>Dave Sill wrote:
>Harry Browne needs a vote for him less than Gore needs a vote against him.
The way this is phrased suddenly caused an election analogue of Baye's
Theorem to flash into my head.
Baye's Theorem is based, as I understand it, on the observation that the
probability of a given proposition being true is not simply one minus the
probability of it being false, when we are in a position of partial
knowledge.
A totally analagous situation exists in political thinking. As Mr. Sill so
succintly illustrated, the utility of voting against a politician is often
quite different then simply one minus the utility of voting for that
politician.
Hmmm.
One of the major differences of Bayes Theorem vs. more naive formulations of
probability theory is to deliver significantly smaller probability values,
once evidence is taken into account.
I wonder what the analagous effect of this assymmetry on political calculus
is?
Just another half-formed flash of inspiration from the mind of...
Darin Sunley
rsunley@escape.ca
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