The World Cup Discussion Thread (OOC, Version IV)

[Audioslavia]

[Graintfjall]

Congrats Audio. Your nation is probably older than the average NS user...

[The Sherpa Empire]

Like you didn't already swear and drink whisky?

[Audioslavia]

About the voting thingmy:

It's very easy for conversations on voting systems to get bogged down in what-ifs and but-if-you-think-about-its. Every solution you create always has two drawbacks, and before you know it two forumpages have gone by and you're even further from the truth than where you started.

After removing Bid B from contention (That is, taking any vote that had voted for Bid B, making it null and void, then replacing that vote with the second choice on those ballots), Bid A gained only 12 votes. That means that only 12 of the 16 voters who supported Bid B were supportive of Bid A. While this vote was not tied, if it were, then it may have gone entirely to second preferences. What you dont see in the total is the number of votes for Bid A that had Bid B as a second preference. That number very well could have been 13 or higher.

If we did things that way, voters would vote differently, as there'd be a higher chance that adding a second preference to your ballot makes it less likely that your first choice wins.

I don't think we should be trying to second-guess or reinvent the instant runoff system here, nor should we be confusing voters as to how best to use their vote. "Make a list in order of preference" is nice and simple. "Try to figure out whether or not you'd weaken your first choice by adding a second choice" isn't.

With regards to the clarification on breaking ties, I prefer Kelssek's rewrite. I was finding Kry's difficult to parse.

Like you didn't already swear and drink whisky?

who, me? Why good gosh I would never do that I am a pure soul.

[Kelssek]

I guess it shouldn't be entirely surprising that Arrow's impossibility theorem has come up twice. There are many interpretations you can take from it, including pretty odious and wrong conclusions that authoritarianism is preferable to democracy. But more relevant for the discussion - Arrow's theorem, and indeed the public opinion survey industry, highlights that lots of individual choices don't necessarily coalesce into a coherent "group" choice. What's more important in the voting system than attempting to discern some rational collective decision that exists only in a philosophical sense, is that it's easy to understand and is perceived as fair (and both those things are related to each other).

[Farfadillis]

I guess it shouldn't be entirely surprising that Arrow's impossibility theorem has come up twice. There are many interpretations you can take from it, including pretty odious and wrong conclusions that authoritarianism is preferable to democracy. But more relevant for the discussion - Arrow's theorem, and indeed the public opinion survey industry, highlights that lots of individual choices don't necessarily coalesce into a coherent "group" choice. What's more important in the voting system than attempting to discern some rational collective decision that exists only in a philosophical sense, is that it's easy to understand and is perceived as fair (and both those things are related to each other).

Just as a comment: the voting system I brought up, I brought up specifically because it avoids Arrow's impossibility theorem by virtue of not being ranked choice. On the more subjective side of it, I feel like it would more accurately reflect voters' opinions? At least with a more robust rating system, say, -5 to +5. With how ranked choice voting works, preferring one bid over another by a hair's breadth is the same as having a very strong preference.

[Ethane]

I guess it shouldn't be entirely surprising that Arrow's impossibility theorem has come up twice. There are many interpretations you can take from it, including pretty odious and wrong conclusions that authoritarianism is preferable to democracy. But more relevant for the discussion - Arrow's theorem, and indeed the public opinion survey industry, highlights that lots of individual choices don't necessarily coalesce into a coherent "group" choice. What's more important in the voting system than attempting to discern some rational collective decision that exists only in a philosophical sense, is that it's easy to understand and is perceived as fair (and both those things are related to each other).

Just as a comment: the voting system I brought up, I brought up specifically because it avoids Arrow's impossibility theorem by virtue of not being ranked choice. On the more subjective side of it, I feel like it would more accurately reflect voters' opinions? At least with a more robust rating system, say, -5 to +5. With how ranked choice voting works, preferring one bid over another by a hair's breadth is the same as having a very strong preference.

The idea that a couple of people with strong opinions (-5s) on a bid would outweigh those who preferred one bid (+3) but also didn't hate the other bid (+2), possibly in the majority, highlights a flaw in this system. If a majority of people prefer a certain bid, then that bid should undoubtedly win. Thus I don't think this system would work outside a -1, 1 binary (approve or disapprove?).

