[EM] Markus: What is Condorcet's method?

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Markus--

You wrote:

you wrote (19 Jan 2003):
>Copeland isn't a Condorcet version. Copeland is a Condorcet Criterion
>method, but it isn't an interpretation of one of Condorcet's proposals
>for solving circular ties.

That's hair-splitting.

I reply:

No, not every Condorcet Criterion method is Condorcet's method.
Did Condorcet propose Dodgson's & Nanson's methods, for instance?

You continued:

You said that "in all Condorcet versions a
candidate wins if he has no pairwise decisions for or against him"
without explaining what a "Condorcet version" is.

I reply:

That's because it's a term that we've been using for a long time here,
and its meaning has long been understood: The versions of Condorcet's
method are the interpretations, accepted here, of Condorcet's proposals
for solving circular ties based on the strength of defeats. His
proposal for dropping weakest defeats and his proposal for keeping
stronger defeats. We haven't had disagreement about which of those
interpretations we accept on EM. For instance, PC, Smith//PC, and SSD
have been accepted as reasonable interpretations of what Condorcet
meant by his drop-weakest proposal. But we needn't debate now whether
he really might have meant Smith//PC or SSD. I'm only saying that we've
been calling those Condorcet's method. By extension from SSD, CSSD
is reasonably also called Condorcet's method. BeatpathWinner, since
it's equivalent to CSSD, also qualifies thereby as Condorcet's method.

Ranked-Pairs is unanimously agreed on EM to be the best interpretation
of what Condorcet meant by his keep-strongest proposal.

These are the things that we've been calling Condorcet's method, and
reasonably so. We don't have to restart the debate about what Condorcet
meant by his drop-weakest proposal. I suggest that PC is the literal
interpretation, but that it's perfectly possible that Condorcet would
have done Smith//PC or SSD if he carried out his proposal.

I'll resume this reply tomorrow--
Mike Ossipoff




_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* 
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

----
For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), 
please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em