If irrational voters are the supermajority, and elect their candidate, then you lose, yes. If you waste your time voting for someone rational who can’t win, you lose more.
Rational voters never being large enough of a block to influence the outcome of any election seems quite unlikely, especially so if we don’t require the rationalists’ favored candidates to necessarily win. I don’t know about the US, but at least in Finland, even a candidate who doesn’t get elected but does get a considerable amount of votes will still have more influence within his party (and with the actual elected candidates) than somebody who got close to no votes.
My claim isn’t that this can never be the case but that it’s not the case now, and in general it’s the most important factor in whether a rational voter can win by voting.
? The long game makes voting when you can’t make a decent impact even less rational compared to anything else you could be doing that would give you long term gains. Making money you can invest, taking time to learn a skill or network, getting more information on almost anything, convincing people to follow your beliefs or teaching others about information, donating to x-risk or other charities, working on inventing. Each of these are “long game” activities.
Of course almost no one spends all their time doing this sort of thing, and I don’t care if you take 20 minutes out of one day to go vote because it gives you fuzzies. But don’t pretend it’s a great thing you do.
I won’t pretend it’s a great thing to vote if you promise you’ll stop pretending I pretended any such thing, or that I was talking about anything other than comparisons of voting strategies.
The US suffers from a major problem with institutionalizing false dilemmas in politics. Playing the long game as a voter might well involve actions intended to lead to eventual disillusionment in that regard. Whether your time is better spent, in the long run, doing something other than voting (and learning about your voting options) is a somewhat distinct matter.
In short, you suggested that at this time rational voters cannot win by voting, which I took to mean you meant they could not get a winning result in the election in which they vote right now. My response was meant to convey the idea that there are voting strategies which could lead to a win several elections down the line (as part of a larger strategy). You then replied, for some reason, by suggesting that voting is not as useful in general as inventing something—which may be true without in any way contradicting my point.
It’s ridiculous to condemn me for trying to interpret actual meaning out of your vague one sentence reply and then respond with 2 paragraphs of what you “meant to convey”, none of which was any more obviously implied than what I read into your comment.
To respond to THIS point: So what? Each vote is a distinct event. It can easily make sense that you can influence elections positively in the future without you having that ability in any relevant way today.
I fail to see how not knowing what someone meant somehow compels you to make up elaborate fantasies about what the person meant, or even excuses it.
. . . and of course nobody ever does anything other than actually cast a vote when strategizing for the future. There’s no way anyone could possibly, say, make the voting part of a grander strategy.
. . . and I suppose you probably think that I think voting is a winning strategy in some way, basically because I pointed out some possible strategies that might seem like a good idea to someone, somewhere, as part of an attempt to remind you that the one-vote-right-now tactic may not be the only reason someone casts a vote.
In short, you assume far too much, then blame me. Good job. That’s certainly rational.
If irrational voters are the supermajority, and elect their candidate, then you lose, yes. If you waste your time voting for someone rational who can’t win, you lose more.
Rational voters never being large enough of a block to influence the outcome of any election seems quite unlikely, especially so if we don’t require the rationalists’ favored candidates to necessarily win. I don’t know about the US, but at least in Finland, even a candidate who doesn’t get elected but does get a considerable amount of votes will still have more influence within his party (and with the actual elected candidates) than somebody who got close to no votes.
My claim isn’t that this can never be the case but that it’s not the case now, and in general it’s the most important factor in whether a rational voter can win by voting.
Don’t forget to take the long game into account.
? The long game makes voting when you can’t make a decent impact even less rational compared to anything else you could be doing that would give you long term gains. Making money you can invest, taking time to learn a skill or network, getting more information on almost anything, convincing people to follow your beliefs or teaching others about information, donating to x-risk or other charities, working on inventing. Each of these are “long game” activities.
Of course almost no one spends all their time doing this sort of thing, and I don’t care if you take 20 minutes out of one day to go vote because it gives you fuzzies. But don’t pretend it’s a great thing you do.
I won’t pretend it’s a great thing to vote if you promise you’ll stop pretending I pretended any such thing, or that I was talking about anything other than comparisons of voting strategies.
The US suffers from a major problem with institutionalizing false dilemmas in politics. Playing the long game as a voter might well involve actions intended to lead to eventual disillusionment in that regard. Whether your time is better spent, in the long run, doing something other than voting (and learning about your voting options) is a somewhat distinct matter.
In short, you suggested that at this time rational voters cannot win by voting, which I took to mean you meant they could not get a winning result in the election in which they vote right now. My response was meant to convey the idea that there are voting strategies which could lead to a win several elections down the line (as part of a larger strategy). You then replied, for some reason, by suggesting that voting is not as useful in general as inventing something—which may be true without in any way contradicting my point.
It’s ridiculous to condemn me for trying to interpret actual meaning out of your vague one sentence reply and then respond with 2 paragraphs of what you “meant to convey”, none of which was any more obviously implied than what I read into your comment.
To respond to THIS point: So what? Each vote is a distinct event. It can easily make sense that you can influence elections positively in the future without you having that ability in any relevant way today.
I fail to see how not knowing what someone meant somehow compels you to make up elaborate fantasies about what the person meant, or even excuses it.
. . . and of course nobody ever does anything other than actually cast a vote when strategizing for the future. There’s no way anyone could possibly, say, make the voting part of a grander strategy.
. . . and I suppose you probably think that I think voting is a winning strategy in some way, basically because I pointed out some possible strategies that might seem like a good idea to someone, somewhere, as part of an attempt to remind you that the one-vote-right-now tactic may not be the only reason someone casts a vote.
In short, you assume far too much, then blame me. Good job. That’s certainly rational.