Feels like you're pulling a fast one. You say with two parties the domain and range are not restricted, but in a two party system isn't the range artificially restricted to only two candidates? Unless you naturally have only two candidates standing you're going to need some way of narrowing down those choices to just two, for which you will need a voting system of some sort. I cannot vote for my preferred candidate, because my candidate has been eliminated from the process.

@CarneadesOfCyrene

7 жыл бұрын

But we certainly must have some way of limiting the field of choices, least we always want to choose between literally everyone in the world, right? Unrestricted domain and range are saying that of the candidates that we have, none will be have greater preference than others, how we get those candidates to begin with is not part of the social choice procedure.

@scaredyfish

7 жыл бұрын

If the system is mandating two candidates, surely the process by which you narrow down your candidates to two is inherently a part of the social choice procedure. The only way it's not a part of the procedure is if the social choice is naturally a choice between two options. Typically we restrict the choice from the entire population of the world to a few individuals by limiting things geographically, and only deciding between people who actually choose to stand. The other thing we do, of course, is have Primary elections - which is itself a social choice procedure. It seems to me it's impossible to avoid the necessity of an electoral system that decides between more than two candidates at some point in the process.

@nienke7713

Жыл бұрын

​@@CarneadesOfCyreneall the selection procedures are part of the process. We typically limit it based on certain criteria that the candidates need to fit (e.g. age, citizenship), only have candidates that choose to run, sometimes there are financial barriers to running as well, and sometimes you (or a party under whose banner you run) need(s) to first get some signed support from a certain number of people to be allowed to run (for the first time). But none of such criteria reduces it down to just 2. In order to truly get just 2, you need to mandate that there can be only 2, and need a procedure for selecting which 2 are allowed to run, which then in itself involves using an electoral method of some sort.

Limitation to two parties only results in bifurcation fallacy (especially when they tend toward a managed democracy with controlled opposition, and/or when the two choices are substantially identical with only superficial differences thus actually providing only a single choice ...).

so how is restricting to a two party choice on the table for desirability... Yet approval voting (multiple selection without ranking) not even considered for comparison?

The issue I take with this as a case for a two party system is that saying that the two party system meets all the criteria assumes both that the criteria list is exhaustive and that it is objective, neither of which are the case (as you pointed out at the end with the counter argument that having a third candidate could be considered a criteria). The argument I would make in favor of 3+ party systems over two party systems is this; while it may be impossible to have a completely fair multi-party system, I would argue that a two-party system is infinitely more unfair, as all but two perspectives are completely eliminated from consideration from the start in an obviously undemocratic fashion. Better to be slightly odds-based then have no possibility of alternative options whatsoever. Claiming that a two-party system is perfectly fair is like claiming unanimity after killing everyone who disagrees. With regard to the thought that this means all systems are inevitably unfair, to me this does seem to be true within the scope and context of the type of system that this series seems to be targeted at, however I do think there is more room for exploration and possibility if we think a little further outside the box; that is, reconsider the process of voting and representation all together, rather than just how the votes are counted. The Soviet model, for example, provides an interesting contrast wherein smaller communities and other groups of people would gather, speak and debate over candidates, and then for the final proposed candidate a simple yes/no vote would be held. The winners of these elections would then go on to elect their superiors up to the very top. While I'm not necessarily advocating for this system in particular as I am not particularly well educated about it's details, nuances and practical issues, it does provide an example of a system that allows for more nuance and discussion in the political sphere, and would be an interesting and insightful place to start in a deeper exploration of possible electoral and gubernatorial systems rather then just vote counting. At the end of the day, it may be voting itself that is the issue, and some other, deeper form of political participation that is the solution.

@nienke7713

16 күн бұрын

One immediate issue I foresee with a tiered system like that is that a group that is spread out might get outvoted by a localised majority (even if they can partake in the discussion at first) and by the time it reaches the higher levels their vote may be lost, even if they might have the majority in the entire population. More generally, any system that doesn't have proportional representation or some way to specifically ensure minorities get heard also have an issue of completely silencing minorities on the higher levels. That said, I do think there is benefit to deliberative democracy, and I do think there are other ways to work that into things. However, I also think it's unrealistic for all to be constantly involved with politics, and there's a certain benefit to having career politicians who can deep dive into the matters. One option is to work with transferable votes, where on every matter you could vote yourself directly on the matter if you wanted to, but you may also transfer your vote to someone you trust with it, whether a friend or family member, or a career politician. And they can choose to transfer your vote (along with their own) to someone else they trust with it too. At any point, you should be able to take your vote back (although you can't reverse decisions already made using your vote). It creates something between representative and direct democracy, and allows people to engage themselves with the issues they have a deep connection with, whilst trusting someone else on matters they're not as occupied with or knowledgeable about, and is encourages discussing matters with eachother to find out who you feel you can trust with your vote. However, it would certainly require some practical working out of how to arrange it in a way that's manageable, safe, and can't be abused. Another thing is citizen's assemblies, where a demographically representative sample of the population is asked to come together multiple times over a longer period of time and discuss a certain topic (or several topics), whilst there are experts who can inform them on that topic, and they deliberate with each other to find solutions/ideas that they can agree on. Often the ideas still do require the government to agree (and if the government disagrees it is required to address the reasons for rejecting the ideas/solutions offered by the assembly).

