Blake said:
But you must recognize there's a difference between saying "Mike prefers chocolate to vanilla" and saying that P&P will be considering a preference order in which chocolate is higher than vanilla. I think it is obvious what P&P mean, and I don't think they have to state the obvious. I reply: Here's what they said: "Given the profile of individual preferences..." Sorry, but the expression "individual preferences" means ways that individuals prefer things to other things. Of course it means whatever the speaker wants it to mean, but its standard, accepted meaning is what I said it is. You & Markus informed me that when they say "preferences", they mean something more abstract: Orderings of the candidates, without saying or caring where those preferences are. They could be in voters' minds, or they could be marked, sincerely or insincerely on ballots, but P&P say nothing about that. They're just abstract candidate-orderings. So, you pointed out, they're just saying that the input to the choice function is a set of candidate-orderings. Fine. Then they could call them candidate-orderings. But instead they call them "preferences", a word whose meaning is different from what you say that they mean by it. Now that you've told me what they mean, that's fine. By the way, though, I guess they're assuming that the choice function won't be CR, if they're saying that the input to the choice function is a set of candidate-orderings. Or are you now going to change the definition of preferences again so that it accomodates CR? Sorry, but I prefer a criterion that applies to all methods, or at least to all proposable methods, or at the very least to all used or proposed methods. Blake had said: >For you, > >>preference order implies sincere preferences, and you recognize that a >>real-world method can only work on cast votes. But for P&P, a method is >>just a function from a hypothetical set of preference orders to a set of >>winners. I replied: >Ok, thanks for clarifying that. If an oracle knew the preferences, >or if sincere or insincere preferences were recorded on a ballot, >either of those would do for what P&P mean by preferences. I just >meant that P&P should have been a lot clearer about that. Perhaps they weren't writing with you in mind. I reply: Clearly saying what one means isn't just something that someone should do when they're writing for me. If they want what they're saying to mean anything to anyone outside their own little culture, then it would be good to use words according to their accepted meaning in English, rather than with a meaning that's used only in that culture. Or maybe, as you may be suggesting, they don't care if anyone else knows what they're saying. Of course I can't complain about that. It's none of my business what made-up word meanings some group wants to use when communicating with eachother, or if they don't want to be understood by others. But academics' ineptness at saying what they mean is worth mentioning, because there are people on this list who quote them a lot, and there are people on this list who regard them as some sort of high authority. For that reason it's sometimes necessary to discuss what they've said, and, though they aren't writing just for me, it would be more convenient if they were better at saying what they mean. But they're not, and there's no point making a longterm issue of it. I just wanted to mention it. I believe that we've both stated our positions on that question, and there seems nothing else to say about it. Surely there are other issues more worthy. Mike Ossipoff _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
