I have thought about this, to destroy my past erroneous belief that a single vote doesn’t make a difference. Imagine that you know a secret that few people know, which tells you that the right candidate to vote is definitely candidate X. All the people who know the secret also might think in the same way as you—that a single vote doesn’t matter. But the difference between all of those people voting and no one of them voting is winning the election. So there’s the two situations:
Nobody votes, you lose the election.
Everyone votes, you win the election.
The benefit of your desired party winning the election is greater than the cost to go and vote. But if your vote adds only 0.01% chance of winning, which is not enough to outweigh the time spent for voting, why is it better for everyone who knows the secret if all of them voted?
The answer is that by voting, you don’t only increase that chance by 0.01% for you, you also increase it for everyone else. So if there was two of you, you can both vote and each of you will gain a double increase for the same cost. But if you’re altruistic, then the most logical thing would be to vote.
Sorry if my idea is repeated in the article or in some of the comments, I didn’t read everything.
I have thought about this, to destroy my past erroneous belief that a single vote doesn’t make a difference. Imagine that you know a secret that few people know, which tells you that the right candidate to vote is definitely candidate X. All the people who know the secret also might think in the same way as you—that a single vote doesn’t matter. But the difference between all of those people voting and no one of them voting is winning the election. So there’s the two situations:
Nobody votes, you lose the election.
Everyone votes, you win the election.
The benefit of your desired party winning the election is greater than the cost to go and vote. But if your vote adds only 0.01% chance of winning, which is not enough to outweigh the time spent for voting, why is it better for everyone who knows the secret if all of them voted?
The answer is that by voting, you don’t only increase that chance by 0.01% for you, you also increase it for everyone else. So if there was two of you, you can both vote and each of you will gain a double increase for the same cost. But if you’re altruistic, then the most logical thing would be to vote.
Sorry if my idea is repeated in the article or in some of the comments, I didn’t read everything.