Could you spell out what you mean by extremist, and how the analogous argument goes?
If there are three candidates, then yes, you should give all your support to one candidate, even if you hate one and don’t distinguish between the other two.
But that hardly makes you an extremist. I don’t see any reason that this kind of argument says you should support the same party in every election, or for every seat in a particular election, or that you should support that party’s position on every issue. Even if you are an extremist and, say, want to pull the country leftward on all issues, it’s not obvious whether equal amounts of support (say, money) to a small far-left party will be more effective than to a center-left party. Similarly, if your participation in politics is conversation with people, it’s not obvious that always arguing left-wing positions is the most effective way to draw people to the left. It may be that demonstrating a willingness to compromise and consider details may make you more convincing. In fact, I do think the answer is that the main power individuals have in arguing about politics is to shift the Overton window; but I think that is a completely different reason than the charity argument.
and then I looked up your comment on LJ and the comment it replies to and I strongly disagree with your comment. This has nothing to do with the charity argument. Whether this argument is correct is different matter. I think the Overton window is a different phenomenon. I think the argument to take extreme positions to negotiate compromises better applies to politicians than to ordinary people. But their actions are not marginal and so this is clearly different from the charity argument.
I agree with everything in your comment. “Extremist” was a bad choice of word, maybe “single-minded” would be better. What I meant was, for example, if success at convincing people on any given political issue is linearly proportional to effort, you should spend all your effort arguing just one issue. More generally, if we look at all the causes in the world where the resulting utility to you depends on aggregated actions of many people and doesn’t include a term for your personal contribution, the argument says you should support only one such cause.
What I meant was, for example, if success at convincing people on any given political issue is linearly proportional to effort, you should spend all your effort arguing just one issue.
But this isn’t at all likely. For one thing you probably have a limited number of family and friends who highly trust your opinions, so your effectiveness (i.e., derivative of success) at convincing people on any given political issue will start out high and quickly take a dive as you spend more time on that issue.
But this isn’t at all likely. For one thing you probably have a limited number of family and friends who highly trust your opinions, so your effectiveness (i.e., derivative of success) at convincing people on any given political issue will start out high and quickly take a dive as you spend more time on that issue.
I’m inclined to agree. A variant of the strategy would be to spend a lot of time arguing for other positions that are carefully selected to agree with and expand eloquently on the predicted opinions of the persuasion targets.
Yes, that is the charity argument. Yes, you should not give money both to a local candidate and to a national candidate simultaneously.
But the political environment changes so much from election to election, it is not clear you should give money to the same candidate or the same single-issue group every cycle.
Moreover, the personal environment changes much more rapidly, and I do not agree with the hypothesis that success at convincing people depends linearly with effort. In particular, changing the subject to the more important issue is rarely worth the opportunity cost and may well have the wrong effect on opinion. If effort toward the less important issue is going to wear out your ability to exert effort for the more important issue an hour from now, then effort may be somewhat fungible. But effort is nowhere near as fungible as money, the topic of the charity argument.
Could you spell out what you mean by extremist, and how the analogous argument goes?
If there are three candidates, then yes, you should give all your support to one candidate, even if you hate one and don’t distinguish between the other two.
But that hardly makes you an extremist. I don’t see any reason that this kind of argument says you should support the same party in every election, or for every seat in a particular election, or that you should support that party’s position on every issue. Even if you are an extremist and, say, want to pull the country leftward on all issues, it’s not obvious whether equal amounts of support (say, money) to a small far-left party will be more effective than to a center-left party. Similarly, if your participation in politics is conversation with people, it’s not obvious that always arguing left-wing positions is the most effective way to draw people to the left. It may be that demonstrating a willingness to compromise and consider details may make you more convincing. In fact, I do think the answer is that the main power individuals have in arguing about politics is to shift the Overton window; but I think that is a completely different reason than the charity argument.
and then I looked up your comment on LJ and the comment it replies to and I strongly disagree with your comment. This has nothing to do with the charity argument. Whether this argument is correct is different matter. I think the Overton window is a different phenomenon. I think the argument to take extreme positions to negotiate compromises better applies to politicians than to ordinary people. But their actions are not marginal and so this is clearly different from the charity argument.
I agree with everything in your comment. “Extremist” was a bad choice of word, maybe “single-minded” would be better. What I meant was, for example, if success at convincing people on any given political issue is linearly proportional to effort, you should spend all your effort arguing just one issue. More generally, if we look at all the causes in the world where the resulting utility to you depends on aggregated actions of many people and doesn’t include a term for your personal contribution, the argument says you should support only one such cause.
But this isn’t at all likely. For one thing you probably have a limited number of family and friends who highly trust your opinions, so your effectiveness (i.e., derivative of success) at convincing people on any given political issue will start out high and quickly take a dive as you spend more time on that issue.
I’m inclined to agree. A variant of the strategy would be to spend a lot of time arguing for other positions that are carefully selected to agree with and expand eloquently on the predicted opinions of the persuasion targets.
Yes, that is the charity argument. Yes, you should not give money both to a local candidate and to a national candidate simultaneously.
But the political environment changes so much from election to election, it is not clear you should give money to the same candidate or the same single-issue group every cycle.
Moreover, the personal environment changes much more rapidly, and I do not agree with the hypothesis that success at convincing people depends linearly with effort. In particular, changing the subject to the more important issue is rarely worth the opportunity cost and may well have the wrong effect on opinion. If effort toward the less important issue is going to wear out your ability to exert effort for the more important issue an hour from now, then effort may be somewhat fungible. But effort is nowhere near as fungible as money, the topic of the charity argument.