khafra comments on Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Academian 05 November 2012 01:02AM

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Tags: instrumental voting rationality

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 06 November 2012 07:23:25AM 8 points [-]

This seems to actually underestimate the value of voting, in that it assumes that a vote is only significant if it flips the winner of the election. But as Eliezer wrote:

But a vote for a losing candidate is not "thrown away"; it sends a message to mainstream candidates that you vote, but they have to work harder to appeal to your interest group to get your vote. Readers in non-swing states especially should consider what message they're sending with their vote before voting for any candidate, in any election, that they don't actually like.

Also, rationalists are supposed to win. If we end up doing a fancy expected utility calculation and then neglect voting, all the while supposedly irrational voters ignore all of that and vote for their favored candidates and get them elected while ours lose... then that's, well, losing.

Comment author: khafra 06 November 2012 08:01:26PM 4 points [-]

it sends a message to mainstream candidates that you vote, but they have to work harder to appeal to your interest group to get your vote.

I recently heard an argument to the contrary: Viewing voter preferences along one dimension for simplicity, if a small percentage on the left breaks away and votes for an extreme-left candidate, the mainstream left candidate may actually move further to the right--since the majority of undecided voters are in the middle, not along the boundary between left and extreme-left.

This may not generalize to a hyperplane separating a particular non-mainstream candidate from other candidates in n-dimensional policy-space, but I don't know if presidential campaigns are set up to do that level of analysis.

Comment author: apotheon 18 November 2012 02:46:16AM 1 point [-]

You were right when you described "along one dimension" as being simplistic. There are other options than extreme-left, left, centrist, right, and extreme-right (for instance). Engaging in false dilemma reasoning as an excuse to vote for a mainstream candidate with no interest in sending political messages encouraging reform is not particularly rational.

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