[EM] Markus, 20 March, 0440 GMT

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Dear Markus--

You quoted me:

you wrote (19 March 2005):
>MinMax is a term that I didn't use then and don't use now, due to its 
>ambiguity.

You say:

Well, the term "MinMax" is less ambiguous than
your term "Plain Condorcet", since this method has
absolutely no resemblance to Condorcet's proposals.

I reply:

Now you want to give me complete credit for the initial proposal of PC. 
Thanks, but I should point out that one of Condorcet's proposals, for when 
no one is unbeaten, was the repeated  dropping of the weakest 
pairwise-defeat. In other words: PC.

Condorcet referred to a pairwise defeat, a statement of the form 
"Smith>Jones", as a "proposition".

By the way,
You've claimed that Condorcet didn't propose wv for his method. If you want 
to say that I wasn't the first proponent of wv, then I suggest that you, 
right now, need to reverse your position on whether Condorcet proposed wv.

But I'm not interested in re-dredging-up the debate on what Condorcet 
proposed. I'd rather concede that PC has "absolutely no resemblance to 
Condorcet's proposals". So, do you think you could not debate that, since 
I'm willing to concede it?

I'm not going to encourage you to waste everyone's time with another debate 
about what Condorcet proposed.

You continued:

Actually I prefer the term "Simpson-Kramer".

I reply:

Fine. In the _Journal of Economic Perspective_, for Winter '85, 
Simson-Kramer is defined as electing the candidate whose greatest votes for 
him in a pairwise comparison is greater than any other candidate's greatest 
votes for him in a pairwise comparison.

(note that a candidate's pairwise comparisons aren't limited to his defeats)

If you think that sounds like the definition of PC, or is equivalent to the 
definition of PC, then there's no way that I can reach you, and I won't try.

By all means tell us that you prefer Simpson-Kramer to PC, but you're 
mis-using that term if you say that it's definition is the same as the 
definition of PC.

But thank you for demonstrating that MinMax is used to mean more than one 
thing. You use it to mean PC, but you also think that it means 
Simpson-Kramer, a different method.

That's why I don't use the name "MinMax", because it doesn't have just one 
meaning. PC only has one meaning.

You quoted your statement and my reply:

I wrote (17 March 2005):
>You didn't propose wv in general, since GMC isn't
>satisfied by other wv methods than MinMax(wv).

You wrote (19 March 2005):
>Markus, this is why I eventually start asking
>if something is wrong with you. I just finished
>pointing out to you the following (among others
>things): I introduced and proposed wv years before
>I defined GMC. Therefore you aren't making any sense
>when you try to say that GMC has bearing on what I
>meant when I introduced and proposed wv. What Markus
>is doing here is repetition of what he said before.
>copying, re-use, recycling and repetition of statements
>that have been rebutted in the message to which Markus
>(maybe thinks that he) is replying to. But Markus isn't
>replying. Markus is monologing. It doesn't matter what
>I say. It doesn't matter if I point out why Markus's
>conclusions don't make any sense. Markus will just
>keep on repeating what he likes to repeat.

You now say:

I can only comment on how you motivated wv at the EM
mailing list. Here, you used GMC from the very beginning.
And GMC was one of your main arguments for using wv.

I reply:

I introduced and proposed wv in 1994. I defined GMC, first mentioned GMC, in 
1996 or 1997.

>From my earliest introduction of wv, in 1994, I justified my advocacy of wv 
in the ways that I described in my previous "Markus" posting. Those 
justifications are completely general in nature. And, also, the effect of 
those facts are quite general, in the sense that those facts, by which I 
justified my initial introduction and advocacy of wv, are just as true when 
the method is BeatpathWinner or Ranked-Pairs, as when the method is PC. For 
example, I explained why those same facts are the reason why BeatpathWinner 
meets WDSC and SFC, and why Margins fails those criteria.

You quote me:

>At the time when I introduced wv, there were only
>2 methods known on EM that could use wv or margins:
>PC and Smith//PC.

You then say:

Of course, that means that my observation that
"you proposed wv only in connection with the
MinMax tie-breaking strategy" is correct.

I reply:

As I already said, my justification of my introduction and advocacy of wv 
was based on completely general arguments, which I described in my previous 
"Markus" posting.

Let me paste a paragraph from earlier on this page:

>From my earliest introduction of wv, in 1994, I justified my advocacy of wv 
in the ways that I described in my previous "Markus" posting. Those 
justifications are completely general in nature. And, also, the effect of 
those facts are quite general, in the sense that those facts, by which I 
justified my initial introduction and advocacy of wv, are just as true when 
the method is BeatpathWinner or Ranked-Pairs, as when the method is PC. For 
example, I explained, in my most recent "Markus" posting, why those same 
facts are the reason why BeatpathWinner meets WDSC and SFC, and why Margins 
fails those criteria.

But I refer you to my previous "Markus" posting, just before this one.

Which Condorcet versions had been proposed on EM at the time when I 
introduced wv is quite irrelevant to the matter. I justified wv by general 
considerations not limited to a particular method.

Mike Ossipoff

_________________________________________________________________
Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! 
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/