[EM] Discourse

[Juho Laatu]

On 1.7.2013, at 23.12, Benjamin Grant wrote:

> Thanks for everyone's candor and feedback. I can certainly appreciate how
> annoying it is to deal with someone like myself that 1) is often asking
> questions that everyone else had heard many times before and knows the
> answer by heart, and 2) someone who may not be able to understand the
> explanations when they are given.
> 
> I am running into #2 a lot, so much that I am wondering if this list is
> really mostly for people who are already trained, steeped, and comfortable
> with concepts like utlity and Batesian regret, with high level math and set
> theory, and so on.

Some people are very kowledgeable here, some less. That's no problem as long as the discussions are good. There are many kind of people on the EM list. Some have academic interests in this area, some are active on practical reforms, some promote their own favourite methods and criteria, some are just interested in following the discussions. The language on this list is sometimes polite, sometimes not. Your mails have certainly been better than many others. Welcome to the list. It is no problem if you don't know all the used terminology yet. Because of the multitude of topics and writers of this list, people are already used to reading and answering those mails that they are interested of and skip the rest. Despite of all the quarreling and messy posts, I think the EM list is a well working mailing list that has also lots of good content for various needs. Hopefully for you too.

Juho



> 
> It may simply require more time and effort than I have to give to understand
> the answers to these questions, I certainly do not have the option presently
> to take courses in these advanced subjects. I was hoping there would be a
> more down-to-earth way to "get" this stuff, but whether there's no way to
> "dumb" this stuff down, or whether it's just not something that people here
> are interested in, either way I can appreciate it.
> 
> Finally, while I was surprised that erudition didn't eliminate the
> "churlishness", my best approach to that fact is probably to get a thicker
> skin. I'm not promising to be a punching bag, mind you, but I can probably
> be a little less sensitive and just assume that these groups are more
> pugnacious than I had imagined.
> 
> Thanks everyone. I'm going to keep my subscription to these groups for now
> (if I may), and I will try to be mindful of all of the above if and when I
> continue interacting with them.
> 
> -Benn Grant
> eFix Computer Consulting
> benn at 4efix.com
> 603.283.6601
> 
> 
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info