The irrational meme is the one that says it’s worth voting in Erewhon but not in the real world.
This isn’t totally clear to me.
Suppose we throw away the business of supporting third parties so that they’ll do better next time (which we might as well since it doesn’t appear to be part of the Erewhon scenario). I would argue that voting for one of the major parties has roughly the same expected utility both in America and Erewhon, but voting for third parties has a much lower EU in America than in Erewhon.
Suppose polls predict with their typical (pretty good) confidence that 3rd Party Person will get 4% of the votes, while the 1st Party Person and 2nd Party Person will get the remaining 96%. In Erewhon, there is a 4% chance that the 3rd party candidate gets elected. In America… still pretty much zero.
Of course that’s just aggregate effect, the voting dilemma is about marginal effect. To make it easier to picture though, let’s zoom out and talk adding not 1 more voter, but enough to give Party 3 another 1% of the populace.
In Erewhon, the odds of Party 3 winning have simply increased from 4% to 5%. In America… Party 3 is still looking at pretty much zero chance of winning. The marginal effect is negligible up until at least 20%, and that’s assuming that the psychological effects mentioned in the article can be relied on to keep bumping the numbers up. So it seems that we can conclude that voting for a far-trailing 3rd party has a much greater EU in Erewhon than in America.
Please correct me if my math is wrong though, I’m only just now inventing this argument.
That argument is correct: real-world voting only has as much effect on the odds as an Erewhonian vote if the polls are within the margin of error (roughly speaking).
Voting for a party that’s well behind in the polls only has effects via future elections. These indirect effects are still significant enough, in my opinion, to make it worth voting.
This isn’t totally clear to me.
Suppose we throw away the business of supporting third parties so that they’ll do better next time (which we might as well since it doesn’t appear to be part of the Erewhon scenario). I would argue that voting for one of the major parties has roughly the same expected utility both in America and Erewhon, but voting for third parties has a much lower EU in America than in Erewhon.
Suppose polls predict with their typical (pretty good) confidence that 3rd Party Person will get 4% of the votes, while the 1st Party Person and 2nd Party Person will get the remaining 96%. In Erewhon, there is a 4% chance that the 3rd party candidate gets elected. In America… still pretty much zero.
Of course that’s just aggregate effect, the voting dilemma is about marginal effect. To make it easier to picture though, let’s zoom out and talk adding not 1 more voter, but enough to give Party 3 another 1% of the populace.
In Erewhon, the odds of Party 3 winning have simply increased from 4% to 5%. In America… Party 3 is still looking at pretty much zero chance of winning. The marginal effect is negligible up until at least 20%, and that’s assuming that the psychological effects mentioned in the article can be relied on to keep bumping the numbers up. So it seems that we can conclude that voting for a far-trailing 3rd party has a much greater EU in Erewhon than in America.
Please correct me if my math is wrong though, I’m only just now inventing this argument.
That argument is correct: real-world voting only has as much effect on the odds as an Erewhonian vote if the polls are within the margin of error (roughly speaking).
Voting for a party that’s well behind in the polls only has effects via future elections. These indirect effects are still significant enough, in my opinion, to make it worth voting.