I rarely make decisions involving such low probabilities, so I don’t really know how to handle risk-aversion in these cases. If I’m making a choice based on a one-in-ten-million chance, I expect that even if I make many such choices in my life, I’ll never get the payoff. This is quite different than handling one-in-a-hundred chances, which are small but large enough that I can expect the law of large numbers to average things out in the long term. So even if I usually subscribe to a policy of maximizing expected utility, it could still make sense to depart from that policy on issues like voting.
BTW, in my state, Maryland, Obama has a 18-point margin in the polls. That could easily be six standard deviations away from the realm where I even have a chance of making a difference.
So… there is no chance that you will be married if/when you die. There is also no chance that you will be single if/when you die. (Assuming that you will only ‘die’ once). There are many things that happen one or fewer times per human lifetime; the expected chance of them happening is less than once per human lifetime.
Most people stop attempting to acquire additional spouses after they find a good one, so the actual rate of success isn’t reflective of the number of successes someone could statistically expect if they worked at it continuously for 100 years.
Many people marry more than once in their lifetime; I’m not sure what the average is offhand- but I didn’t reference marriages, I measured conditions at a specified point in lifespan.
All of them are obviously still chances. I never said that a very small probability wasn’t a chance. I said that it might rationally be treated in a different manner than larger chances due to risk-aversion.
Voting for electoral impact doesn’t make sense from a causal decision theory selfish point of view: you won’t consider a $1 trillion gain to the U.S. to be a billion times as great as $1,000 for you. This argument presumes that you have a “risk-neutral charity budget.”
I rarely make decisions involving such low probabilities, so I don’t really know how to handle risk-aversion in these cases. If I’m making a choice based on a one-in-ten-million chance, I expect that even if I make many such choices in my life, I’ll never get the payoff. This is quite different than handling one-in-a-hundred chances, which are small but large enough that I can expect the law of large numbers to average things out in the long term. So even if I usually subscribe to a policy of maximizing expected utility, it could still make sense to depart from that policy on issues like voting.
BTW, in my state, Maryland, Obama has a 18-point margin in the polls. That could easily be six standard deviations away from the realm where I even have a chance of making a difference.
How small does the chance have to be before it isn’t a chance anymore?
Also, are you intending to research and vote only for the presidential election? Local offices have smaller budgets but also smaller margins...
“Less than one expected payoff per human lifetime” seems like a good threshold.
So… there is no chance that you will be married if/when you die. There is also no chance that you will be single if/when you die. (Assuming that you will only ‘die’ once). There are many things that happen one or fewer times per human lifetime; the expected chance of them happening is less than once per human lifetime.
Most people stop attempting to acquire additional spouses after they find a good one, so the actual rate of success isn’t reflective of the number of successes someone could statistically expect if they worked at it continuously for 100 years.
Many people marry more than once in their lifetime; I’m not sure what the average is offhand- but I didn’t reference marriages, I measured conditions at a specified point in lifespan.
Of course, this is LW; local notions of how long a human lifetime is differ by many orders of magnitude.
Zero?
Re: other stuff on ballot. Yes, that’s right. I was just replying to the content of the post.
Sorry, I don’t understand what was meant by your first sentence.
Is a .001% chance of making a difference still a chance of making a difference? Is a seven-sigma chance still a chance?
All of them are obviously still chances. I never said that a very small probability wasn’t a chance. I said that it might rationally be treated in a different manner than larger chances due to risk-aversion.
Not to mention that, if he lives in Maryland, he has at least seven ballot questions to answer on the poll.
Voting for electoral impact doesn’t make sense from a causal decision theory selfish point of view: you won’t consider a $1 trillion gain to the U.S. to be a billion times as great as $1,000 for you. This argument presumes that you have a “risk-neutral charity budget.”