2) The risk you incur in going to the place where you vote (a non-trivial likelihood of dying due to unusual traffic that day).
3) The attention you pay to politics and associated decision cost.
4) The sensation you made a difference (this cost is conditional on voting not making a difference).
What are the benefits associated with voting:
1) If an election is decided based on one vote, and you voted on one of the winning contestants, your vote decides who is elected, and is causally responsible for the counterfactual difference between candidates.
2) Depending on your inclinations about how decision theory and anomalous causality actually work in humans, you may think your vote is numerically more valuable because it changes/indicates/represents/maps what your reference class will vote. As if you were automatically famous and influential.
Now I ask you to consider whether benefit (1) would in fact be the case for important elections (elections say where the elected will govern over 10 000 000 people). If 100 Worlds had an election decided based on one vote, which percentage of those would be surreptitiously biased by someone who could tamper with the voting? How many would request a recount? How many would ask it’s citizens to vote again? Would deem the election illegitimate? Etc…
Maybe some of these worlds would indeed accept the original counting, or do a fair recounting that would reach the exact same number, I find it unlikely this would be more than 80 of these 100 worlds, and would not be surprised if it was 30 or less.
We don’t know how likely it is that this will happen, in more than 16000 elections in the US only one was decided by one vote, and it was not an executive function in a highly populated area.
This has been somewhat discussed in the rationalist community before, with different people reaching different conclusions.
Here are some suggestions for EA’s that are consistent with the point of view that voting is, ceteris paribus, not valuable:
EA’s who are not famous and influential should consider never making political choices.
EA’s who are uncertain or live in countries where suffrage is compulsory may want to consider saving time by copying the voting decisions of someone who they trust, to avoid time and attention loss.
Suggestions for those who think voting is valuable:
EAs should consider the marginal cost of copying the voting policy of a non-EA friend/influence they trust highly, and weight it against the time, attention and decision cost of deciding themselves.
EAs should consider using safe vehicles (all the time and) during elections.
EAs who think voting is valuable because it represents what all agents in their reference class would do in that situation should consider other situations in which to apply such decision procedure. There may be a lot at stake in many decisions where using indication and anomalous causation applies—even in domains where this is not the sole ground of justification.
Now I ask you to consider whether benefit (1) would in fact be the case for important elections (elections say where the elected will govern over 10 000 000 people). If 100 Worlds had an election decided based on one vote, which percentage of those would be surreptitiously biased by someone who could tamper with the voting? How many would request a recount? How many would ask it’s citizens to vote again? Would deem the election illegitimate? Etc… Maybe some of these worlds would indeed accept the original counting, or do a fair recounting that would reach the exact same number, I find it unlikely this would be more than 80 of these 100 worlds, and would not be surprised if it was 30 or less.
It does indeed look hard to predict what will happen here exactly. Luckily it pretty much factors out of the analysis.
I’ll demonstrate with a toy example. Say the election goes to whoever gets more votes, EXCEPT if the counts only differ by 1 vote. In that case there’s a 100% chance that the election is deemed illegitimate and the military step in. Say you’re voting for Party B rather than Party A. You know Party A has 1,000 votes, and you think Party B has about 1,000 votes.
If you move Party B from 1,000 to 1,001 votes you make no difference—you get the election declared illegitimate either way. Instead your impact comes from the cases where Party B was getting 998 votes already (you move from Party A win to military takeover) or Party B was getting 1,001 votes already (you move from military takeover to Party B win).
If you’re uncertain enough about the outcome that all of those possibilities for vote numbers look about equally likely to you, then the net expected effect of your vote is a small chance (the chance that the votes stand at any one particular number) to move from a Party A win to a Party B win—just the same as if you disregarded all the possible complications.
I don’t understand what you’re pointing us to in that link. The main part of the text tells us that ties are usually broken in swing states by drawing lots (so if you did a full accounting of probabilities and expectation values, you’d include some factors of 1⁄2, which I think all wash out anyway), and that the probability of a tie in a swing state is around 1 in 10^5.
The second half of the post is Randall doing his usual entertaining thing of describing a ridiculously extreme event. (No-one who argues that a marginal vote is valuable for expectation-value reasons thinks that most of the benefit comes from the possibility of ties in nine states.)
Perhaps some of those details are interesting, but it doesn’t look to me like it changes anything of what’s been debated in this thread.
My main response is that this is worrying about very little—it doesn’t take much time to choose who to vote for once or twice every few years.
But in particular,
2) The risk you incur in going to the place where you vote (a non-trivial likelihood of dying due to unusual traffic that day).
is an overstated concern at least for the US (relative risk around 1.2 of dying on the road on election day compared to non-election days) and Australia (relative risk around 1.03 +/- error analysis I haven’t done).
