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Peterdjones comments on We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think - Less Wrong
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It probably doesn't help to live in a society where changing one's positions in response to evidence is considered "waffling", and is considered to show a lack of conviction.
Divorce is a lot more common than 4%, so people do admit mistakes when given enough evidence.
I think the embargo on mind-changing is a special case for politiicians: after all, if they say one thing on the hustings, and then do another in office, that makes a mockery of democracy. However, if it is applied to non-pliticians, that would be fallacious.
If they say one thing and intend to do another, sure - but if they actually update? That may be bad PR, but I don't think it's undemocratic.
If you can;t rely on politicians to do something like what hey said they were going to, what's the point in voting? ideally, a pl who has a change of heart should stand for re-election.
You could have a prediction about what they respectively will do and have a preference over those outcomes.
So if they ruin the economy, and I successfully predict that, I smile and collect my winnings?
Presumably if you can predict that Candidate A will ruin the economy, then you vote for Candidate B instead.
Unless you can think of a way of winning by having advance knowledge that the economy will be ruined, which will net you greater gain than having an un-ruined economy would be. Then you may selfishly vote for Candidate A.
I'm ignoring here the question of how much your opinion influences the outcome of the election, of course. Also if you end up predicting that all the candidates will ruin the economy equally, you don't have much of a decision to make.
I can only predict what will happen on the basis that a) their policies will have a certain effect and b) they will actually implement their policies. Which gets back to the original point: if they are not going to do what they say, what is the point of voting?
I think I agree. I also think wedrifid wanted to talk about predictions of what the candidates do, even if they are not guaranteed not to change their mind.
This doesn't seem impossible, just harder. You'd have to make a guess as to how likely the candidates are to implement a different policy from the one they promised, as well as the effect the possible policies will have.
The candidates do have an incentive to signal that they are unlikely to "waffle". If you are relatively certain to implement your policies, then at least those who agree with you will predict that you'll have a good effect. If you look like you might change your mind, even your supporters might decide to take a different option, because who knows what you will do?
In theory, you might gain a bigger advantage by somehow signaling that you will change your mind for good reasons. Then if new information comes up in the future, you're a better choice than anyone who promises not to change their mind at all. But this is trickier and less convincing.
That seems to be a significant limitation.
Fortunately, not everybody has said limitation.
Both candidates being likely to successfully manage to ruin the economy is a problem quite distinct from politicians lying.
You misrepresent democracy very badly in the above post. Politicians are not agents of the voters, they are representatives of them, appointed by, and accountable to the demos, but not a mirror of it- they are not supposed to enact the policies voters thought appropriate 2 years ago at the polls, or what polls well today. They are supposed to do what the voters would want done if they had time to research the issue and give it some thought, incorporating all data about the present situation. If policy was supposed to reflect the averaged will of the people politicians would be entirely redundant and we could just do lawmaking by popular initiative.
Of course it is unworkable for politicians to stick rigidly to their manifestos. It is also unworkable for them to discard their manifestos on day one.