PlaidX comments on Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Ask Your Questions - Less Wrong

16 Post author: MichaelGR 11 November 2009 03:00AM

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Comment author: PlaidX 11 November 2009 03:41:54AM *  -1 points [-]

In 2000, you said this:

When voting in the United States, follow this algorithm: Vote Libertarian when available; otherwise, vote for the strongest third party available (usually Reform, unless they have a really evil candidate); then vote for any candidate who isn't a lawyer; then vote Republican (at present, they're slightly better).

Would you stick by your assertion that in 2000, the republicans were "slightly better", and who or what did you mean they were slightly better for? From where I'm standing, albeit with the benefit of hindsight, it seems like eight years of al gore would've been "slightly better" than eight years of dick cheney for just about everyone and everything.

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 11 November 2009 03:51:45AM 5 points [-]

Cf. "Stop Voting for Nincompoops" (2008):

Besides, picking the better lizard is harder than it looks. In 2000, the comic Melonpool showed a character pondering, "Bush or Gore... Bush or Gore... it's like flipping a two-headed coin." Well, how were they supposed to know? In 2000, based on history, it seemed to me that the Republicans were generally less interventionist and therefore less harmful than the Democrats, so I pondered whether to vote for Bush to prevent Gore from getting in. Yet it seemed to me that the barriers to keep out third parties were a raw power grab, and that I was therefore obliged to vote for third parties wherever possible, to penalize the Republicrats for getting grabby. And so I voted Libertarian, though I don't consider myself one (at least not with a big "L"). I'm glad I didn't do the "sensible" thing. Less blood on my hands.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 November 2009 03:53:44AM 1 point [-]

...and that's still my reply, but you could vote it up if you want me to repeat it on video. :)

Comment author: PlaidX 11 November 2009 08:23:35AM *  4 points [-]

I see. Were you similarly at a loss to distinguish the two parties in the 2004 and 2008 elections? It's one thing to say that you can't tell the difference and quite another to insist that nobody could have and we were all fools for voting. Maybe you just weren't paying attention.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 November 2009 06:37:58PM 1 point [-]

Were you similarly at a loss

No.

Comment author: CronoDAS 11 November 2009 09:47:21AM *  1 point [-]

Until Obama, I've never voted for anyone who won a presidential election. (I voted for Nader in 2000 and Kerry in 2004.)

Comment author: MichaelVassar 13 November 2009 05:43:26AM *  -1 points [-]

Seconded. Eliezer may have been rationally ignorant on this point, but anyone who irrationally or for social or general curiosity reasons became reasonably informed should have voted the right way.

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