You’re confusing the average value of voting with the marginal value of voting. Would you apply the same argument to homosexuality (“if no one was heterosexual how would making babies work”)?
If I believed that a social norm encouraging homosexuality stood a significant chance of reducing the rate of heterosexual relationships to the point where the birthrate became low enough to cause collective harm, I would be concerned about public acceptance of homosexuality.
If I believed that a social norm encouraging non-voting stood a significant chance of reducing the voting rate to the point where it became low enough to cause harm, I would be concerned about public acceptance of non-voting.
I find the second claim significantly more plausible than the first, though given how implausible I find the first claim that isn’t saying much.
Yes, which frees up people’s time to do and think about other things, and I think for LW people in particular that the benefits of this outweigh the costs of not voting (although I am amenable to a Fermi estimate suggesting otherwise).
I’m assuming your reasoning is that LW people are, or at least are capable of, spending their time/effort doing more valuable things, so time spent voting (including time spent becoming an informed voter) is a net loss.
If that assumption gets widely implemeted, the end result seems to be that only people who don’t do anything particularly valuable with their time vote.
Am I following your reasoning correctly? Or is there some other aspect of LW people (like being more likely to work on x-risk, or being more likely to be mathematicians, or something else) driving your reasoning?
If I believed that a social norm encouraging homosexuality stood a significant chance of reducing the rate of heterosexual relationships to the point where the birthrate became low enough to cause collective harm, I would be concerned about public acceptance of homosexuality.
If I believed that a social norm encouraging non-voting stood a significant chance of reducing the voting rate to the point where it became low enough to cause harm, I would be concerned about public acceptance of non-voting.
I find the second claim significantly more plausible than the first, though given how implausible I find the first claim that isn’t saying much.
Okay, but me saying “I don’t think voting is valuable” on LW seems pretty unlikely to actually encourage such a social norm.
I would agree that it doesn’t apply very much pressure, but what pressure it applies does seem pretty clearly to push in the direction of non-voting.
Yes, which frees up people’s time to do and think about other things, and I think for LW people in particular that the benefits of this outweigh the costs of not voting (although I am amenable to a Fermi estimate suggesting otherwise).
I’m assuming your reasoning is that LW people are, or at least are capable of, spending their time/effort doing more valuable things, so time spent voting (including time spent becoming an informed voter) is a net loss.
If that assumption gets widely implemeted, the end result seems to be that only people who don’t do anything particularly valuable with their time vote.
Am I following your reasoning correctly? Or is there some other aspect of LW people (like being more likely to work on x-risk, or being more likely to be mathematicians, or something else) driving your reasoning?
Yes.
This is nearly identical to the current situation as far as I can tell anyway.