[SEQ RERUN] Stop Voting For Nincompoops

MinibearRex

Today's post, Stop Voting For Nincompoops was originally published on 02 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Many people try to vote "strategically", by considering which candidate is more "electable". One of the most important factors in whether someone is "electable" is whether they have received attention from the media and the support of one of the two major parties. Naturally, those organizations put considerable thought into who is electable in making their decision. Ultimately, all arguments for "strategic voting" tend to fall apart. The voters themselves get so little say in why the next president is that the best we can do is just to not vote for nincompoops.

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Today's post, Stop Voting For Nincompoops was originally published on 02 January 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Many people try to vote "strategically", by considering which candidate is more "electable". One of the most important factors in whether someone is "electable" is whether they have received attention from the media and the support of one of the two major parties. Naturally, those organizations put considerable thought into who is electable in making their decision. Ultimately, all arguments for "strategic voting" tend to fall apart. The voters themselves get so little say in why the next president is that the best we can do is just to not vote for nincompoops.

Sure, there is some non-zero effect, but I don't think it's relevant overall. The zero marginal cost of internet publishing, in my opinion, doesn't make for a significant difference relative to the moderate cost of vanity press. (Or in more recent pre-internet times, the even smaller cost of xeroxing.)

If your position is marginalized, the problem is not in producing enough copies of your screeds, but in getting people to read them and take them seriously, since they are perceived as low-status relative to the respectable mainstream sources. I don't see any significant advantage that The New York Times enjoyed over some contrarian's xeroxed pamphlets 20 years ago that wouldn't also apply to the nytimes.com website relative to some contrarian blog nowadays. In both cases, the public opinion is shaped by high-status sources, regardless of whether accessing low-status sources has become somewhat less onerous for the weird minority of people who have interest in them.

Also, note that in past centuries, before the monopolization of high-status public discourse by the mainstream media and academia, pamphleteering was seen as a formidable means of ideological warfare, and often a serious threat to the established order that required constant censoring to keep the peace. It is the same factors that have since then made pamphleteering into a province of irrelevant contrarian weirdos that also make the system immune to the lowered cost of pamphleteering enabled by the internet.

I'm updating in your direction. When I wrote the grandparent, I was anchoring on my own experience as someone whose life has been profoundly shaped by picking up strange new ideas from the internet and taking them seriously. But now that you mention it, if "I" (scare quotes because personal identity doesn't work that way) had been born earlier, how do I know that "I" wouldn't be the sort or person who whose life was shaped by picking up strange new ideas from xeroxed pamphlets and taking them seriously?

8Emile14y

Since any "mainstream" idea was most likely marginal at some point, changes in the way marginal ideas start and spread should eventually have a significant impact. [...] Twenty years ago, educated readers would get their news from newspapers, books, and TV, with (some) newspapers being the most intellectually respectable source of news; few educated readers would be getting news from xeroxed pamphlets. Today, newspapers like the New York Times have a smaller share in the attention of educated readers, who also read blogs and other news sites on the internet. The New York Times may still be the biggest, but it seems much less impressive than it used to be.

2SilasBarta14y

I think there's an Emporer's-New-Clothes / Common-Knowledge effect that differentiates the two. If a significant minority holds marginalized view X, but all such people think virtually no one else holds the view, then it's easier for a blogger to help the Xers identify each other and come out the woodwork (closet?) than for a lone pamphleteer. And if I may indulge in some mind-killing speculation, I think that's exactly what happened with libertarianism pre- and post-internet. Before, it was relegated to low-circulation newletters, with most adherents thinking themselves alone in the dark, and afterward it dominates internet discussion, a now mainstream medium.

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