I don't inherently disagree with the idea of RoN being eliminated, but I feel like we've had a similar discussion to this before?
(actually, I've looked back. We've had multiple).#

EDIT: Congratulations Audio on reaching 18! Wish I knew about NS from a younger age. (that just blows my 5 years out the water)

[Sarzonia]

Sorry, Audio. Drinking age is 21. Can't serve you.

[Ceni]

I know I'm not too active in the World Cup any more, but since I've done a fair bit of research on different voting systems IRL, I feel like I should jump in here:

The idea that a couple of people with strong opinions (-5s) on a bid would outweigh those who preferred one bid (+3) but also didn't hate the other bid (+2), possibly in the majority, highlights a flaw in this system. If a majority of people prefer a certain bid, then that bid should undoubtedly win. Thus I don't think this system would work outside a -1, 1 binary (approve or disapprove?).

The point of cardinal voting (or range voting, as it's often called) is that the degree of people's preferences matters much more than the distribution of those preferences, remembering that the goal of a voting system is to produce the most utility for the most people.

Let's flesh out your example a little more. For the sake of discussion, let's say 60% of voters had the following ballots:
A: 3
B: 2

And the other 40% had the following ballots:
A: -5
B: 3

Under many other systems using this simplified example, Bid A would win. But this ignores the fact that the people who didn't vote for Bid A really, really, really hated it, while the people who didn't vote for Bid B truthfully wouldn't have minded seeing Bid B enacted, but just liked Bid A a little bit better.

Treating these preferences as utilities, if Bid A won, there'd be a total societal utility of -20 (since the people who hated Bid A really, really, really hated it), but if Bid B won, there'd be a total societal utility of 240 (since the people who voted for Bid A wouldn't have minded Bid B). We could play around with the numbers a bit, but it'd generally work out something like this in the scenario you described. I view this as a feature of cardinal/range voting, not a bug.

We really don't seem to mind this when we're rating products on Amazon (out of 5 stars), for example; if the people who "like" a product give it three or four stars (but not five), and the people who dislike it all give it 0 stars, we probably won't buy the product.

For the record: Approval voting (where the two options are 1 and 0) is a thing, and I believe Farf went over the approve, neutral, disapprove system earlier.

Let's further suppose that of the 10 who voted for the Bizarro one, nine of them had Re-open bids next because they didn't want a n00b hosted World Cup, but preferred the bizarre format to no World Cup host at all. This means that of the 27 voters, 18 preferred no host at all to the n00b bid and 16 preferred it to the bizarre format bid, yet we're eliminating Re-open bids under Banija's proposal which means one of those bids is going to win despite a majority of voters being opposed to it to the point where they'd rather there be no host at all.

I think the voting system that's most explicit about the issue of RON is something called a Condorcet system. As Wikipedia simply describes it, "To find the Condorcet winner every candidate must be matched against every other candidate in a series of imaginary one-on-one contests. In each pairing the winner is the candidate preferred by a majority of voters." Under Condorcet, we would continue to use ranked-choice voting. By default, if a particular bid loses to RON in a pairwise contest, it is not considered the Condorcet winner. Admittedly, Condorcet is harder to tally manually (we'd have to use a third-party site to do the calculations), but it solves the RON problem.

For those of you confused by this discussion of voting systems (which can get super arcane), I highly recommend a book called Gaming the Vote.

Anyway, sorry for the rant -- but this is something that I geek out on IRL so I just felt like putting my two cents in.

[Farfadillis]

If anyone is interested in a good argument against cardinal voting: it's likely to make us much more reticent to change. Proposals like the Casaran system, public RP bonus, using dice to generate scores or not using RP carryover could fail by virtue of having a minority that's particularly opposed to such ideas. Even then I guess it could be argued that their preferences should be reflected in a vote. I'm actually quite split on it, but I thought it was worth bringing up cause it does evade most of the problems that have been brought up throughout this discussion.

It's worth noting it's not a Condorcet system, too, but it also doesn't aim to be one.

[Kelssek]

I totally understand the belief in the existence of a group opinion that can be discerned through some properly devised electoral system. I can tell you all about my change of views about the importance and feasibility of electoral reform some other time. But I say again...

What's more important in the voting system than attempting to discern some rational collective decision that exists only in a philosophical sense, is that it's easy to understand and is perceived as fair (and both those things are related to each other).

And we were trying to deal with the issue of what to do in case of a tie. I do not believe there is a problem with the existing system of voting on host bids and I would not support a change to this kind of x-point scale. This isn't something that was on the table so let's not start looking for nails to hammer.

