Should rationalists put much thought into tipping and/or voting?
It seems to me that tipping involves rather little money, and voting involves rather little time. For the latter, I’m assuming that you follow politics enough anyway that you have at least one candidate you prefer.
I’m willing to bet that there are people who spend more time in a year on whether voting is rational than they would if they just went and voted and ignored the arguments.
What are the biggest wins you’ve gotten in terms of time and/or money from thinking about what you’re doing?
There are humans who spend more resources punishing a given defector than ameliorating the harm to the victim of that defection (or endorse doing so). Is that obviously a bad policy?
No, not obviously. There are certainly good altruistic reasons to punish defectors.
Correct. And likewise, it can make sense to spend more resources to discourage others from voting than one saves in not voting.
Was thumbing through a negotiating book and it made the rather stunning and clearly true observation that the few minutes\hours it takes to talk someone down a few extra bucks is probably substantially higher than any wage rate you’ll ever make. Many orders of magnitude on occasion. This is particularly true if you are leveraging the buying\selling power of a corporation, rather than just buying a trinket in Jamaica.
Were there other observations of similar value in this book? If so, what book was it?
Oh yeah it’s full of them. They are the kinds of things you say ‘sure that makes sense’, ‘oh I’ve seen that used before’, and ‘man that’s douche-y’. But I suspect they are all generally true and effective.
The book is: “Roger Dawson’s Secrets of Power Negotiating”.
I had a friend recently tell me that their company bought a license for a platform operating system for 75k$, whereas the initial asking price was 750k$. So somewhere in between those prices is a lot of value to be made by negotiating. It makes the engineer salaries a relative trifle.
Thanks! I just placed a hold on it at the library.
Time spent deciding whom to vote for is non-negligible.
That’s likely, but it does not necessarily imply that it’s a bad idea to do so. Rationally analyzing whether you should tip or vote might be useful as an opportunity to practice rationality skills, and the arguments might be easy to carry over in similar situations quicker than it would be to construct them from scratch in said other situation.
You actually made me think if I spent more time contemplating the rationality of voting or the rationality of the candidates. I believe in voting, but I don’t personally want to vote. That is to say, other people can vote if they choose because that’s the privilege they have in a democracy, but I don’t vote for personal reasons. You could say that I had a traumatic experience (although that would be an overstatement). I followed the 2008 presidential election believing that Obama was the better choice. In hindsight, maybe neither choice was a good one. When I lived in Nevada, I witnessed the Reid/Angle election believing that Reid was a RELATIVELY could choice. I was right, but then later on I learned that if people had the option of voting “Neither,” that would have been a better choice. So, I decided that if I register to vote, I won’t choose Reps or Dems, I’ll write in the “other” category. I haven’t decided what I’ll write; maybe I’ll be a part of the “Dance” party or “Pajama” party or “Birthday” party or “After” party. I’m not saying that I’ll never follow politics ever, I still do. I just don’t want to vote because, quite frankly, I don’t gain anything when voting between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.
When it comes to tipping, though, I use the triple T method: TAX TIMES TWO.
Lastly, and this is totally irrelevant to what I stated before, but your first sentence made me laugh. “It seems to me that tipping involves rather little money, and voting involves rather little time”. You know what else involves rather little money and time? Suicide. Or prostitutes. I really don’t think your first sentence is really necessary is the point I’m trying to get across.
Tax Times Two depends on the state. Delaware has no sales tax.
Awesome!
Why is voting the default? It doesn’t seem to make sense to take an action just because you aren’t willing to take the time to think about whether or not to take the action. If you decide against taking efforts to be strategic on matters of action or inaction, shouldn’t inaction be the default?
ETA: Also, I’m pretty sure the reason people (mostly economists) take the time to spell out justifications for not voting is because people act like voting is an altruistic action, and guilt non-voters. So the anti-voters spell out their logic because they want to demonstrate that voters are just getting warm-fuzzies and not utilons. The point is to show that voters are just as selfish as non-voters.
I’m inclined to think that if there’s a lot of social pressure to do something, there are people who think society benefits if people generally underestimate the costs and/or risks.
I’m wondering about the way people really behave around voting, which is to be less inclined to bother unless there’s a race where it looks as though the outcome will be affected by who wins. Is that more rational than either always voting or never voting?