It might just be that I disagree with him, but I find this post out of
character for Eliezer. He argues against being strategic or using
game theoretical approaches, which is surprising to me. How can that
possibly make sense? Shouldn’t I try to maximize the value of my vote
given my expectations of the game I’m playing and the people I’m
playing with/against? Essentially, I think he’s arguing for an
idealistic solution instead of a pragmatic one.
I guess I should admit that, in a perfect world, voting for whom you
actually want, regardless of perceived popularity, might work well.
However, it seems more important to me, having identified that the
electoral system seems to consistently produce these kinds of results,
to try to identify the problem. Is the problem really with the
voters, or is it inherent in the structure of the rules?
What should democracy produce, ideally? It should produce election
results that closely mirror what people actually want. It turns out
that the plurality voting system, which we use in most places in the
US, is well known to support a two-party stranglehold as a failure
mode. It is very likely to produce an outcome which leaves most
people unsatisfied. Why not work on fixing the system that produces
this result instead of just hoping for everyone in the country to
suddenly agree to play the game by different rules? (In San
Francisco, we use “instant runoff” voting rules that produce an
outcome more in line with what people actually want. Of course, it’s
not perfect.)
Essentially my question is, why would you insist that people shouldn’t
vote strategically, when it is clearly in their best interests to do
so? If you strongly believe (for example) Rick Perry would
be a threat to your well being, why would you go vote for a third
party instead of doing your best to ensure Perry doesn’t win?
It might just be that I disagree with him, but I find this post out of character for Eliezer.
My prediction: You did not read the post. Your reply only makes sense if I assume it is based off the one paragraph quoted—and then only if I pretend the quotes around “strategic” are not present.
True, but wedrifid was not invoking that following definition as evidence; he was invoking the presence of scare quotes, and as an independent data point; and he in fact agreed that the summary paragraph was insufficient to learn the point of the post—hence why I criticized the summary (conditional on wedrifid’s claim) for failing to do its job (of either summarizing or making clear what you have to read the article to know).
Edit: Wow that’s a big tangle. Here’s a recap:
machrider: *reads summary*; *makes (possibly) bad point in response* wedrifid: “What a stupid point, you obviously just read the summary and not the whole post.” me: “Then it’s a bad summary.” wedrifid: “Even so, it had scare quotes.” me: “Whoa, let’s not overestimate what they can do.”
i read it, and I disagree. I think it’s irrational to expect everyone to do what he suggests, and it only works if everyone does it.
Edit: Using the word “strategic” is probably misleading. Eliezer proposes a particular strategy—vote for someone you actually like, regardless of popularity or perceived likelihood of winning. It’s still a strategy, and voting is still a game. So the argument isn’t really about whether or not to vote “strategically”, it’s about which strategy one should use.
In my original comment I argue for the meta-strategy of changing the electoral system to one that isn’t as broken as plurality systems are. As well, I argue that it still makes sense given the current system to continue to vote for the least evil candidate who has a shot at winning.
Edit: Using the word “strategic” is probably misleading. Eliezer proposes a particular strategy—vote for someone you actually like, regardless of popularity or perceived likelihood of winning.
More to the point he rejects using “strategic voting” that is based off strategies for survival when votes are all public and retaliation is expected—where the consequences of the guy you didn’t vote for getting in are far more serious than whether it is the guy you prefer. This is rejected in favor of pulling the rope sideways.
Are there any good examples of the long strategy working? Ron Paul seemed like a potential case of exactly that, and in 2008 he was rallying support on the internet and raking in serious political campaign contributions. He got a small chunk of the popular vote and raised the profile of libertarianism a little. However, a few years later the media have still apparently decided that he is unelectable and give him far less coverage than the “mainstream” candidates. (I’m not a Ron Paul fan myself, but he should appeal to the fiscal conservative base and he seems to be a man of integrity.)
Is there a good template for what the “long strategy” working would look like?
There have certainly been candidates elected in the U.S. who at some earlier time would have been considered completely unelectable, but of course in each case it’s possible to point to a variety of other causes for why they became electable besides the decision of voters to vote for them. Which is also what I would expect to see if the long strategy worked, since there are always lots of things going on.
What does “man of integrity” mean? I’m willing to tentatively accept that Ron Paul didn’t write material like this:
I’ve been told not to talk, but these stooges don’t scare me. Threats or no threats, I’ve laid bare the coming race war in our big cities. The federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS (my training as a physician helps me see through this one.) The Bohemian Grove—perverted, pagan playground of the powerful. Skull & Bones: the demonic fraternity...