Yes, you’re right that election day doesn’t add much to the danger. But the baseline risk of drying on the road is pretty high relative to other risks you probably face, so if you thought the benefits of voting were negligible this one might be a significant element of your calculus.
Diego, I don’t weight any of the 4 risks you’ve listed very heavily. I also think you’ve underestimated the benefits.
In regards to Benefit #1, a vote’s relevance doesn’t depend on the election being decided by a single vote. If you think probabilistically, then in any given election, your vote has a certain probability of affecting the outcome. You can weight that against how important you think it is for Party A to win over Party B. I think that given how little it costs to vote, it’s usually clearly worth it to take a small action with a tiny probability of having large-scale consequences.
I think this is somewhat analogous to going vegetarian, in which case you’re contributing to a larger cause even though your individual decision not to buy meat only has a tiny probability of being the non-purchase that causes the grocery store to order one less item next time.
Other benefits:
a) Your vote might cause other people to vote with you. In this case, you are no longer a single vote but a package of votes.
b) There’s also something to be said for signalling an interest in politics and social issues.
c) In some elections, your vote might give the party you voted for more seats, funding, power and/or legitimacy, even if they ultimately lose the election.
d) The attention it takes to learn about politics can also have multiple benefits: being in touch with the people around you, learning about issues in society, learning about solving those issues, etc.
a) Yes, famous people should signal to whom they will vote.
b) Signalling interest in politics seems commendable on occasion and despicable at least as frequently.
c) Which is why I focused on large elections where the counterfactual difference would be larger. Also, definition-wise, a vote that decides on more seats is a vote that breaks a tie, which I had considered.
d) The hypothesis that dedicating attention to politics gets you closer to the people around me strikes me as utopic, whereas frequently politics are used to determine who is left, not who is right, in a social environment.
It seems that you missed a substantial cost: the time taken to physically go to vote (and queue if necessary). I’d expect this to be a bigger expected cost than the extra risk incurred.
I think voting is very valuable from a “moral trade” perspective. I want to convince other people to take my ideas of virtue seriously, but they won’t if they see me doing something that’s commonsense unvirtuous like not voting.
I agree that this might help with persuasion, but I’m not sure this really counts as moral trade. By voting, you’re diluting the effect of everyone else’s votes. So plausibly you are harming everyone else by voting. If this counts as a trade for them, it’s a perverse one, where they would be better off not trading.
Of course, you could make the reasonable counter-argument that you have studied economics, history etc. far more than the average voter, so are actually helping by diluting the impact of stupid voters. But that’s not so much trade as paternalism.
If this counts as a trade for them, it’s a perverse one, where they would be better off not trading.
Not if the person values democracy for the sake democracy, rather than achieving particular legislative aims. I feel like many of my friends are like this.
Is voting valuable?
There are four costs associated with voting:
1) The time you spend deciding on whom to vote.
2) The risk you incur in going to the place where you vote (a non-trivial likelihood of dying due to unusual traffic that day).
3) The attention you pay to politics and associated decision cost.
4) The sensation you made a difference (this cost is conditional on voting not making a difference).
What are the benefits associated with voting:
1) If an election is decided based on one vote, and you voted on one of the winning contestants, your vote decides who is elected, and is causally responsible for the counterfactual difference between candidates.
2) Depending on your inclinations about how decision theory and anomalous causality actually work in humans, you may think your vote is numerically more valuable because it changes/indicates/represents/maps what your reference class will vote. As if you were automatically famous and influential.
Now I ask you to consider whether benefit (1) would in fact be the case for important elections (elections say where the elected will govern over 10 000 000 people). If 100 Worlds had an election decided based on one vote, which percentage of those would be surreptitiously biased by someone who could tamper with the voting? How many would request a recount? How many would ask it’s citizens to vote again? Would deem the election illegitimate? Etc… Maybe some of these worlds would indeed accept the original counting, or do a fair recounting that would reach the exact same number, I find it unlikely this would be more than 80 of these 100 worlds, and would not be surprised if it was 30 or less.
We don’t know how likely it is that this will happen, in more than 16000 elections in the US only one was decided by one vote, and it was not an executive function in a highly populated area.
This has been somewhat discussed in the rationalist community before, with different people reaching different conclusions.
Here are some suggestions for EA’s that are consistent with the point of view that voting is, ceteris paribus, not valuable:
EA’s who are not famous and influential should consider never making political choices.
EA’s who are uncertain or live in countries where suffrage is compulsory may want to consider saving time by copying the voting decisions of someone who they trust, to avoid time and attention loss.
Suggestions for those who think voting is valuable:
EAs should consider the marginal cost of copying the voting policy of a non-EA friend/influence they trust highly, and weight it against the time, attention and decision cost of deciding themselves.
EAs should consider using safe vehicles (all the time and) during elections.
