[EM] Chris: various topics

[James Green-Armytage]

Hi Chris,
	My reply follows...

James:
>>The thing is, nobody has convinced me that there is any particular reason
>>to care about mono-add-plump or mono-append. Maybe I should care about
>>them, but I [don't] know why I should, at least not as yet. So, even if
>they're
>>bargain-basement cheap, I don't see why I should buy them. 	
Chris:
>I  am flabbergasted at your claim that you need someone to *convince*  
>you  to "care about" those criteria.  Are there any criteria that that 
>you have come to care about without
>anyone needing to convince you? (If so, which ones?)
>(Just to be clear, in case anyone missed the definitions, Mono-add-Plump 
>means that if  x wins and afterwards we add some ballots that 
>bullet-vote for x, then x must still win;
>and Mono-append says that if x wins and afterwards we alter some 
>truncated ballots that didn't rank x to now rank x just below the 
>previously lowest-ranked candidate, then
>x must still win.)
>Either you are not serious and are  to use a UK slang expression "taking 
>the piss", or  you have a highly defective 
>intuition/sense-of-the-ridiculous.

	Dang, that's harsh. I don't even know what we're arguing about. 
	There are an infinite number of possible voting methods criteria, and for
any possible voting method, it is quite easy to make up a criterion that
the method fails. However, some criteria have much more practical
significance than others. When I say that I don't know of any reason to
care about a criterion, I mean that I don't know if it has much practical
significance. Maybe it does, but if so I don't currently appreciate it. I
think that it is possible to productively discuss (debate, convince) the
relative practical significance of different criteria.
	But if you say that mono-add-plump and mono-append are met by pretty much
every rank method, then that's fine with me; I don't see any reason to
argue about them if they're not a factor in any comparison between
interesting methods.
	To be perfectly honest, I have a hard time recalling the definitions for
each of Woodall's monotonicity criteria without referring to his May 1996
paper. (There are 9 in total?) I suspect that many of them have rather
limited practical significance, but again I'd rather not argue the point
outside the context of particular method comparisons. 
>
>>"If C is the CW and is ranked above X and Y on
>>more than 1/3 of the ballots, the X>C faction cannot switch the winner
>>from C to X by burying C under Y." 
>>
>means exactly the same thing, but with mine noone needs to know what 
>"burying" means. 

	Oh, okay. How about "...cannot switch the winner from C to X by
insincerely voting C under Y."

Sincerely,
James