As the author, I think this has generally stood the test of time pretty well. There are various changes I’d make if I were doing a rewrite today; but overall, these are minor.
Aside from those generally-minor changes, I think that the key message of this piece remains important to the purpose of Less Wrong. That is to say: making collective decisions, or (equivalently) statements about collective values, is a tough problem; it’s important for rationalists; and studying existing theory on this topic is useful.
Here are the specific changes I’d make if I were going to rewrite this today:
The most significant change is that I’d probably start off with multi-winner voting theory, because I’ve come to believe that it is clearly more important than single-winner theory overall.
I would avoid quick-decaying cultural references such as the “American Chopper” meme. There are also a few passages where the language is noticeably awkward and could be rewritten for clarity.
Unlike my attitude in this piece, I’ve come to accept, although not to like, the “Rank Choice Voting” terminology.
I am no longer on the board of the CES; my term ended. I still endorse their work, though I wish they’d do more on multi-winner reform rather than focusing so strongly on single-winner methods.
Today, I wouldn’t be quite so dismissive of the issues with asset voting. Though minor and probably resolvable in practice, they are actually quite thorny from a philosophical point of view.
On the topic of comparing multi-winner methods, and which ones are best, I have substantially more that I could say today. In fact, I plan to write this new material up as a new article in this series. In the context of this article, though, I wouldn’t fully explain that new material, but rather just briefly outline it. Essentially: I have developed a metric for comparing outcomes of different voting methods. This metric is not directly utilitarian, but I have arguments that suggest it is among the “best known strategy-robust estimators of the difference from the optimal utilitarian outcome”.
The hashtag “#ProRep” seems to have won over “#PropRep” as a way of tagging the topic of proportional representation.
I did not in fact finish the “playable exploration” that I talked about in the penultimate paragraph. But I did, just three days ago, finish my doctorate (defend my thesis) in statistics, so I may end up having time to finally make that playable exploration soon. Certainly, if I can get funded with at least $45K for around 6 months of work, I will finish that and other productive voting theory work that I think would be well worth the money.
Congratulations on finishing your doctorate! I’m very much looking forward to the next post in the sequence on multi-winner methods, and I’m especially the metric you mention.
As the author, I think this has generally stood the test of time pretty well. There are various changes I’d make if I were doing a rewrite today; but overall, these are minor.
Aside from those generally-minor changes, I think that the key message of this piece remains important to the purpose of Less Wrong. That is to say: making collective decisions, or (equivalently) statements about collective values, is a tough problem; it’s important for rationalists; and studying existing theory on this topic is useful.
Here are the specific changes I’d make if I were going to rewrite this today:
The most significant change is that I’d probably start off with multi-winner voting theory, because I’ve come to believe that it is clearly more important than single-winner theory overall.
I would avoid quick-decaying cultural references such as the “American Chopper” meme. There are also a few passages where the language is noticeably awkward and could be rewritten for clarity.
Unlike my attitude in this piece, I’ve come to accept, although not to like, the “Rank Choice Voting” terminology.
I am no longer on the board of the CES; my term ended. I still endorse their work, though I wish they’d do more on multi-winner reform rather than focusing so strongly on single-winner methods.
Today, I wouldn’t be quite so dismissive of the issues with asset voting. Though minor and probably resolvable in practice, they are actually quite thorny from a philosophical point of view.
On the topic of comparing multi-winner methods, and which ones are best, I have substantially more that I could say today. In fact, I plan to write this new material up as a new article in this series. In the context of this article, though, I wouldn’t fully explain that new material, but rather just briefly outline it. Essentially: I have developed a metric for comparing outcomes of different voting methods. This metric is not directly utilitarian, but I have arguments that suggest it is among the “best known strategy-robust estimators of the difference from the optimal utilitarian outcome”.
The hashtag “#ProRep” seems to have won over “#PropRep” as a way of tagging the topic of proportional representation.
I did not in fact finish the “playable exploration” that I talked about in the penultimate paragraph. But I did, just three days ago, finish my doctorate (defend my thesis) in statistics, so I may end up having time to finally make that playable exploration soon. Certainly, if I can get funded with at least $45K for around 6 months of work, I will finish that and other productive voting theory work that I think would be well worth the money.
Congratulations on finishing your doctorate! I’m very much looking forward to the next post in the sequence on multi-winner methods, and I’m especially the metric you mention.
+1