[r-t] Doubles 240s

[Philip Earis]

Richard:
"Are there any historical examples of the use of the identity change? If 
there are, as is the case for jump changes, then a plausible case might be 
made for the inclusion of the identity, but not otherwise"

How bizarre. I'm puzzled as to what makes clever people turn so irrational 
in some circumstances.

To answer your narrow question, I've certainly rung at least one peal with 
the identity change in it.  I'm not sure if this meets your definition of a 
historic peal or not.

If I was being only semi-facetious, I'd make the point that call changes are 
about as historic as you get, and these are a form of change ringing (as 
incidentally the CC recognises).  I'm pretty confident that call changes 
make extensive use of the identity change.

But on the general point, what on earth makes historical examples the final 
arbiter?  You're saying that something being done a long time ago renders it 
good / permissible, but doing for the first time now is bad / not allowed. 
So what's your cut-off date for innovations to be acceptable? If the maximus 
change "125890" has never before been rung, should we therefore ban it?

Moreover, if there was no historical evidence of ringing the identity 
change, you are saying it should not be recognised now.  But what if 
historic evidence of the identity change comes to light next year. Under 
your logic, that changes the whole argument?  I find this strange.

Change ringing is based on true permutations. That's what is comes down to, 
and should be our baseline.  It allows us to then take a descriptive 
approach to what is rung.

What I find interesting in these debates is the key conceptual "thing" that 
we should be mindful of is multi-extent blocks (MEBs). There are huge 
lessons here.

A MEB, as you know, is a block which when considered in totally meets a 
definition of being true, but for which a subset of the block is not 
necessarily true.

Today, MEBs are widespread, frequently run (for doubles, minor and triples), 
and there is little opposition to them.  If somebody proposed not 
recognising them (and with this tried to sideline the huge advances made, 
especially with spliced, in recent years - evidence which supports the 
effects of liberalising), I don't believe they'd get much traction.

And yet, there has never really been much of a debate about MEBs.  This is 
actually pretty shocking and surprising, given they rely on a definition of 
"truth" that many, especially historically, may not have signed up to. 
Interesting, I think MEBs only really became accepted by the back door after 
Bankes James (a CC type no doubt) pushed to have his 2160 of minor made 
"official" as a special case, and then it was hard to logically argue that 
this was so distinct from any MEB.

If there had been no history up until now of ringing MEBs, and I came along 
this year and proposed them, no doubt many ringers would be in strong 
opposition, calling them an abomination etc.  It just goes to show that the 
concept of change, rather than intrinsic proposals (which become familiar 
when adopted) are what make people uneasy.  Your post perfectly illustrates 
this.

If you support recognising (true) MEBs, it strikes me as daft that you try 
to insert stipulations on how the permutations may be arranged to put 
together a (true) MEB.  The identity change may not be to your taste, or 
something you want to ring yourself, but I cannot see good logic in denying 
others the chance to assemble true change ringing compositions with it.