I’ll even grant for the sake of argument that he has some more-or-less good reason for not revealing the name of the staffer(s) who published this in his name. But if I were John Stewart, hearing Paul say it’s enough for him to have a smaller base who “gets the message”, I’d have to ask about it and give him a chance to say that he’d never hire anyone like that for his hypothetical administration. Assuming that he does want to lose the white supremacist vote.
Shouldn’t I try to maximize the value of my vote given my expectations of the game I’m playing and the people I’m playing with/against? Essentially, I think he’s arguing for an idealistic solution instead of a pragmatic one.
He is arguing for a pragmatic solution. He thinks that voting for whom you like has greater chance to help you achieve your political goals than voting for the less disliked major candidate. You can argue that it doesn’t work that way (which you didn’t), but not that EY didn’t use pragmatic reasoning. If his strategy coincides with the idealist strategy, that’s, well, only a coincidence.
Essentially my question is, why would you insist that people shouldn’t vote strategically, when it is clearly in their best interests to do so? If you strongly believe (for example) Rick Perry would be a threat to your well being, why would you go vote for a third party instead of doing your best to ensure Perry doesn’t win?
If you are really convinced that Rick Perry is such a danger that his election should be prevented “at all costs”, vote for the strongest of the other candidates. But in most situations, you are not justified in believing such a thing. Your vote has other consequences than only decreasing probability of RP’s victory. It also sends a signal to both candidates and influences their behaviour and influences other voters. In most normal conditions the secondary effects have greater value than the primary choice of the election winner because the major candidates are unlikely to implement drastically different policies. (I don’t necessarily agree with that, but it is what the original post says.)
I guess I should admit that, in a perfect world, voting for whom you actually want, regardless of perceived popularity, might work well.
Supposing there exists (even as a concept) a perfect world is one of the frequent errors of political thinking.
What should democracy produce, ideally? It should produce election results that closely mirror what people actually want.
This is, in my opinion, a particular example of the problems of perfect-world thinking. You are trying to reform the system to approach some ideal state, where elections reflect what people want. But is this even a coherent ideal? For one thing, different people want different things (and a compromise is usually something nobody is content with). Even one person can have conflicting preferences and be unaware of what they are. I can assure you that voters in proportional voting systems are approximately as dissatisfied with the election results as voters in the plurality systems. I am not saying that all voting systems are equal, but the practical difference is not that big and there is almost certainly no ideal system.
But more importantly, to reform the voting system you first have to grab some political power, either by getting elected yourself or electing a candidate who would support the reform. Do you think that voting “strategically”, that is for the less disliked of the two main candidates, would work, when this very candidate would have been elected just because the present voting system is in place (and he probably knows that)?
It might just be that I disagree with him, but I find this post out of character for Eliezer. He argues against being strategic or using game theoretical approaches, which is surprising to me. How can that possibly make sense? Shouldn’t I try to maximize the value of my vote given my expectations of the game I’m playing and the people I’m playing with/against? Essentially, I think he’s arguing for an idealistic solution instead of a pragmatic one.
I guess I should admit that, in a perfect world, voting for whom you actually want, regardless of perceived popularity, might work well. However, it seems more important to me, having identified that the electoral system seems to consistently produce these kinds of results, to try to identify the problem. Is the problem really with the voters, or is it inherent in the structure of the rules?
What should democracy produce, ideally? It should produce election results that closely mirror what people actually want. It turns out that the plurality voting system, which we use in most places in the US, is well known to support a two-party stranglehold as a failure mode. It is very likely to produce an outcome which leaves most people unsatisfied. Why not work on fixing the system that produces this result instead of just hoping for everyone in the country to suddenly agree to play the game by different rules? (In San Francisco, we use “instant runoff” voting rules that produce an outcome more in line with what people actually want. Of course, it’s not perfect.)
Essentially my question is, why would you insist that people shouldn’t vote strategically, when it is clearly in their best interests to do so? If you strongly believe (for example) Rick Perry would be a threat to your well being, why would you go vote for a third party instead of doing your best to ensure Perry doesn’t win?
My prediction: You did not read the post. Your reply only makes sense if I assume it is based off the one paragraph quoted—and then only if I pretend the quotes around “strategic” are not present.
Then the summary isn’t very representative.
Eh, scare quotes by themselves are a lot less informative than you might think./
The scare quotes were not “by themselves”—they were directly followed by a definition.
