Because in electoral politics, you are not a unique snowflake. Failure to take into account collective action of people thinking along the lines you’re thinking drastically understates the influence of those thoughts.
It’s not that your decision affects the others. That’s messed up causality. It’s that your decision shares a lot of its causes with other decisions in other people. If you take yours as typical of a particular subset, and decide not to vote, then that suggests that others in that subset might as well. Gathering a large bloc of equivalent voters raises the voting power from approximately 0 to… well, some nontrivial number. If it’s really large, it’s exactly 1 (voting power is not probability, so 1 is a legit answer).
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Because in electoral politics, you are not a unique snowflake. Failure to take into account collective action of people thinking along the lines you’re thinking drastically understates the influence of those thoughts.
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It’s not that your decision affects the others. That’s messed up causality. It’s that your decision shares a lot of its causes with other decisions in other people. If you take yours as typical of a particular subset, and decide not to vote, then that suggests that others in that subset might as well. Gathering a large bloc of equivalent voters raises the voting power from approximately 0 to… well, some nontrivial number. If it’s really large, it’s exactly 1 (voting power is not probability, so 1 is a legit answer).
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It’s not ‘will be the same regardless of which side I come down on’, like we’re in a state
A |Luke votes & Joe votes> + B|Luke doesn’t vote & Joe doesn’t vote>
It’s ‘Is this a good plan of action? Let’s look at its consequences. First order (if I do it): OK. Second order (if everyone does it): not OK.’
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