“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:
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.