Range Voting
Jan. 4th, 2007 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeThe folks advocating Range Voting contacted WSFS (actually, the WSFS webmaster, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sfrose) lobbying WSFS to change its voting system from the Instant Runoff Voting system we currently use for site selection and the Hugo Awards. Sharon told them how our rules work and suggested that if they want to change them, they come to WSFS business meetings and propose and debate the changes there, like all other rule changes. The advocate's response, in my opinion, amounted to, "Our proposal is so obviously Right that we shouldn't have to do all that hard, expensive work. You should change your rules because we tell you to do so."
I often tell people who come to me with rules-change proposals, "If you think it's worthwhile, come and submit it yourself. I'll help you with all of the technicalities to the best of my ability, but you have to make your own case, lobby people yourself, and get the votes by convincing people." Most of the time, this discourages them -- democracy is hard work! But sometimes we get people who are willing to work and debate, and sometimes we even get workable changes and improvements.
WSFS rules are intentionally designed to be resistant to change; however, they can be changed if people work hard enough at it. But it's not enough to just lobby a Board of Directors or subvert the Chairman; you have to convince the members.
sfrose) lobbying WSFS to change its voting system from the Instant Runoff Voting system we currently use for site selection and the Hugo Awards. Sharon told them how our rules work and suggested that if they want to change them, they come to WSFS business meetings and propose and debate the changes there, like all other rule changes. The advocate's response, in my opinion, amounted to, "Our proposal is so obviously Right that we shouldn't have to do all that hard, expensive work. You should change your rules because we tell you to do so."I often tell people who come to me with rules-change proposals, "If you think it's worthwhile, come and submit it yourself. I'll help you with all of the technicalities to the best of my ability, but you have to make your own case, lobby people yourself, and get the votes by convincing people." Most of the time, this discourages them -- democracy is hard work! But sometimes we get people who are willing to work and debate, and sometimes we even get workable changes and improvements.
WSFS rules are intentionally designed to be resistant to change; however, they can be changed if people work hard enough at it. But it's not enough to just lobby a Board of Directors or subvert the Chairman; you have to convince the members.
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Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-24 12:48 pm (UTC)And since Range Voting can be done in just one round, always, whereas IRV can take multiple rounds, IRV is "cheaper"/easier. Another great reason to dump the wreck that is IRV for Range Voting.
The range stuff sort of reminds me of that--sort of. One thing I notice is that there appears to be -no- calibration involved, no normalization, and that tends to create garbage for both an analysis and results of analysis..
Some have suggested that we automatically normalize the Range Voting ballots, but there's no hard evidence that actually produces greater social utility efficiency. On the contrary, I have a pretty well founded intuition that people's inherent tendency to convert their honest utilities to range ballots using a sort of logarithmic process (sort of like treating increasing utility with diminishing returns) actually increases social utility efficiency. We could test that by adding some new strategy generators to the utility calculation software, but I'm too lazy, and I want to rewrite the software in D before I further modify it.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-24 05:55 pm (UTC)Clue 1: it takes time and effort to read through and try to follow the descriptions that the proponents of range voting give, and time to try to follow the analysis. That is time and effort that the person is giving up from doing things that might be more interesting and rewarding to them, than reading ideological ranting about how wonderful range voting is and everyone should go to it....
From thebroken/r/e/c/o/r/d/ladder:
And since Range Voting can be done in just one round, always, whereas IRV can take multiple rounds..
Clue #2: there is software in place if I am not mistaken, for tallying results of voting for Worldscon site selection and the Hugos. Changing the voting system would require writing -new- software, testing it, etc. etc. etc. The existing methods have "sunk costs." Changing to something else, would entail a lot of time and effort. Is it worthwhile as expenditure of volunteer time and labor, particularly, are there people trusted within the community competent to implement range voting who would actually go to the effort and time and personal expense to do so? Even were there any substantiative interest by the Business Meeting to make a change, unless there is the wherewithal to do so--someone competent and willing to go to the effort of developing and implementing etc. the software, it would be moot.
...I have a pretty well founded intuition that people's inherent tendency to convert their honest utilities to range ballots using a sort of logarithmic process (sort of like treating increasing utility with diminishing returns) actually increases social utility efficiency.
Why should I value you intuition? I have seen no evidence of what I consider considered reasonable competence and ability to do competent analysis, conclusion generation, recommendation generation, and presentation of results in a reasonable fashion. That is, what I am seeing presented by you, does not come off as something done by someone who has made an adequate investigation and analysis of what, who, how, and who has not bothered to tune the presentation to the audience and has failed to consider audience response and interaction with the audience and audience opinions, values, interests, etc.
You showed up with an agenda to push, and have with vast amounts of temerity and energy, proceeded to push it....
You keep referring to "social efficiency." Just what is "social efficiency and why should I or anyone else here care about it? It looks like some arbitrary definition of some value you have, it may not be seen as a viable or reasonable or desirable or rational metric by others.
Generation of Hugo and site selection results, does NOT get done by the entire convention. A small number of people are involved directly, the other thousands of people, don't get involved in handling any ballot than the individual one they submit. In terms of "efficiency" then it is immaterial to 99.99 percent of the Worldcon members what the specific software, etc., that gets used is, or methods, so long as the method used follows the will of the membership for type of voting, that the results are honest outcomes based on the submitted valid ethically-submitted ballots, and that the results get announced in a timely fashion. It doesn't particularly affect MY life if it takes Keven, John, Rick, or whoever five minutes, or hours, or days, to deal with ballots and the data crunching, I'm not someone who has done ballot counting and data entry and software running to generate the results! It does affect my life if I hear them complaining about it, but otherwise...
We could test that by adding some new strategy generators to the utility calculation software, but I'm too lazy, and I want to rewrite the software in D before I further modify it.
Who're these "we"?
You are apparently someone who enjoys writing software code... however, "all code has bugs." Who do you propose to e.g. do code reviews? What are the independent validation and verification requirements? Why should anyone believe that your code is accurate... where are the system spec, requirements, etc.?