The behavior of political candidates has direct, measurable, and large effects on the welfare of a lot of people I care about.
Political candidates are often very different from each other.
Even small differences between political candidates can have large effects if their constituency is large.
I want people who are like me to vote (because I have fantastic political views). You can motivate this acausally using TDT, but that’s not really necessary, because if I signal that I’m a voter to members of my social circles (who, by a remarkable coincidence, have nearly-as-fantastic political views) I can causally impact their tendency to vote. Signaling authentically is less taxing than pretending to be a voter, because it eliminates the risk of being found out, and doesn’t feel damaging to my image of myself as a good person.
Voting makes me more willing to speak up regarding important political issues, to maintain a consistent self-image; not voting would make me feel (at least a tiny bit) like a hypocrite or outsider when I think getting involved will have important benefits. More generally, it gives me practice cultivating habits I find otherwise useful.
I enjoy voting as a ritual. It improves my self-image, and the people in line at polls are fun to talk to.
In elections that are small and/or close, my individual vote often has a nontrivial probability of swinging the election. You can think of it as, in effect, an altruistic lottery with amazingly good odds. See Voting for Charity’s Sake.
Are those the kinds of reasons you were looking for?
Yes, I think that’s a nice selection of reasons. But I also think that when most people discuss political questions they aren’t doing it to become better-informed voters. A strategy optimized for better voting wouldn’t look like constantly discussing political questions, it would look like maybe setting aside a few weeks before election day to do a lot of research. A strategy optimized for influencing the votes of others would look like a grassroots campaign or something.
A grassroots campaign sounds like a significant expenditure of effort compared to voting and casual conversation about the issues. Perhaps maximizing our influence on the votes of others is not the only consideration, and voting hits a sweet spot which returns acceptable values for “(potentially) having an effect”, “not too time consuming”, and “improves my self-image”.
You’re right about setting aside some time for research, though; it’d be nice if we maximized potential effect in the correct direction :P
The behavior of political candidates has direct, measurable, and large effects on the welfare of a lot of people I care about.
Political candidates are often very different from each other.
Even small differences between political candidates can have large effects if their constituency is large.
I want people who are like me to vote (because I have fantastic political views). You can motivate this acausally using TDT, but that’s not really necessary, because if I signal that I’m a voter to members of my social circles (who, by a remarkable coincidence, have nearly-as-fantastic political views) I can causally impact their tendency to vote. Signaling authentically is less taxing than pretending to be a voter, because it eliminates the risk of being found out, and doesn’t feel damaging to my image of myself as a good person.
Voting makes me more willing to speak up regarding important political issues, to maintain a consistent self-image; not voting would make me feel (at least a tiny bit) like a hypocrite or outsider when I think getting involved will have important benefits. More generally, it gives me practice cultivating habits I find otherwise useful.
I enjoy voting as a ritual. It improves my self-image, and the people in line at polls are fun to talk to.
In elections that are small and/or close, my individual vote often has a nontrivial probability of swinging the election. You can think of it as, in effect, an altruistic lottery with amazingly good odds. See Voting for Charity’s Sake.
Are those the kinds of reasons you were looking for?
Yes, I think that’s a nice selection of reasons. But I also think that when most people discuss political questions they aren’t doing it to become better-informed voters. A strategy optimized for better voting wouldn’t look like constantly discussing political questions, it would look like maybe setting aside a few weeks before election day to do a lot of research. A strategy optimized for influencing the votes of others would look like a grassroots campaign or something.
Yes. They’re also trying to influence other people’s votes.
A grassroots campaign sounds like a significant expenditure of effort compared to voting and casual conversation about the issues. Perhaps maximizing our influence on the votes of others is not the only consideration, and voting hits a sweet spot which returns acceptable values for “(potentially) having an effect”, “not too time consuming”, and “improves my self-image”.
You’re right about setting aside some time for research, though; it’d be nice if we maximized potential effect in the correct direction :P