[Farfadillis]

I totally understand the belief in the existence of a group opinion that can be discerned through some properly devised electoral system. I can tell you all about my change of views about the importance and feasibility of electoral reform some other time. But I say again...

What's more important in the voting system than attempting to discern some rational collective decision that exists only in a philosophical sense, is that it's easy to understand and is perceived as fair (and both those things are related to each other).

And we were trying to deal with the issue of what to do in case of a tie. I do not believe there is a problem with the existing system of voting on host bids and I would not support a change to this kind of x-point scale. This isn't something that was on the table so let's not start looking for nails to hammer.

As a clarification: I'm not necessarily in favor of a cardinal voting system (for the reasons I outlined two posts above, I'd have to think it over very seriously even if it magically made it all the way to a vote), but I brought it up specifically because of a concern raised by another user over the fairness of the current voting system, so I feel like you're being a bit unfair in your assessment of the situation.

[Strike]

Considering the number of established long time participants / EWCC members who have admitted to not casting a vote this cycle, I would be wary of terms like "Group opinion"

[The Sarian]

We should just do Eurovision voting, complete with bad jokes.

[Sarzonia]

Am I the only one who finds the whole ranked voting thing too complicated? Like "it's trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist" complicated?

I'm not thrilled with the idea of combining the votes that were cast for the Valanora-Chromatika bid with the ones for the Taeshan-Ethane bid after the first round, especially considering how I voted. Since I already made my point by withdrawing from this World Cup, I'll leave it at that.

[Bluecliff]

Around how long in RL time is it usually between the end of the Baptism of Fire and the start of the World Cup?

[Drawkland]

Around how long in RL time is it usually between the end of the Baptism of Fire and the start of the World Cup?

It varies between cycles, based on the hosts of the World Cup and their schedule, but it's generally around a week, give or take a few days.

[Bluecliff]

Around how long in RL time is it usually between the end of the Baptism of Fire and the start of the World Cup?

It varies between cycles, based on the hosts of the World Cup and their schedule, but it's generally around a week, give or take a few days.

That's about what I thought, thank you.

[Starblaydia]

Short and sweet suggestion:

1. Count up the WCC votes. If a bid wins, pick that one, as per usual.
2. If it's deadlocked, figure out how the EWCC voted. If a bid wins, pick that one.
3. If it's still deadlocked, the Prez votes. That bid wins.

Slightly longer version: currently the EWCC only does BoF votes because they are 'trusted' to pick the right option for newbies and their all-important first tournament. Trust them with breaking WC host voting ties before the deadlock is even mentioned as part of the normal process. If they still can't decide for us, then we trust El Prezidente to be a sensible person who can decide in the unlikely event of us collectively being unable to.

[Strike]

Short and sweet suggestion:

1. Count up the WCC votes. If a bid wins, pick that one, as per usual.
2. If it's deadlocked, figure out how the EWCC voted. If a bid wins, pick that one.
3. If it's still deadlocked, the Prez votes. That bid wins.

Slightly longer version: currently the EWCC only does BoF votes because they are 'trusted' to pick the right option for newbies and their all-important first tournament. Trust them with breaking WC host voting ties before the deadlock is even mentioned as part of the normal process. If they still can't decide for us, then we trust El Prezidente to be a sensible person who can decide in the unlikely event of us collectively being unable to.

Seconded

[Sarzonia]

I'll third Starblaydia's suggestion

[HUElavia]

Fourth.

That's a very excellent and sensible idea that can help the voting process in the future.

[The Plough Islands]

The only problem I can see with that issue is that El Presidente may in fact also be a bidder for the World Cup; presumably the authority to Make A Decision then falls on someone else?

[Sarzonia]

The only problem I can see with that issue is that El Presidente may in fact also be a bidder for the World Cup; presumably the authority to Make A Decision then falls on someone else?

The constitution would most likely mandate that the Vice President then have a tiebreaking vote, then it would devolve onto the next highest vote-getters in the election.

[Starblaydia]

The only problem I can see with that issue is that El Presidente may in fact also be a bidder for the World Cup; presumably the authority to Make A Decision then falls on someone else?

The constitution would most likely mandate that the Vice President then have a tiebreaking vote, then it would devolve onto the next highest vote-getters in the election.

Yup, that's how I see it working.