True, but wedrifid was not invoking that following definition as evidence; he was invoking the presence of scare quotes, and as an independent data point; and he in fact agreed that the summary paragraph was insufficient to learn the point of the post—hence why I criticized the summary (conditional on wedrifid’s claim) for failing to do its job (of either summarizing or making clear what you have to read the article to know).
Edit: Wow that’s a big tangle. Here’s a recap:
machrider: *reads summary*; *makes (possibly) bad point in response*
wedrifid: “What a stupid point, you obviously just read the summary and not the whole post.”
me: “Then it’s a bad summary.”
wedrifid: “Even so, it had scare quotes.”
me: “Whoa, let’s not overestimate what they can do.”
They are sufficient to remove the meaning machrider used as a straw man from the summary entirely. I think you are being silly.
i read it, and I disagree. I think it’s irrational to expect everyone to do what he suggests, and it only works if everyone does it.
Edit: Using the word “strategic” is probably misleading. Eliezer proposes a particular strategy—vote for someone you actually like, regardless of popularity or perceived likelihood of winning. It’s still a strategy, and voting is still a game. So the argument isn’t really about whether or not to vote “strategically”, it’s about which strategy one should use.
In my original comment I argue for the meta-strategy of changing the electoral system to one that isn’t as broken as plurality systems are. As well, I argue that it still makes sense given the current system to continue to vote for the least evil candidate who has a shot at winning.
More to the point he rejects using “strategic voting” that is based off strategies for survival when votes are all public and retaliation is expected—where the consequences of the guy you didn’t vote for getting in are far more serious than whether it is the guy you prefer. This is rejected in favor of pulling the rope sideways.
Are there any good examples of the long strategy working? Ron Paul seemed like a potential case of exactly that, and in 2008 he was rallying support on the internet and raking in serious political campaign contributions. He got a small chunk of the popular vote and raised the profile of libertarianism a little. However, a few years later the media have still apparently decided that he is unelectable and give him far less coverage than the “mainstream” candidates. (I’m not a Ron Paul fan myself, but he should appeal to the fiscal conservative base and he seems to be a man of integrity.)
Is there a good template for what the “long strategy” working would look like?
There have certainly been candidates elected in the U.S. who at some earlier time would have been considered completely unelectable, but of course in each case it’s possible to point to a variety of other causes for why they became electable besides the decision of voters to vote for them. Which is also what I would expect to see if the long strategy worked, since there are always lots of things going on.
What does “man of integrity” mean? I’m willing to tentatively accept that Ron Paul didn’t write material like this:
I’ll even grant for the sake of argument that he has some more-or-less good reason for not revealing the name of the staffer(s) who published this in his name. But if I were John Stewart, hearing Paul say it’s enough for him to have a smaller base who “gets the message”, I’d have to ask about it and give him a chance to say that he’d never hire anyone like that for his hypothetical administration. Assuming that he does want to lose the white supremacist vote.
If you have, in fact, read it then I no longer have an explanation as to why you are engaging with the straw man.
He is arguing for a pragmatic solution. He thinks that voting for whom you like has greater chance to help you achieve your political goals than voting for the less disliked major candidate. You can argue that it doesn’t work that way (which you didn’t), but not that EY didn’t use pragmatic reasoning. If his strategy coincides with the idealist strategy, that’s, well, only a coincidence.
If you are really convinced that Rick Perry is such a danger that his election should be prevented “at all costs”, vote for the strongest of the other candidates. But in most situations, you are not justified in believing such a thing. Your vote has other consequences than only decreasing probability of RP’s victory. It also sends a signal to both candidates and influences their behaviour and influences other voters. In most normal conditions the secondary effects have greater value than the primary choice of the election winner because the major candidates are unlikely to implement drastically different policies. (I don’t necessarily agree with that, but it is what the original post says.)
Supposing there exists (even as a concept) a perfect world is one of the frequent errors of political thinking.
This is, in my opinion, a particular example of the problems of perfect-world thinking. You are trying to reform the system to approach some ideal state, where elections reflect what people want. But is this even a coherent ideal? For one thing, different people want different things (and a compromise is usually something nobody is content with). Even one person can have conflicting preferences and be unaware of what they are. I can assure you that voters in proportional voting systems are approximately as dissatisfied with the election results as voters in the plurality systems. I am not saying that all voting systems are equal, but the practical difference is not that big and there is almost certainly no ideal system.
But more importantly, to reform the voting system you first have to grab some political power, either by getting elected yourself or electing a candidate who would support the reform. Do you think that voting “strategically”, that is for the less disliked of the two main candidates, would work, when this very candidate would have been elected just because the present voting system is in place (and he probably knows that)?