[EM] Nontechnical words for cardinal and ordinal categories?

[Jameson Quinn]

>
>
>
> I'm sorry to be a spoil-sport, but what's wrong with the
> already-familiar terms that already have the intended meaning?


So far, there have been three responses, which I summarize as follows:

1. Obviously, the correct terms are "cardinal" and "ordinal".
2. Obviously, the correct terms are "ranking" and "rating".
3. Obviously, the correct terms are "ranked" and "rated".

I'd say that given that the first three answers were each different, it
can't be so obvious.

Why do I think new terms are worthwhile? I think that choosing the right
term is an important part of activism. Neither pro-life nor pro-choice
activists are satisfied with the more-descriptive "anti-abortion" or
"abortion rights". Similarly, Republicans made no headway against the
inheritance tax until they termed it the "death tax". And FairVote has done
very well with "instant runoff".

Also, I'm old enough to have seen several neologisms pass into common use.
That's taught me not to trust the initial suspicion against a new term. A
word or phrase which sounds strange the first time you hear it, becomes
perfectly normal by the fourth.

So, what are my specific complaints with existing terms?

Cardinal/Ordinal: yes, I know that pretty much everyone learns these terms
somewhere around 2nd grade. But then they don't really use them again.
Imagine you didn't know anything about voting theory, and you heard just
one of the terms; "cardinal voting" or "ordinal voting", but not both. For
me at least, these would be meaningless jargon. "Cardinal", in isolation,
is more likely to mean "principal" than "on an absolute scale"; and even
"ordinal", which has no other confusing meaning, takes some thought to
relate to voting; you have to translate the adjective to a verb in your
head.

Ranked/rated: To me, these work fine as neutral terms. But they're not so
good for activism. Again, if I heard the term "rated voting" for the first
time, I'd have to think a bit to understand what it meant. Has the voting
process itself been rated, or does it involve using ratings? What would it
be like to use ratings to vote? None of these leap to mind; they must be
explained.

That's why I like evaluative/comparative. Just hearing the words already
puts you into the process of casting a ballot.

...

Other perspectives are welcome. But it's certainly worth talking about
this. This is mostly a list for theoretical discussion, and there are other
lists for advocacy; but there absolutely should be terms that are suited
for advocacy, and the theoretical community has a part to play in approving
such terms.

Jameson
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