Abstract
Assuming that votes are independent, the epistemically optimal procedure in a binary collective choice problem is known to be a weighted supermajority rule with weights given by personal log likelihood ratios. It is shown here that an analogous result holds in a much more general model. Firstly, the result follows from a more basic principle than expected-utility maximisation, namely from an axiom (“epistemic monotonicity”) which requires neither utilities nor prior probabilities of the ‘correctness’ of alternatives. Secondly, a person’s input need not be a vote for an alternative; it may be any type of input, for instance a subjective degree of belief or probability of the correctness of one of the alternatives. The case of a profile of subjective degrees of belief is particularly appealing, since no parameters such as competence parameters need to be known here.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 263-283 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Journal | Social Choice and Welfare |
Volume | 26 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2006 |