Re: General Resolution: Statement regarding Richard Stallman's readmission to the FSF board result
On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 at 16:57, Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> wrote:
> That's a big jump, and I don't think I agree.
> At least not when you phrase it that way.
> Why should my preference matter less just because it's weaker? It's
> still my preference and I'm attached to it very much:-)
There are two ways to approach this kind of question.
First: we can use our intuitions. What makes sense? And we can discuss
that, explain why some things seem intuitively fair and others don't.
We can make analogies. How does a group decide on a restaurant? What
do we think is fair? What doesn't seem fair?
Second: we can get scientific about it. This means we define some
performance metrics for voting systems, then measure their
performance. Such measurements can be done theoretically, or in
simulation, or in practice. It can use various assumptions about the
environment, and even various performance metrics. This might include
difficulty of filling out a ballot, or understandability of both the
ballots and the system as a whole, as part of the performance. When we
try it on real people, factors like what fraction of the eligible
voters actually bother to vote, or what fraction of them can correctly
answer questions about how the system works, might be things to
measure.
You're making an argument in the "intuition" class. That's fine, but
it requires trying to understand everybody's intuition. Like, if one
person ranks A>B>C>D>E and another ranks A>E>B>C>D, maybe the voting
system should treat the first person's preference for A>E as stronger
than the second person's? If we were deciding on a restaurant, I think
that's how things would work.
But at the end of the day, after people have hashed around about their
intuitions, it seems crucial to drop down to the hard
science/math/engineering approach and put our intuitions aside and let
the data speak. Because our intuitions about stuff like this has a
pretty crappy track record. Like, "you can vote for exactly one
presidential candidate" apparently seems reasonable to a large
fraction of the public in the USA, but it's a terrible voting system.
The night sky sure *looks* like a big black dome with some holes poked
in it. We are mere humans, and the way we overcome our poor intuitions
is to be scientific, to ruthlessly question our own assumptions.
--Barak.
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