[r-t] Anything Goes vs Peals Mean Something

[Mark Davies]

Iain A writes,

> I think this example separates my definition from that of DFM and RAS.
> With the recursive defintion you have to start with the highest stage. ...
> Since you can't extract a full 5040 of triples, since there are 6 rows
> missing, it would be false. Now if you rang a 5034 of triples that was
> mutually true against the singles, that would be a "true" 5046.

Ah yes, so your recursive definition doesn't allow Triples and Major with a
true 5040 of Triples and some Major changes tacked on? I can't really see
why we can't treat that as a true peal.

But the recursive definition seems much too lax in one other way (I think
Don's "sets" definition suffers from this too). Basically you are working at
the level of individual rows, so in identifying an extent at stage N you can
take any row from the peal, not just those rung to a method at stage N.

Suppose you rang a peal containing a partial extent of Triples and a partial
extent of Minor. The Minor is false against the Triples, so it can't be
considered a true peal at the Triples stage. We have no complete extents, so
it's hard to argue it's true by extents, either. But by your definition, you
could pick changes out of any part of the Minor touch to make up the extent
of Triples. It wouldn't matter that what was left over was some Minor
changes that didn't fit together to make a touch.

I don't like that particularly much. Hence my wording, based around methods
rather than changes. If you have a Minor method, you can treat it at the
Triple stage and it must be true against the Triples changes. Or you can
treat it as a Minor method, which means you need whole extents, with only
one partial extent. You can't get past this by cherry-picking changes.

> Ultimately we trust the band to make that judgement for themselves.  The
> proposal by some members of the list is to extend that idea to allow the
> band to determine what is a good standard of method and what is a good
> standard of truth.  The role of any rules or decisions we make is merely
> to help classify what methods and truth are.

With ringing quality, yes, we must, because it is a subjective judgement.
Truth and falsehood shouldn't be a subjective judgement. You can't accept
false peals from one band because "they are OK about falseness" whilst other
bands aren't. So sorry, I don't buy this!

MBD