A person is said to exhibit rational irrationality when it is instrumentally rational for him to be epistemically irrational. An instrumentally rational person chooses the best strategies to achieve his goals. An epistemically irrational person ignores and evades evidence against his beliefs, holds his beliefs without evidence or with only weak evidence, has contradictions in his thinking, employs logical fallacies in belief formation, and exhibits characteristic epistemic vices such as closed-mindedness. Epistemically irrational political beliefs can reinforce one’s self-image; boost one’s self-esteem; make one feel noble, smart, superior, safe, or comfortable; and can help achieve conformity with the group and thus facilitate social acceptance. Thus, epistemic irrationality can be instrumentally rational.
If I falsely believe the road I am crossing is free of cars, I might die. So I have a strong incentive to form beliefs about the road in a rational way. However, if I falsely believe that import quotas are good for the economy, this has no directly harmful effects. (On the contrary, the belief can have significant instrumental value. It might make me feel patriotic; serve my xenophobia; serve as an outlet to rationalize, sublimate, or redirect racist attitudes; or help me pretend to have solidarity with union workers.) … Epistemic rationality is hard and takes self-discipline.
When it comes to politics, individuals have every incentive to indulge their irrational impulses. Demand for irrational beliefs is like demand for most other goods. The lower the cost, the more will be demanded. The cost to the typical voter of voting in epistemically irrational ways is nearly zero. The cost of overcoming bias and epistemic irrationality is high. The psychological benefit of this irrationality is significant. Thus, voters demand a high amount of epistemic irrationality.
I think this quote might have the analysis backwards. Politicians are not irrational for spouting irrational nonsense—because that is what voters want to hear. I’m not sure if that is accurately described as “epistemically irrational” because some of the politicians probably know what the correct answers are.
None of that creates incentives on voters to be epistemically irrational—except for game-theoric reasons. There certainly are costs to voters being epistemically irrational (assuming one believes there are meaningful differences between the political parties—which may not be the local consensus.
Except that an individual vote have a negligible effect on who wins an election, so voters have no incentive to figure out which political party best represents their goals.
The cost to the typical voter of voting in epistemically irrational ways is nearly zero. The cost of overcoming bias and epistemic irrationality is high. The psychological benefit of this irrationality is significant. Thus, voters demand a high amount of epistemic irrationality.
In the case of LW, voting irrationally has almost zero costs. You don’t get penalized for voting wrongly(Incidentally I suggested trying to implement some measure of this kind and guess what… I was downvoted). The penalties are more indirect, like diminishing the amount of epistemically correct contributions.
So why would you assume that LW would be less prone to have this sort of problem?
The evidence suggests that the problem should actually be worse on LW, see1, 2.
Jason Brennan, The Ethics of Voting, p.173-74
I think this quote might have the analysis backwards. Politicians are not irrational for spouting irrational nonsense—because that is what voters want to hear. I’m not sure if that is accurately described as “epistemically irrational” because some of the politicians probably know what the correct answers are.
None of that creates incentives on voters to be epistemically irrational—except for game-theoric reasons. There certainly are costs to voters being epistemically irrational (assuming one believes there are meaningful differences between the political parties—which may not be the local consensus.
Except that an individual vote have a negligible effect on who wins an election, so voters have no incentive to figure out which political party best represents their goals.
Someone recently wrote a post analyzing optimal voter behavior. It turns out that anyone who would vote in a country where a random voter is selected to decide the election should vote in the current setup. Plus, voting has knock-on effects for future elections.
And most people wouldn’t vote rationally in that country either.
I wish we would reconsider the upvote/downvote mechanics on LW.
Could you elaborate?
Well,
it is exactly what the quote said:
In the case of LW, voting irrationally has almost zero costs. You don’t get penalized for voting wrongly(Incidentally I suggested trying to implement some measure of this kind and guess what… I was downvoted). The penalties are more indirect, like diminishing the amount of epistemically correct contributions.
So why would you assume that LW would be less prone to have this sort of problem?
The evidence suggests that the problem should actually be worse on LW, see1, 2.