[EM] Being unfair at the very first step: issues for Jobst Heitzig

[Diana Galletly]

Sometimes I wonder why I bother replying to Craig; I've recently had a
more useful discussion with a bot on Usenet!  However, having spotted
four errors in the first two paragraphs that he wrote concerning me,
I decided to persevere a little further in attempting to decipher his
message.  I think that this is the crucial bit:

Craig Carey wrote:

> Also, suppose that the ballot papers are all these papers:
>
>     a0 * (A)  +
>     ab * (AB) +
>     ac * (AC) +
>     and other papers.
>
> Then increasing the "ab" Real number will tend to cause B to lose
> since appearing with a positive weight in the Heitzig-ian "A over B"
> total.

And as far as I can see it's total rubbish, because increasing *any*
of a0, ab, ac etc. is going to cause an increase in the "A over B" total.

> So it is just shown that all Condorcet variants will be failed by the
> rule of monotonicity.

Where is it shown?  In your paragraph I quote above?  I don't think so.
I will concede that Condorcet fails participation, which I consider to
be almost as serious as failing monotonicity, in that statements of the
form "any later choices you make cannot harm earlier ones" should not
be made, and voters tend to like such assurances.

> I need to keep lucid comments on the algebra of fairness, confined to
> my own mailing lists, e.g. the single-transferable-vote mailing list.

It might help if you actually wrote comprehensible English when you wrote
here.  I know you can, or at least could; I've looked round your website
and read some of the stuff you wrote in the past.  It's a shame that you
seem to need to insult the people on this mailing list, e.g.

> I see that DW TV periodically has articles on searching for new
> spouses. Since not getting principles on how to be fair to individuals,
> maybe Jobst could free up some knowledge on how to pick a partner.

This kind of attack really doesn't increase the credibility of you, or
your posts, you know ...

> Some Christians believe that children get taught worthless or wrong
> material and then it has to be redone because the first teachings
> were simply not good enough (German bible schools).

Wlog, this is true.  One gets taught stuff for exams at 16, then told it's
not right for exams at 18, and then told that *that's* not true when one
gets to university.  So it goes ...

Diana.