I answered this before and it didn’t post. I’ll try again.
If voting matters, we have to treat it like matters.
EAs warn people, “Don’t just donate $500! Be careful. Learn what works and what doesn’t. Make sure you give to an effective charity rather than an ineffective or harmful one. Be aware that you are biased to make bad choices!”
But all that applies to voting. If voting can be like donating $50,000, it can also be like robbing a charity of $50,000. But oddly I see EAs telling everyone to vote and telling them to guesstimate, even though our evidence is that people are much worse at judging politics than charities, and even though guestimating a presidential candidate is orders of magnitude more difficult than judging a charity.
I answered this before and it didn’t post. I’ll try again.
If voting matters, we have to treat it like matters.
EAs warn people, “Don’t just donate $500! Be careful. Learn what works and what doesn’t. Make sure you give to an effective charity rather than an ineffective or harmful one. Be aware that you are biased to make bad choices!”
But all that applies to voting. If voting can be like donating $50,000, it can also be like robbing a charity of $50,000. But oddly I see EAs telling everyone to vote and telling them to guesstimate, even though our evidence is that people are much worse at judging politics than charities, and even though guestimating a presidential candidate is orders of magnitude more difficult than judging a charity.
Is it sufficient for it to be good to vote for EAs to be better than the median voter? (which I think is probably true.)