the chance that your vote (along with everyone else’s) would be pivotal because the margin was 1 vote,
I have never understood this criterion for your vote “mattering”. It has the consequence that if (as will almost always be the case for a large electorate) the winner has a majority of at least 3, then no-one’s vote mattered. If a committee of 5 people votes 4 to 1, then no-one’s vote mattered. Two votes mattered, but no-one’s vote mattered. If one of the yes voters had stayed at home that day, then every yes vote would matter, but the no vote wouldn’t matter.
This does not seem like a sensible concept to attach to the word “matter”. If someone on that committee was very anxious that the vote should go they way they would like, they will have done everything they could to persuade every other persuadable member to vote their way. Far from no-one’s vote mattering, every vote in that situation matters. This is a frequent occurrence in parliamentary votes, when there is any doubt beforehand whether the motion will pass, and the result is of great importance to both sides. In the forthcoming US presidential election, both parties will be making tremendous efforts to “get out the vote”. Yet no-one’s vote “matters”?
There has been some philosophical work that makes just this point. In particular, Julia Nefsky (who I think has some EA ties?) has a whole series of papers about this. Probably the best one to start with is her PhilCompass paper here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phc3.12587
Obviously I don’t mean this to address the original question, though, since it’s not from an FDT/UDT perspective.
I agree that this definition of “matters” is odd; not the one most people use in everyday speech. I think that there are ways to make other definitions rigorous (in ways that aren’t addressed in the wikipedia article I linked). But this is the narrowly consequentialist definition, so it does deserve analysis.
I have never understood this criterion for your vote “mattering”. It has the consequence that if (as will almost always be the case for a large electorate) the winner has a majority of at least 3, then no-one’s vote mattered. If a committee of 5 people votes 4 to 1, then no-one’s vote mattered. Two votes mattered, but no-one’s vote mattered. If one of the yes voters had stayed at home that day, then every yes vote would matter, but the no vote wouldn’t matter.
This does not seem like a sensible concept to attach to the word “matter”. If someone on that committee was very anxious that the vote should go they way they would like, they will have done everything they could to persuade every other persuadable member to vote their way. Far from no-one’s vote mattering, every vote in that situation matters. This is a frequent occurrence in parliamentary votes, when there is any doubt beforehand whether the motion will pass, and the result is of great importance to both sides. In the forthcoming US presidential election, both parties will be making tremendous efforts to “get out the vote”. Yet no-one’s vote “matters”?
There has been some philosophical work that makes just this point. In particular, Julia Nefsky (who I think has some EA ties?) has a whole series of papers about this. Probably the best one to start with is her PhilCompass paper here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phc3.12587
Obviously I don’t mean this to address the original question, though, since it’s not from an FDT/UDT perspective.
I agree that this definition of “matters” is odd; not the one most people use in everyday speech. I think that there are ways to make other definitions rigorous (in ways that aren’t addressed in the wikipedia article I linked). But this is the narrowly consequentialist definition, so it does deserve analysis.