Folks,
A while back I obtained a copy of the classic book Social Choice and Individual Values by Kenneth J. Arrow (Second Edition, Yale University Press, Cowles Foundation monograph 12, copyright 1951, 1963). Arrow won the Nobel Prize for this work. Here is what he writes about the Condorcet Criterion (bottom of page 94):
"As Granger and Black both observed, Condorcet has really two different approaches. In the one most in line with subsequent developments, as well as with Borda's work, the chief contribution has been what might be termed the Condorcet criterion, that a candidate who receives a majority as against each other candidate should be elected. This implicitly accepts the view of what I have termed the independence of irrelevant alternatives (see text, pp. 26-28). It was in this context that Condorcet discovered that pairwise majority comparisons might lead to intransitivity and hence to an indeterminacy in the social choice."
Based on this wording, it appears that Arrow himself may have been the first to actually coin the phrase "Condorcet criterion."
The book itself presents advanced formal mathematics, including theorems, lemmas, corollaries, consequences, and conditions. Yet Arrow's definition of the Condorcet criterion is very informal: "that a candidate who receives a majority as against each other candidate should be elected."
Did you get that, Mike? He *assumes* a ranked ballot, just as I suggested, and which you tried to ridicule me for. And where is the gobbldy-gook about sincere preferences, Mike? Or the notion that the CC should apply to all methods, ordinal or not?
I realize that you are a legend in your own mind, Mike, and you probably consider Kenneth Arrow a simpleton, but the difference between a renowned scholar and a rude, pedantic amateur should now be clear to everyone else at least.
I'm sick and tired of the garbage you obsessively fill my inbox with, and I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one. I wish you'd take your annoying capitalized name and "retire" for good, MIKE OSSIPOFF.
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