[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.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The American System and Misleading Labels, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

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.

There is also the contrary trend of consolidaton, as smaller local newspapers are dying. I'm not sure what the net trend is.

But more importantly, I simply don't observe any lessening of the mainstream media's control over the limits of respectable public discourse and the set of people and issues that will be in the public spotlight (whether positive or negative). The facts about which the original article complains are as true today as they were four years ago.

Similarly, I don't observe any weakening of the intellectual monopoly of the academia, although its output is now widely scrutinized, and interesting contrarian voices heard, on countless blogs and websites. (And it's not like no naked emperors are being revealed in the process.)

On the whole, it seems to me that a vast chasm of status separates contrarian blogs from mainstream online intellectual outlets just as effectively as it separated xeroxed pamphlets from the latter's paper incarnations in the past. High-status and influential people (as well as all those who imagine themselves as such, or hope to become one day) still get their information from the latter, whether in paper or online form, and instinctively shun the former.

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