Great series! Still digesting all of it...

@CarneadesOfCyrene

7 жыл бұрын

Thanks! It is a lot to digest.

If only two candidates present sign up to be electable then it fulfils the criteria, but as soon as more eligible people sign up and we artifically restrict things to only two candidates, I wouldn't consider it unrestricted any more, you'd have to force everyone to only pick from 2 candidates despite there being more potential candidates who meet all eligibility criteria, or you'd have to hold some sort of pre-election, at which point you'd either need to look at what is a fair and democratic way to choose two candidates from a pool, or split the pool in two and have each of the two come to a candidate, in which case you get to the same problem we have now, with the addition of how to determine how to split the pool into 2.

by law having more than two choices IS a desirability condition by law in many nations. to have two candidates would mean suspending in many nations constitutional rights since standing as candidate for election is considered equal political right to voting in the first place or adding new candidate is the right of any X supporting voters. Which then implies that it is directly possible for there to be a third candidate by law, which breaks the two party choice situation. Or one could say for example, if majority of the voters wants to add a new candidate, then new candidate should be added etc. makes sense to me at least as a desirability condition. anyway, I'm sure you will talk about this anyway in one of the future videos. not like I'm the first person to think about this. Voting systems are always a basket of compromises and choices and evaluations aka it is messy, Which is inevitable when real world and humans meet. it is always messy.

I thought May's theorem was, 'Keep saying strong and stable, and eventually they'll vote for you'.

It's simple,... the desirability criterion to Rank preference between candidates, is LESS of a desire than to have choices 3 or more candidates in the first place. Having the ranking preference criterion is contingent on having candidates to Rank. a rank of two is called approval or not approval. This is why Approval Voting is mysteriously left out of this series comparison. Because it meets all Criterion except for ranking. If you think about it,... Two Party ranking isn't ranking any more than Approval voting is... They are both binary.

@nienke7713

Жыл бұрын

If I have a certain preference between candidates, but cannot express it, I might attempt to vote strategically in order to help out my preference. For instance if I would approve of candidates A and B, but not of C, and have a preference of A over B over C, then if the polls indicate that C stands little chance and it's really going to be between A and B, I could decide to only approve of A to increase the odds of them winning. In my country, with proportional representation, there are several options I would really disapprove of, some I dislike but would begrudgingly tolerate, some who I think are decent and would be fine to accept, and a few I actively like and would happily approve off. A simple accept or not accept option wouldn't account for that (and I've already simplified it, as I have preferences within the mentioned groupings as well), and I'd really have to consider where I'll draw the line, realistically above the candidates I truly disapprove off and beneath the candidates I happily approve off, but it is a less obvious choice where to put it relative to the other categories, and that's before the strategic voting comes in (where there may be cases where I'd not approve of candidates I like due to my preferences within that group, or would vote to approve off candidates I actually disapprove because I want to prevent the worse alternative.) We could turn it into a system with more options, and turn it into ratings instead, but then there's still incentives to strategically choose where you put the boundaries between who you consider in each category, and there is an incentive to overemphasize the preferences you have so they have a stronger impact. Ranking allows these preferences to be truly expressed, but you only have to make relative value judgements between candidates, rather than absolute value judgements that can be manipulated (shifted and/or exaggerated) for strategic purposes.

You deserve way more views

@CarneadesOfCyrene

7 жыл бұрын

Thanks!

Here is the case for third party: One might say that to pass the unrestricted range, the right to write in someone is desirable. If someone write in a name, than the original range of choice is clearly incomplete.

This would be great if there only would be two ways to think about everything

@CarneadesOfCyrene

6 жыл бұрын

That sounds like an argument more for representative democracy than anything, since it would be impossible to vote between all of the possible options on any given proposal. Plus, direct democracy is dangerous since people can be easily convinced to vote for something which they don't understand the ramifications of.

basically it throws out the difference between majority and plurality.

There is a big factual error in the video that makes many of the statements in it untrue. The statement of May's theorem given in the video is incorrect. The actual statement of May's theorem (from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) is, "A social decision method for choosing BETWEEN TWO CANDIDATES satisfies neutrality, anonymity and positive responsiveness [another phrase for monotonicity] if and only if the method is majority rule." What you thought it said in this video was that a two-candidate majority rule system is the only one that meets the neutrality, anonimity, and monotonicity criteria, but it actually doesn't say anything about elections with more than two candidates; all it says is that, if there are only two candidates, majority rule is the only system that meets the criteria. In fact, there are voting systems with more than two candidates that have anonymity, neutrality, and monotonicity. Borda count, First past the post, Bucklin voting, and Condorcet's method all have the three conditions which, in this video, you said no voting system with more than two candidates could have. Since May's theorem actually says nothing about three-candidate elections, it can't be used to make an argument against third parties the way you did in the video (though Arrow's impossibility theorem still can).

@CarneadesOfCyrene

6 жыл бұрын

+Joseph Noonan Fair enough. I would not say that this is a large factual error, since it could be implied based on the video title that we are talking about systems with only two candidates, but you are correct that we need to be clear that we are in a world with only two choices for May's Theorem to hold. I'll add a note in the description. Thanks!

@plasmaballin

6 жыл бұрын

Carneades.org That is true that it might be implied. The main reason I said it was a major error was that the argument against the third party doesn't work, since it only applies to a two-candidate election.