[EM] Participation & SARC

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

> > 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!

There are campaigns now that have to be fought, against one
particular nonreform that's being promoted. But I don't discount
the value of theoretical discussion and academically general
criteria.

>
>******
>
>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?

I don't know--does it? I didn't mean to bring up an issue about
who posted it.

Why do I claim that I posted it?
I claim that I posted an example of IRV failing Participation
because I posted such an example a few days ago. I have no idea
what you posted before I rejoined this list early this year.

In a recent posting you said that participation is the mathematical
formulation of a claim that IRV advocates make for IRV. In that
posting you seemed to be implying that IRV meets Participation.

But now that you've brought up the issue of who posted something
first here, I'll bring up something unimportant that I was going
to let go: When you got angry because Steve joined Blake in
giving advantages of Tideman over
Schulze's method, you said that it was you who introduced
beatpaths to this list, and that it was you who introduced
clones to this list. Wrong. I posted the beatpath definition of
the Schwartz set long before you joined the list. And we were
discussing clones (by a different name) before you were
participating.

Anyway, the reason why I asked if I shouldn't have posted the
IRV Participation example was because you'd said that trying
to convince anyone of anything is contrary to the aim of this
list, and I didn't know if it was ok to post that example, which
could be interpreted as an attempt to convince people of something.

>
>******
>
>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.

Let me clarify that: I didn't interpret that statement as saying
anything about SARC. You indeed made the statement that you
refer to, but you made other statements too. I only say this
because you asked, but you really did reply to a statement
about SARC by saying that one can't nontrivially discuss a
property without having a mathematical formulation. The discussion
there was not about generalizing criteria to deal with
probabilistic methods. When I asked what mathematical formulation
problem SARC has, you said that you hadn't meant that, and I
said "Fine".

Mike Ossipoff

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