[EM] Participation & SARC

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Mike,

you wrote (7 May 2000):
> Markus wrote (7 May 2000):
> > Suppose that you are in a public discussion outside the
> > internet. Suppose that one of your opponents says that all
> > those problems that you are talking about can be circumvented
> > simply be using a random tie breaker. What will your answer?
> > If you answer "I refuse to discuss random election methods."
> > then you have already lost the discussion. So -even if you
> > don't like random election methods- you have to know what
> > to answer when somebody proposes them.
>
> My answer would be: "Go for it!" I wouldn't take such a proposal
> seriously as a rival to the methods that I propose.

Good luck with your tactics!

******

You wrote (7 May 2000):
> Markus wrote (7 May 2000):
> > The aim of this mailing list is not to convince anybody of
> > anything. Actually, for your success of Approval Voting in
> > California it is completely irrelevant whether you can convince
> > David in Australia, Norman in Canada or Markus in Germany.
> 
> So I shouldn't have posted the example showing how IRV fails
> Participation?

I don't understand your comment. Could you -please- explain it?
As far as I remember correctly, it was me who posted those
examples showing how IRO fails participation (13 Dec 1999,
14 Dec 1999). Why do you claim that you posted those examples?
Does it make any difference whether you or me posted those
examples?

******

You wrote (7 May 2000):
> What I objected to was your claim or implication
> that SARC makes an unreasonable presumption about how people
> will vote. And when you made your cryptic statement about
> how we can't nontrivially discuss a property without a proper
> mathematical formulation, and said it in reply to something about
> SARC, I wanted to ask you in what way SARC is lacking because
> of not having some type of mathematical formulation, just in
> case you meant that. Later you assured me that you didn't
> mean anything like that. Fine.

I said that every criterion should be defined in the probabilistic
context so that it is impossible that somebody can claim that the
corresponding problem can be circumvented simply by using some
"random mechanisms." It is not clear to me how you interpreted
this as a criticism of SARC.

Markus Schulze
schulze at sol.physik.tu-berlin.de
schulze at math.tu-berlin.de
markusschulze at planet-interkom.de