James A.--
You'd said:
I replied:
See... A, B, and C are in the Schwartz / Smith ? GETCHA / GOCHA / minimal dominant / minimal undominated set... and D ain't not in the nuthin' set. Ta-da!
I'm sorry but the; meaning of that isn't entirely clear. If I couldmake
a suggestion, you might not want to partake of recreational substanceswhen
posting to EM.
Don't know if you're being playful, if you actually disapprove, or if you just want to take me down a peg.
I reply:
None of the above. Just speaking frankly, if that's ok. Disapprove? I wouldn't care if you post gibberish, when you're not replying to a message of mine. But if you want to come down a peg, I have no objection.
You continued:
I'm not sure if you know this, but what you call the Smith set is also
known as the minimal dominant set, or the GETCHA set. GETCHA stands for
GEneralized Top CHoice Axiom.
What you call the Schwartz set is also known as the union of minimal
undominated sets, or the GOCHA set, which stands for Generalized
Optimal
CHoice Axiom.I reply:
When I use acronyms on EM, I've previously defined them. In the "context" of your posting, there was no reason to believe that GOTCA or GETCHA meant anything.
You continued:
If these nicknames seem wacky to you,
I reply:
Do you think that it was just those 2 terms? I dildn't say that I was referring only to them. What I said was about the entire posting, overall.
I'd said:
Go for it. But try not to post when you're all f***ed-up.
You replied:
Can you relax, man?
I reply:
Instead of guessing about other people's emotional states, you could just try to do a better job of saying what you mean. I said nothing about myself, but I'll tell you now that no one can be expected to know what to make of a frantic-gibberish reply to a message that he's posted.
You continued:
Sometimes it's okay to use playful language to get serious points across.
I reply:
Oh, so that's what you were doing--getting serious points across :-) Actually you weren't getting anything across. Except for some sort of unexplained intent to dump a nonsense reply on my posting.
Send a copy of my posting and your reply to "Miss Manners", for an explanation of why someone might not appreciate your reply.
You continued:
In other words, why you gotta be hating all the time?
I reply:
Why do you hate America?
No, of course I have no reason to believe that you do. You have no justification to say that I hate anything or anyone, or, in general, to speculate or guess about unstated opinions, attitudes or emotional states. Better to talk about what's known, and reply to what's said, not what you imagine.
"Hate" is a strong word, but I won't claim that I liked your reply to my posting. By all means, be playful and real cool, but, when postinlg messages that contain no seriously-intended meaning, it would be better if they weren't posted as replies.
Since you say you were conveying serious meaning, what was the serioius meaning conveyed by your statement that you use the BeatpathWinner-&-RP-distinguishing example because it seems occult, in your opinion? Or your statement that you get your power from diagrams of voting systems? There are just 2 possibilities: Either those and many similar statements in your posting are believed by you to be true, in which case you've overtaken Don Davison and Craig Carey, or else you're making intentionally false statements. Sure, satire is fine in order to make a point. But, you see, there aparently wasn't a point, in your case. When there isn't a point, then it isn't satire or humor anymore. It's just Craig Carey. And when it purports to be a reply to someone else's posting, it's a bit rude as well.
Mike Ossipoff
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