TO: Forest FROM: Steve (stevebosworth@hotmail.com) Below, Forest offers what seems to me to be a strange and unintelligible suggestion which is supposed to relate to my current support of MJ. Is this suggestion just a playful in joke that I do not understand, or please explain its serious relevance to debates about the virtues of MJ? Message: 3 Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2021 20:11:46 -0700 From: Forest Simmons <)> To: EM <Election-methods@lists.electorama.com> Subject: [EM] For Better or for Worse ... an MJ variant Message-ID: <CANUDvfqsHjqaON=tvQmwNunRa+QVPD+8MWjQ=ycXHbyo8gSSZA@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Steve Bosworth's steadfast advocacy for MJ has made me wonder if there might be a version of MJ that satisfies the Reverse Symmetry Criterion, and perhaps Participation, as well. Here's my idea ... Each voter judges each candidate with an appropriate specialized vocabulary word by writing the word next to the candidate's name on the ballot. The words must be spelled using only letters from the set {B, W}. They can be short or long, but they have to fit (left justified) into the spaces provided next to the candidate names. Fortunately, B and W are easy for optical scanner/digitzers to distinguish. For example, if a voter writes the word BBWBWWB next to the name Jos? Jim?nez, she is describing Jos? as being among the better possible candidates... in fact among the better of the better, yet among the worse of the better of the better, etc. Each letter refines the partial judgment represented by the preceding letters ... so it's more like Romance languages where the modifiers conform to post-fix rather than pre-fix conventions ... Casa Blanca vs White House. If you are thinking that we are going to convert each word into a binary point number ... well, no ...we're going to do something much more subtle and interesting for which the arithmetic operations on binary numbers are not well adapted (though alpha numeric string operations could work, but let's stick with literature!): For convenience list all of the ballot words judging Jos? in alphabetical (lexicographical) order... BBBBB BBBBB BBBBW ... WWBBW WWWBB ... WWWWW Suppose that most of these judgment words start with B..Then the first letter of the majority judgment (of Jos?) will be a B. Before continuing we have to modify the losing words ... the ones that started with W ... cross out the initial W, but replace the remaining letters (if there are any) with W's to reflect these voters' opinion that the majority judgment (B) was too nice, so on the question of remaining letters, all of these voters' words will come down on the side of W. After these modifications, determine by majority rule the next letter in Jose's judgment, and make the usual adjustments to the losing words. What if there is a tie, meaning both letters get equal support. Then put a neutral letter n for "neither better nor worse" in that position of Jose's majority judgment word, and base its next letter on whether there are more W's or B's in the next position of the remaining words in the list (of voter words judging Jose). Continue as necessary until the tie is fully resolved. So we see that the majority judgment words for the various candidates will be formed with letters from the set {B, n, W} The order of finish is the dictionary order of the respective majority judgment words ... assuming a really up to date comprehensive English dictionary . Have I overlooked anything? Is Mono-Add satisfied? Reverse Symmetry? Do the rules make sense heuristically? FWS

On 18.10.2021 19:52, steve bosworth wrote: > > > TO: Forest > > FROM: Steve (stevebosworth@hotmail.com) > > Below, Forest offers what seems to me to be a strange and unintelligible > suggestion which is supposed to relate to my current support of MJ. Is > this suggestion just a playful in joke that I do not understand, or > please explain its serious relevance to debates about the virtues of MJ? He's basically saying "MJ is good, but it fails reversal symmetry and participation. Can we make a method that does what MJ does, but also passes reversal symmetry and participation?" It's not (as I would see it, at least) a practical proposal, but he's exploring whether it is at all possible. -km

Steve, Kristopher is right ... just brainstorming to explore the possibilities .... how close can we get to compliance with IIAC, Majority Criterion, Clone Free, Mono-Raise, Mono-Add, FBC, etc. Later, we will pare it down and fluff it up to a simple, attractive, user friendly format like MJ's current incarnation. The main reason that MJ is not compliant with Reverse Symmetry is that its designers could not come up with a good symmetrical rule for breaking ties... theirs is a pretty good rule, if you don't care about symmetry ... and accommodating symmetry as much as possible is not easy .... you cannot blame them for settling on something suboptimal. If you want to help, work on generic verbal descriptions of four distinct levels of evil and four distinct levels of good ... short, pithy, memorable phrases that encapsulate the qualities of bad and good candidates ... something like "incompetent and corrupt," on one end of the spectrum, and "honest and wise" on the other. Don't be afraid of using judgmental words ... after all, we're talking "Majority Judgment." But avoid inflammatory words ... corrupt is borderline inflammatory, so find a better word! When you have perfected an eight level symmetrical scale for human alternatives, start working on a generic scale for inanimate choices that must be voted on ... say from "beastly" to "droll" ... I know you can do better than that! El lun., 18 de oct. de 2021 11:10 a. m., Kristofer Munsterhjelm < km_elmet@t-online.de> escribió: > On 18.10.2021 19:52, steve bosworth wrote: > > > > > > TO: Forest > > > > FROM: Steve (stevebosworth@hotmail.com) > > > > Below, Forest offers what seems to me to be a strange and unintelligible > > suggestion which is supposed to relate to my current support of MJ. Is > > this suggestion just a playful in joke that I do not understand, or > > please explain its serious relevance to debates about the virtues of MJ? > > He's basically saying "MJ is good, but it fails reversal symmetry and > participation. Can we make a method that does what MJ does, but also > passes reversal symmetry and participation?" > > It's not (as I would see it, at least) a practical proposal, but he's > exploring whether it is at all possible. > > -km > >