people use them to mean. There is no dictionary in the sky that defines a word in a very specific way. And there is certainly nothing that cancels out the definition of a word based on the non-existence or incoherence of a concept.

If someone uses the word "ought" to refer to some objective morality, then that is what they are using the word to mean.

This is a silly argument anyway, and far removed from election by jury!

Edit - you do this routine of incredulity when you think people aren't getting what you're saying, but I could do the same on you here. Your lack of comprehension of what I am saying is staggering.

@clay “aggregate utility maximization objectively gives everyone more of whatever it is they subjectively prefer.”

Unless there is a known feasible option that maximizes every individual’s utility simultaneously, with no interpersonal tradeoffs, that is simply false. Aggregate utility maximization maximizes the sum or expected sum of utilities, not each person’s utility.