If, as in this hypothetical, Yvain is a Democrat, then he is more representative of Democrats than Republicans, and therefor is likely to acausally influence more Democrats.
I could see that as being true if my reason for not voting was “Obama just doesn’t inspire me that much,” but what about in the originally mentioned case where my reason is bad weather? Do you think Democrats and Republicans are different enough that their algorithms for dealing with bad weather differ in a consistent way?
“Obama just doesn’t inspire me that much” and “bad weather” are simpified stories someone might tell to explain their behavior. But “Does Obama inspire me enough to deal with the bad weather?” is closer to how the decision is made.
Do you think Democrats and Republicans are different enough that their algorithms for dealing with bad weather differ in a consistent way?
I would not rule out their being some correlation with willingness to go out in bad weather.
I could imagine a world where Democrats and Rupublicans really run the same algorithm with different parameters pointing to different political entities that are close analogues of each other, in which case a Democrat would acausally influence Republicans as much as Democrats. But this does seem to be a highly specific hypothesis, that I would not favor, and does not fully fit in with actual assymetries that can be observed.
With a very big ceteris paribus in there somewhere. (The relevance Yvain being a Democrat is that we may expect other people with the same political affiliation to be more likely to also share voting technique. Apart from making that inference possible the similarity is not relevant.)
These hypotheses are different: that you will have zero effect, and that you will have some effect of unknown sign and magnitude, with expected value of zero. I object to the former, not necessarily to the latter (note that the expected absolute value of the effect is bound to be non-zero in the latter case). To give an estimate of the nature of the effect, we need to consider specific reasons that moved your decision.
Because the distribution of Democrats and Republicans you acausally influence is symetric around 1:1
If, as in this hypothetical, Yvain is a Democrat, then he is more representative of Democrats than Republicans, and therefor is likely to acausally influence more Democrats.
I could see that as being true if my reason for not voting was “Obama just doesn’t inspire me that much,” but what about in the originally mentioned case where my reason is bad weather? Do you think Democrats and Republicans are different enough that their algorithms for dealing with bad weather differ in a consistent way?
“Obama just doesn’t inspire me that much” and “bad weather” are simpified stories someone might tell to explain their behavior. But “Does Obama inspire me enough to deal with the bad weather?” is closer to how the decision is made.
I would not rule out their being some correlation with willingness to go out in bad weather.
I could imagine a world where Democrats and Rupublicans really run the same algorithm with different parameters pointing to different political entities that are close analogues of each other, in which case a Democrat would acausally influence Republicans as much as Democrats. But this does seem to be a highly specific hypothesis, that I would not favor, and does not fully fit in with actual assymetries that can be observed.
With a very big ceteris paribus in there somewhere. (The relevance Yvain being a Democrat is that we may expect other people with the same political affiliation to be more likely to also share voting technique. Apart from making that inference possible the similarity is not relevant.)
Yes, I realise this. But the difference between Republicans and Democrats is likely to be so small this is small consolation.
On the other hand, there is Democrats and Republicans arguable use different value systems.
These hypotheses are different: that you will have zero effect, and that you will have some effect of unknown sign and magnitude, with expected value of zero. I object to the former, not necessarily to the latter (note that the expected absolute value of the effect is bound to be non-zero in the latter case). To give an estimate of the nature of the effect, we need to consider specific reasons that moved your decision.