"Besides, if you're going to apply game theory to the situation in a shortsighted local fashion - not taking into account others thinking similarly, and not taking into account the incentives you create for later elections based on what potential future candidates see you doing today - if, I say, you think in such a strictly local fashion and call it "rational", then why vote at all, when your single vote is exceedingly unlikely to determine the winner?"
You mention:
others thinking similarly
incentives you create for later elections
as two factors that people who defend the I-don't-vote-because-it's-irrational (IDVBII) view might fail to consider. As a proud defense of the (IDVBII) view, I'd like to respond to these (even if the chances of you responding back are slim).
Quite simply:
Others don't think similarly enough to make my vote likely enough to matter for voting to be worth my time+energy. If enough people did think like me---if the number of voters got sufficiently low---I might consider voting. But they don't. This seems to be a factor that people who defend IDVBII consider, but consider irrelevant.
The power a voter exercises, by voting, to influence future elections is proportional to, although probably even smaller than, the power it exercises to influence the current election--virtually nil.
Perhaps I am misguided. Perhaps there is some explanation in Eliezer's book that he started writing about "collective action, Prisoner's Dilemma, Newcomblike problems, etc." If someone persuaded me of the logic of voting, I would be happy to start. But the freerider / collective action problem logic makes sense to me.
Eliezer:
"Besides, if you're going to apply game theory to the situation in a shortsighted local fashion - not taking into account others thinking similarly, and not taking into account the incentives you create for later elections based on what potential future candidates see you doing today - if, I say, you think in such a strictly local fashion and call it "rational", then why vote at all, when your single vote is exceedingly unlikely to determine the winner?"
You mention:
as two factors that people who defend the I-don't-vote-because-it's-irrational (IDVBII) view might fail to consider. As a proud defense of the (IDVBII) view, I'd like to respond to these (even if the chances of you responding back are slim).
Quite simply:
Others don't think similarly enough to make my vote likely enough to matter for voting to be worth my time+energy. If enough people did think like me---if the number of voters got sufficiently low---I might consider voting. But they don't. This seems to be a factor that people who defend IDVBII consider, but consider irrelevant.
The power a voter exercises, by voting, to influence future elections is proportional to, although probably even smaller than, the power it exercises to influence the current election--virtually nil.
Perhaps I am misguided. Perhaps there is some explanation in Eliezer's book that he started writing about "collective action, Prisoner's Dilemma, Newcomblike problems, etc." If someone persuaded me of the logic of voting, I would be happy to start. But the freerider / collective action problem logic makes sense to me.