I haven’t tried to fully understand the argument, but it seems like you’re not considering that the cost of voting c has to be the opportunity cost, which can be astronomically high if the alternative to voting is to spend the time on reducing x-risk some other way. (If you have already considered this, please clarify and I’ll look more into the rest of the post.)
I don’t think that normal humans can live on the bleeding edge of maximum effectiveness every waking moment. I don’t presume to give advice to those who aren’t normal humans.
I think normal humans tend to have something like a budget for “doing something about x-risk”, so if you’re asking them to vote in the name of preventing x-risk, that time is coming out of their x-risk budget, therefore you still have to consider the cost of voting as time that would otherwise be spend on reducing x-risk some other way.
I am suggesting establishing a policy of voting (“being a voter”) as an x-risk strategy. Once you have that policy, voting is just an everyday action, only indirectly related to x- risk. This distinction makes sense to me but now that you mention it I’m sure there are those for whom it’s nonsense.
I haven’t tried to fully understand the argument, but it seems like you’re not considering that the cost of voting c has to be the opportunity cost, which can be astronomically high if the alternative to voting is to spend the time on reducing x-risk some other way. (If you have already considered this, please clarify and I’ll look more into the rest of the post.)
[edit: oops, I just repeated a point made in the post that Wei_Dai presumably already understood]
I don’t think that normal humans can live on the bleeding edge of maximum effectiveness every waking moment. I don’t presume to give advice to those who aren’t normal humans.
I think normal humans tend to have something like a budget for “doing something about x-risk”, so if you’re asking them to vote in the name of preventing x-risk, that time is coming out of their x-risk budget, therefore you still have to consider the cost of voting as time that would otherwise be spend on reducing x-risk some other way.
I am suggesting establishing a policy of voting (“being a voter”) as an x-risk strategy. Once you have that policy, voting is just an everyday action, only indirectly related to x- risk. This distinction makes sense to me but now that you mention it I’m sure there are those for whom it’s nonsense.