I'm astonished that this comment has been voted down. The comment speaks bluntly, saying that standard classical causal decision theory is "wrong". Is the problem with standard classical causal decision theory really that bad? Yes!

Consider an election in which the members of faction A have accept decision theory and each individual in A takes a cold-blooded decision that it is not worth his while to vote. Meanwhile faction B is made up of ordinary dumb schmucks. They believe that they have a moral duty to vote, except that half of them conveniently forget. Of those that remember, half get distracted by something good on TV. That still leaves a hard core, only half of whom are put off by the rain.

The outcome of the election is that faction B wins with a turnout of one eighth of its members versus faction A which failed to get the vote out at all.

Now comes the "tricky" bit; sticking labels on the factions. Which do we label "rational" and which do we label "irrational". If rationalists win, we had better stick the label "rational" on B and "irrational" on A. "There is a lot of rocking and rolling up here, this is not a telemetry problem."

So far I just stated the paradox of voting, but there is a problem for Less Wrong and not just for voting. Ordinary people know fine well that you have to get off your arse and go and vote. If we on Less Wrong will not admit that there is a problem and simply repeat "voting is irrational" ordinary people will correctly conclude that we have disappeared up into our ivory tower where we can believe in stupid theories that don't work in the real world.