cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) (11/14/89)
In article <3899@sbcs.sunysb.edu>, brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes: > In article <6901@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: < > There are people who insist in bringing up voting paradoxes to show why < > this or that system is a bad idea. < < [ Martin Gardner occasionally reported proofs that voting paradoxes < always exist ] < > Fortunately, the proofs (and paradoxes) do not apply to approval voting, > as in Alien's MAUVE. Approval voting claims to compute the total amount > of happiness that the voters would have with each choice, and that's what > it does compute (by addition). Dave Mack's comments about ``separating > whether you want the group from its name'' are invalid: if you can't > find a 100-vote-happiness margin for sci.aquaria and you can't find a > 100-vote-happiness margin for rec.aquaria, then neither should be > created. It is easy to show rigorously that there is no way to avoid voting paradoxes. That is, no matter what criteria you have, it is possible to construct a paradoxical scenario. This is the "social welfare problem." -- Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907 Phone: (317)494-6054 hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet, UUCP)