Thursday, January 05, 2012

Hedge Your Vote(s)

Most individuals are aware, if only even vaguely, of what the phrase hedge your bets means, even if they are not gamblers.  Hedging your bets is simply attempting to mathematically weigh the odds of numerous uncontrollable variables in order to obtain results from your bets most favorable to yourself, which only makes sense.

But hedging your bets is also a means of not taking a stand for one thing or another, or, as The Free Dictionary’s definition of “hedge your bets” explains it,

to try to avoid giving an opinion or choosing only one thing, so that whatever happens in the future you will not have problems or seem stupid.

Which brings us to the subjects of voting and Professor of Politics Steven J. Bram at New York University.  Professor Bram proposes to put a stop to divisive politics utilizing as his tools in this endeavor mathematics and approval voting, a process which is only a hedging of your bets, which is what voting actually entails.

Brams says approval voting, in which voters can vote for more than one candidate — in some scenarios as many as they can stomach — is a better way to conduct multiple candidate elections. The candidate with the most votes still wins.

Approval voting has been used by various professional societies. It’s similar to the range voting (or score voting) systems seen at the Olympics, except a candidate can only be given a thumbs up or a thumbs down, and not a more precisely calibrated 6.1 or 9.2.

With approval voting, “you can have your cake and eat it, too,” Brams says. “You can vote sincerely for the candidate who can’t win … and you can cast a second approval vote, or strategic vote, for the candidate who can.”

Personally, I find the idea of approval voting unappealing, as I think it brings humans back down to the level of apes, who also appear to gamble.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands observed apes as they “gambled” on overturning cups concealing pieces of chopped banana, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

Faced with the choice of a guaranteed small piece of banana or a larger chunk of fruit hidden beneath one of a number of shuffled cups, the apes chose to gamble more than 50 per cent of the time, researchers said.

The apes were able to identify when the odds were stacked against them and when it was wiser to go with the safe bet, so when more cups were added and the odds of a bigger reward worsened, they became more cautious.

Here’s a rather more revolutionary idea to put an end to divisive politics, no hedging of bets required.

Link to articles regarding Professor Brams’ ideas via Fred Lapides.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/05 at 08:58 AM
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