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wedrifid comments on Arguments Against Speciesism - Less Wrong
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"Maturity" isn't obviously a desirable thing. What people tend to describe as 'maturity' seems to be a developed ability to signal conformity and if anything is negative causal influence on the application of reasoned judgement. People learn that it is 'mature' to not ask (or even think to ask) questions about why the cherished beliefs are obviously self-contradicting nonsense, for example.
I do not expect a country that allows 12-17 year olds to vote to have worse outcomes than a country that does not. Particularly given that it would almost certainly result in more voting-relevant education being given to children and so slightly less ignorance even among adults.
"Maturity" is pretty much a stand-in for "desirable characteristics that adults usually have and children usually don't," so it's almost by definition an argument in favor of adults. But to be fair, characteristics like the willingness to sit through/read boring informational pieces in order to be a more educated voter, the ability to accurately detect deception and false promises, and the ability to use past evidence to determine what is likely to actually happen (as opposed to what people say will happen) are useful traits and are much more common in 18-year-olds than 12-year-olds.
I might be a little more generous than that. The term casts a pretty broad net, but it also includes some factors I'd consider instrumentally advantageous, like self-control and emotional resilience.
I'm not sure how relevant those are in this context, though.
I certainly recommend maturity. I also note that the aforementioned signalling skill is also significantly instrumentally advantageous. I just don't expect the immaturity of younger voters to result in significantly worse voting outcomes.
Interesting argument, I had never thought of that. I'm still sceptical about what the quality of such voting-relevant education would be.
On timescales much longer than politicians usually think about.
In my experience "voting-relevant education" tends to mean indoctrination, so no.
Or sometimes "economics" and "critical thinking.
That's a trick statement, because the biggest reason that a country that allows 12-17 year olds to vote won't have worse outcomes is that the number of such people voting isn't enough to have much of an influence on the outcome at all. I don;t expect a country that adds a few hundred votes chosen by throwing darts at ballots to have worse outcomes, either.
The proper question is whether you expect a country that allows them to vote to have worse outcomes to the extent that letting them vote affects the outcome at all.
In the US there are about 25m 12-17-year-olds.
In the last (2012) presidential election the popular vote gap between the two candidates was 5m people.
There is no trick. For it to be a trick of the kind you suggest would require that the meaning people take from it is different from the meaning I intend to convey. I do not limit the claim to "statistically insignificant worse outcomes because the 25 million people added are somehow negligible". I mean it like it sounds. I have not particular expectation that the marginal change to the system will be in the negative direction.