I’ve given my own reasons against voting before. I specifically addressed the “altruistic” justification for voting, since nobody thinks they can make a case for selfish voting anymore. My two main arguments:
1. You shouldn’t expect to know who the better candidate will be with any confidence, since the policies actually implemented are unpredictable, let alone their effects.
2. Voting contributes to your own mind-kill and to disliking your friends. You will think less clearly about a politician and their supporters once you cast a vote for/against them because of consistency bias, myside bias, confirmation bias etc.
With that said, I actually enjoyed this essay. The X-risk-EA argument presented here actually presents a case that’s both novel and would make my two main objections irrelevant. However, there’s some evidence that it’s not very applicable to real life.
In summer 2016 I heard from several prominent EAs that they think EA orgs should recommend Hillary’s campaign as a key cause, and that EAs should donate to it. I have also seen zero attempts at rigorous analysis showing that Trump is a bigger X-risk than Hillary. If we convince ourselves that elections are an EA cause, the false-positive rate for “important” election will quickly approach 100%, and the chance that EAs decide that the Republican candidate is actually safer will approach 0%. The only effect would be losing a lot of resources, friends and mental energy to this nonsensical theater.
On (1): if you can’t tell who the better candidate is, voting is working. You shouldn’t use that example to reason about what would happen if you didn’t vote. It’s not a one-off game.
On (2): this is true, but it’s also a fully general argument. Doing anything contributes to mind-kill, as you become attached to the idea that it was the right thing to do.
I’m tempted to erase the following argument because it’s a bit of a cheap shot “gotcha”, but it does also serve the legit purpose of an example, so here goes: For instance, not voting contributes to assuming that anybody who thinks Clinton is an EA cause is mind-killed. (Note: I think that high-profile political campaigns are awash in cash and don’t use it effectively, so I would never recommend high-profile political donations as EA. And you may be right that there’s no argument of sufficient rigor to show that Clinton was better than Trump in x-risk terms. But I strongly suspect that you feel more immediate contempt for somebody who says “donating to Clinton is EA” than for somebody who says “donating to the EFF is EA”, in a way that is slightly mind-killing.)
On 1, both candidates suck, and not because someone on the margin votes or doesn’t but because of a thousand upstream causes: the personality type required to succeed in politics, the voting system that ensures a two-party lock in, the inability of citizens to comprehend the complexity of modern nation governments, etc.
On 2, let me make my general argument very particular:
1. Polls show that polarization on politics (“Would you let your child marry a Democrat?”) is stronger than polarization on any other major alignment.
2. Unlike other things, political party affiliation is mostly a symbolic thing with few physical implications (compared to a job, a sexual orientation, or even being a rationalist). This makes one’s interaction with political parties consist mostly of signaling virtue and loyalty by vilifying the other party.
3. Unlike other things, there’s an entire industry (news media) that fans the flames of political party mind-kill 24⁄7.
Some people are willing to die on the Batman-v-Superman-was-better-than-Avengers hill, but not a lot. On the other hand, the Romney-was-better-than-Obama hill is covered in dead bodies ten layers deep. Myside bias and tribalism are bad everywhere, but party politics is the area where they’re observably already causing immense harm.
I’m a huge Sixers fan, but I don’t hate Celtics fans. We bond over our mutual love of basketball. That’s not how party politics works.
I’ve given my own reasons against voting before. I specifically addressed the “altruistic” justification for voting, since nobody thinks they can make a case for selfish voting anymore. My two main arguments:
1. You shouldn’t expect to know who the better candidate will be with any confidence, since the policies actually implemented are unpredictable, let alone their effects.
2. Voting contributes to your own mind-kill and to disliking your friends. You will think less clearly about a politician and their supporters once you cast a vote for/against them because of consistency bias, myside bias, confirmation bias etc.
With that said, I actually enjoyed this essay. The X-risk-EA argument presented here actually presents a case that’s both novel and would make my two main objections irrelevant. However, there’s some evidence that it’s not very applicable to real life.
In summer 2016 I heard from several prominent EAs that they think EA orgs should recommend Hillary’s campaign as a key cause, and that EAs should donate to it. I have also seen zero attempts at rigorous analysis showing that Trump is a bigger X-risk than Hillary. If we convince ourselves that elections are an EA cause, the false-positive rate for “important” election will quickly approach 100%, and the chance that EAs decide that the Republican candidate is actually safer will approach 0%. The only effect would be losing a lot of resources, friends and mental energy to this nonsensical theater.
On (1): if you can’t tell who the better candidate is, voting is working. You shouldn’t use that example to reason about what would happen if you didn’t vote. It’s not a one-off game.
On (2): this is true, but it’s also a fully general argument. Doing anything contributes to mind-kill, as you become attached to the idea that it was the right thing to do.
I’m tempted to erase the following argument because it’s a bit of a cheap shot “gotcha”, but it does also serve the legit purpose of an example, so here goes: For instance, not voting contributes to assuming that anybody who thinks Clinton is an EA cause is mind-killed. (Note: I think that high-profile political campaigns are awash in cash and don’t use it effectively, so I would never recommend high-profile political donations as EA. And you may be right that there’s no argument of sufficient rigor to show that Clinton was better than Trump in x-risk terms. But I strongly suspect that you feel more immediate contempt for somebody who says “donating to Clinton is EA” than for somebody who says “donating to the EFF is EA”, in a way that is slightly mind-killing.)
On 1, both candidates suck, and not because someone on the margin votes or doesn’t but because of a thousand upstream causes: the personality type required to succeed in politics, the voting system that ensures a two-party lock in, the inability of citizens to comprehend the complexity of modern nation governments, etc.
On 2, let me make my general argument very particular:
1. Polls show that polarization on politics (“Would you let your child marry a Democrat?”) is stronger than polarization on any other major alignment.
2. Unlike other things, political party affiliation is mostly a symbolic thing with few physical implications (compared to a job, a sexual orientation, or even being a rationalist). This makes one’s interaction with political parties consist mostly of signaling virtue and loyalty by vilifying the other party.
3. Unlike other things, there’s an entire industry (news media) that fans the flames of political party mind-kill 24⁄7.
Some people are willing to die on the Batman-v-Superman-was-better-than-Avengers hill, but not a lot. On the other hand, the Romney-was-better-than-Obama hill is covered in dead bodies ten layers deep. Myside bias and tribalism are bad everywhere, but party politics is the area where they’re observably already causing immense harm.
I’m a huge Sixers fan, but I don’t hate Celtics fans. We bond over our mutual love of basketball. That’s not how party politics works.