There is a pervasive attitude at Lesswrong and related communities that all politics is a waste of time. I think this calculation, even if a bit naive and imperfect, demonstrates it might not be so.
I think the naivety and imperfections make it useless as a demonstration of this. Taking such ridiculous estimates of the difference between candidates and your level of knowledge about those differences (and especially the difference between you and the median voter you’re hoping to override) makes me doubt the seriousness of the calculation, and makes it impossible to make decisions based on.
Heck, the range of possibilities between “$hundreds of thousands to charity (not mentioned: and many millions to non-charity cronies of the winner)” and “worth your time to vote”, even if we discount the “negative value if you’re wrong” option (which is real, but probably only reduces EV for this group rather than making it net negative) is enough to show that people making monetary EV arguments are on the propaganda side rather than the truth side of the calculation.
Are you referring to OP or me? I don’t think my estimate of the difference between candidates is ridiculous. It’s pretty clear the president can have a massive impact on the world. So large that, even when multiplied by a 1 in 10 million probability, it’s still worth your time to vote.
Using dollar amounts might be a bit naive. Instead look at utility directly, perhaps some estimate like QALYs. I think something like health care reform alone has the potential to be worth tens of millions of QALYs. A major war or economic depression can easily cost similar amounts.
And again this is just the scenario where you are the tiebreaking vote. I think there is something to be said for the value of voting that goes beyond just the likelihood of being a tiebreaker. For instance, consider all the people that think similar to how you do. If you decide to not vote, they will also decide to not vote. So your decision to vote can still change the election, in a sort of acausal way.
I think the naivety and imperfections make it useless as a demonstration of this. Taking such ridiculous estimates of the difference between candidates and your level of knowledge about those differences (and especially the difference between you and the median voter you’re hoping to override) makes me doubt the seriousness of the calculation, and makes it impossible to make decisions based on.
Heck, the range of possibilities between “$hundreds of thousands to charity (not mentioned: and many millions to non-charity cronies of the winner)” and “worth your time to vote”, even if we discount the “negative value if you’re wrong” option (which is real, but probably only reduces EV for this group rather than making it net negative) is enough to show that people making monetary EV arguments are on the propaganda side rather than the truth side of the calculation.
Are you referring to OP or me? I don’t think my estimate of the difference between candidates is ridiculous. It’s pretty clear the president can have a massive impact on the world. So large that, even when multiplied by a 1 in 10 million probability, it’s still worth your time to vote.
Using dollar amounts might be a bit naive. Instead look at utility directly, perhaps some estimate like QALYs. I think something like health care reform alone has the potential to be worth tens of millions of QALYs. A major war or economic depression can easily cost similar amounts.
And again this is just the scenario where you are the tiebreaking vote. I think there is something to be said for the value of voting that goes beyond just the likelihood of being a tiebreaker. For instance, consider all the people that think similar to how you do. If you decide to not vote, they will also decide to not vote. So your decision to vote can still change the election, in a sort of acausal way.