EAs who think voting is valuable because it represents what all agents in their reference class would do in that situation should consider other situations in which to apply such decision procedure. There may be a lot at stake in many decisions where using indication and anomalous causation applies—even in domains where this is not the sole ground of justification.
It does indeed look hard to predict what will happen here exactly. Luckily it pretty much factors out of the analysis.
I’ll demonstrate with a toy example. Say the election goes to whoever gets more votes, EXCEPT if the counts only differ by 1 vote. In that case there’s a 100% chance that the election is deemed illegitimate and the military step in. Say you’re voting for Party B rather than Party A. You know Party A has 1,000 votes, and you think Party B has about 1,000 votes.
If you move Party B from 1,000 to 1,001 votes you make no difference—you get the election declared illegitimate either way. Instead your impact comes from the cases where Party B was getting 998 votes already (you move from Party A win to military takeover) or Party B was getting 1,001 votes already (you move from military takeover to Party B win).
If you’re uncertain enough about the outcome that all of those possibilities for vote numbers look about equally likely to you, then the net expected effect of your vote is a small chance (the chance that the votes stand at any one particular number) to move from a Party A win to a Party B win—just the same as if you disregarded all the possible complications.
Now I ask you (and everyone reading) to consider this: http://what-if.xkcd.com/19/
I don’t understand what you’re pointing us to in that link. The main part of the text tells us that ties are usually broken in swing states by drawing lots (so if you did a full accounting of probabilities and expectation values, you’d include some factors of 1⁄2, which I think all wash out anyway), and that the probability of a tie in a swing state is around 1 in 10^5.
The second half of the post is Randall doing his usual entertaining thing of describing a ridiculously extreme event. (No-one who argues that a marginal vote is valuable for expectation-value reasons thinks that most of the benefit comes from the possibility of ties in nine states.)
Perhaps some of those details are interesting, but it doesn’t look to me like it changes anything of what’s been debated in this thread.
My main response is that this is worrying about very little—it doesn’t take much time to choose who to vote for once or twice every few years.
But in particular,
is an overstated concern at least for the US (relative risk around 1.2 of dying on the road on election day compared to non-election days) and Australia (relative risk around 1.03 +/- error analysis I haven’t done).
Yes, you’re right that election day doesn’t add much to the danger. But the baseline risk of drying on the road is pretty high relative to other risks you probably face, so if you thought the benefits of voting were negligible this one might be a significant element of your calculus.
Diego, I don’t weight any of the 4 risks you’ve listed very heavily. I also think you’ve underestimated the benefits.
In regards to Benefit #1, a vote’s relevance doesn’t depend on the election being decided by a single vote. If you think probabilistically, then in any given election, your vote has a certain probability of affecting the outcome. You can weight that against how important you think it is for Party A to win over Party B. I think that given how little it costs to vote, it’s usually clearly worth it to take a small action with a tiny probability of having large-scale consequences.
I think this is somewhat analogous to going vegetarian, in which case you’re contributing to a larger cause even though your individual decision not to buy meat only has a tiny probability of being the non-purchase that causes the grocery store to order one less item next time.
Other benefits:
a) Your vote might cause other people to vote with you. In this case, you are no longer a single vote but a package of votes.
b) There’s also something to be said for signalling an interest in politics and social issues.
c) In some elections, your vote might give the party you voted for more seats, funding, power and/or legitimacy, even if they ultimately lose the election.
d) The attention it takes to learn about politics can also have multiple benefits: being in touch with the people around you, learning about issues in society, learning about solving those issues, etc.
a) Yes, famous people should signal to whom they will vote.
b) Signalling interest in politics seems commendable on occasion and despicable at least as frequently.
c) Which is why I focused on large elections where the counterfactual difference would be larger. Also, definition-wise, a vote that decides on more seats is a vote that breaks a tie, which I had considered.
d) The hypothesis that dedicating attention to politics gets you closer to the people around me strikes me as utopic, whereas frequently politics are used to determine who is left, not who is right, in a social environment.
It seems that you missed a substantial cost: the time taken to physically go to vote (and queue if necessary). I’d expect this to be a bigger expected cost than the extra risk incurred.
I think voting is very valuable from a “moral trade” perspective. I want to convince other people to take my ideas of virtue seriously, but they won’t if they see me doing something that’s commonsense unvirtuous like not voting.
I agree that this might help with persuasion, but I’m not sure this really counts as moral trade. By voting, you’re diluting the effect of everyone else’s votes. So plausibly you are harming everyone else by voting. If this counts as a trade for them, it’s a perverse one, where they would be better off not trading.
Of course, you could make the reasonable counter-argument that you have studied economics, history etc. far more than the average voter, so are actually helping by diluting the impact of stupid voters. But that’s not so much trade as paternalism.
Not if the person values democracy for the sake democracy, rather than achieving particular legislative aims. I feel like many of my friends are like this.