alyssavance comments on Arrow's Theorem is a Lie - Less Wrong

27 Post author: alyssavance 24 October 2009 08:46PM

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Comment author: Peter_de_Blanc 24 October 2009 10:32:25PM 7 points [-]

taw is correct for most realistic situations. If there is a large voting population, and your probability distribution over vote outcomes is pretty smooth, then the marginal expected utility of each +1 vote shouldn't change that much as a result of your miniscule contribution. In that case, if you vote anything other than 0, you may as well vote 10.

Comment author: alyssavance 24 October 2009 10:36:04PM *  0 points [-]

That's true, in the limit as the number of voters goes to infinity, if you only care about which preference is ranked the highest. However, there are numerous circumstances where this isn't the case.

Comment author: Technologos 25 October 2009 12:20:08AM 0 points [-]

Specifically, it isn't the case if you believe that the disparity between potential winners is smaller than the maximum vote number minus the minimum and that other people do not believe the same and adjust their votes accordingly.