@Eric Neyman re: not understanding: your top-level comment seems to be glossing over the fact that an above-average Republican is… still really quite bad, on everything from immigration to AI safety to basic human rights? A below-average Democrats is still probably on par with an average Republic, at least as far as I can see at the moment. So I claim that the marginal dollar (or minute, or word) is best spent raising the ceiling instead of the floor, and on reducing the chance that a Republican wins instead of trying to make whichever Republican might win less bad.
...Also I’m not clear on why you’re assuming symmetry here. We haven’t got it.
I don’t understand how what you’re saying is in tension with what I’m saying. My post makes no object-level claims about the relative goodness of Democrats and Republicans. I’m merely positing a hypothetical in which you think Donna and Randy would be equally good as president, despite being nominated by two different parties, one of which you prefer to the other.
I do not entirely disagree with the hypothetical case as stated (and probably should have made that clearer). But in applying this hypothetical to the real-world, one cannot avoid the reference class problem, and in my opinion second-order effects such as appointed officials and the policies each party is liable to put forward (and which Randy and Donna might have incentives to veto) alter the dynamic significantly. If you are indeed “supposing that they are of similar quality after taking into account the[se] dynamic[s]”, then sure, IF your hypothetical conditions obtain, there is an argument for Randy. This is absurdly distant from anything we seem likely to actually see in upcoming elections, and I think your avoidance of object-level claims regarding the parties demonstrates that this post is operating entirely within the spherical-politician-in-a-vacuum regime (which occupies measure zero in the space of real world politics).
I think that, while many LessWrong readers do believe that one party is way better than the other, such that the inter-party quality variation is far larger than the intra-party quality variation, this is not true of all readers.
And I think it’s a reasonable move to write a post that says “Assuming that these are your values/beliefs, you should do X” without taking a position on whether those values/beliefs are correct: it can be valuable and action-guiding for such people!
@Eric Neyman re: not understanding: your top-level comment seems to be glossing over the fact that an above-average Republican is… still really quite bad, on everything from immigration to AI safety to basic human rights? A below-average Democrats is still probably on par with an average Republic, at least as far as I can see at the moment. So I claim that the marginal dollar (or minute, or word) is best spent raising the ceiling instead of the floor, and on reducing the chance that a Republican wins instead of trying to make whichever Republican might win less bad.
...Also I’m not clear on why you’re assuming symmetry here. We haven’t got it.
I don’t understand how what you’re saying is in tension with what I’m saying. My post makes no object-level claims about the relative goodness of Democrats and Republicans. I’m merely positing a hypothetical in which you think Donna and Randy would be equally good as president, despite being nominated by two different parties, one of which you prefer to the other.
I do not entirely disagree with the hypothetical case as stated (and probably should have made that clearer). But in applying this hypothetical to the real-world, one cannot avoid the reference class problem, and in my opinion second-order effects such as appointed officials and the policies each party is liable to put forward (and which Randy and Donna might have incentives to veto) alter the dynamic significantly. If you are indeed “supposing that they are of similar quality after taking into account the[se] dynamic[s]”, then sure, IF your hypothetical conditions obtain, there is an argument for Randy. This is absurdly distant from anything we seem likely to actually see in upcoming elections, and I think your avoidance of object-level claims regarding the parties demonstrates that this post is operating entirely within the spherical-politician-in-a-vacuum regime (which occupies measure zero in the space of real world politics).
I think that, while many LessWrong readers do believe that one party is way better than the other, such that the inter-party quality variation is far larger than the intra-party quality variation, this is not true of all readers.
And I think it’s a reasonable move to write a post that says “Assuming that these are your values/beliefs, you should do X” without taking a position on whether those values/beliefs are correct: it can be valuable and action-guiding for such people!