Felagund
1mo ago
I'm speaking regarding this site, where there is no algorithm to have to think about:
Generally, I upvote things that I think are good. I downvote things that I think are bad. Many things I don't vote either way on. Having good insights is one of the most common factors behind me thinking it's good.
Occasionally, if I get to something that's been around for long enough to see the results, I'll upvote someone who's been net-downvoted if it doesn't feel like their comment warranted the votes to be as negative as they are.
If I'm in a one-on-one conversation a few levels deep, I think I upvote people sometimes, because it's nice of them to keep engaging with me. I honestly can't recall how often I downvote people when I'm in the midst of an argument with them—I think I'm more likely to do so if it's unnecessarily bad, instead of merely disagreement. I only remove the auto-upvote if I retroactively think what I said wasn't actually very good.
Felagund
1mo ago
Somewhat—I think Florida's the closest R-leaning seat to being a democrat, besides Montana.
A Democrat trifecta would be bad.
Felagund
1mo ago
On your side:
Your vote, in all likelihood, will not matter. (If it does, it's far more likely to downballot, where people care less anyway.) If it does, it might be a big benefit, but the expected value of voting is probably quite low.
Voting well takes effort, as you point out. It has an opportunity cost.
Accordingly, voting is a net negative, and you should not do it.
On the other side, which I would prefer you followed:
Your vote may not matter much individually, but the vote of your people as a block does. You not voting is a defection against those most aligned with you—you really don't want to establish the norm that 50% of your side votes and 75% of your opponents do. People who agree with you are disproportionately going to follow the same reasoning and do the same.
I think these represent different decision theories, to some extent. The first is more like causal decision theory, the second is more like eternal decision theory.
Are you in a state where your vote will matter (especially presidential or senatorially)?
If you have a specific race or concerns, I could attempt to give thoughts.
Felagund
1mo ago
It's a mix! I partly agree with you (there are a lot of places where elites will understand the subject matter better than the majority), but not entirely (DC votes over 90% blue, maybe we shouldn't leave them with all the decisions).
Felagund
1mo ago
Write-in votes are not counted in many states unless the candidate written in registers beforehand, so a third-party candidate is often a better protest.
If you personally are unsure in elections with national relevance, I'd be happy to argue for the Republican.
While agree that not voting can be reasonable downballot, to modify the last portion of it, if you don't have time, vote no on the ballot measures, rather than skipping.
Felagund
1mo ago
I would even go beyond this and claim that transracialism is much more reasonable than transgenderism
It would also presumably be way easier to act on. Dyeing one's skin is way less invasive than the various transgender things.
Felagund
1mo ago
Well, I think it's bad, and I don't think it's very loving to encourage people to do bad things. That's the short answer.
Does that say something about government policy? Not necessarily.
But I think it's worth bringing up that I do think the bible is pretty clear that homosexual sex is wrong. First, I think it's pretty clear that sexual sin is a big deal. This appears often! One of the clearest passages, for example, is 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, where it argues specifically that it's wrong for Christians to hire prostitutes. Of course, this is different from our case in two ways: the people we're talking about aren't necessarily Christian, and prostitution looks different from monogamous gay relationships (we'll ignore the high rates of gay promiscuity). But it's still wrong if we change either or both of these. See, for example Romans 1 (where it's non-Christians), or the several cases where homosexual sex is specifically condemned, like 1 Timothy 1:10. There are more passages, of course.
Homosexual sex is not the only seemingly victimless sin that was condemned, and the early Christians seem happy to condemn sins while also advocating for love. I think both of those are important! We should be keenly aware of sin (or else, how will we truly appreciate how undeserving we are of what Christ gave for us), and also should walk in love. They go together.
I suppose, then, I'll ask you:
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Do you think the bible condemns homosexual sex?
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If it did, would that sway you?
Felagund
1mo ago
I imagine, if they really want to spend more funding on teacher pay, and want to increase the performance of the school, the best way to do so is to fire many of the existing teachers, and hire top-notch new ones.
Good luck advocating for that.
Felagund
1mo ago
I don't think "rate of fatherlessness" works as a single cause, I would think, though it's surely a contributing factor. I think there's more of a whole cultural milieu that leads to worse behavior and outcomes. African American is not merely a racial group, but also a cultural one—I believe I've read that immigrants often dislike the influence of their children's peers on their children.
Now why does that culture exist in the way it does? No idea. It's surely has many causes, many pressures that have pushed it to be that way, but I'm not knowledgeable about that.
Felagund
2mo ago
This is unclear to me in several respects.
First, what exactly are we measuring? You seem to want to talk about what people want, but you include utility which usually means that on its own, I think. Second, are these four categories both exhaustive, and non-overlapping? You seem to assume so, but why do you think so? They are not at all obviously so to me. Third, you say that utils/hedons are inadequate, and that your schema remedies that. In what ways precisely? What deficits are there? What problems does this fix. Fourth, you connect it to another schema (which, as far as I can tell, has a similar lack of rigor), with no argument besides that those seem natural correspondences.
If I wanted to try to analyze value, what would I do? Well, first I would note that there are two fundamentally distinct things I could try to do.
First, I could analyze it purely in the abstract. One simple model of this are utility functions: ideal agents assign different values to different possibilities, and try to bring about the ones with higher value. This is fairly minimalistic in its assumptions. It doesn't lead to a four-factor model, it leads to a one-factor model.
Second, I could analyze it as it exists in humans. This would be a field of psychology, I suppose—in actual fact, how do people choose things, what do they value, etc? This will be extremely complicated, at least if you wanted a lot of specificity, but you might be able to make some sense of things, do some statistics, etc. These two methods won't always align—for example, humans seem to fall short of ideal agents with regard to the Allais paradox, for example, and we often have moral uncertainty.
What I wouldn't do is take a preexisting framework from elsewhere, and fabricate things to line up with them, unless I had a pretty solid justification that it was necessary that it be so, or pretty good empirical evidence.
Felagund
2mo ago
Two points:
First, abortion being a losing issue is way more true post-Dobbs than it was before. I think pro-life people need to focus more on taking wins that they can keep (in a close state, enact the three month ban, not the 6 week ban), because otherwise it'll be extended to birth and more people will be murdered. Yes, this is unjust, but it may be necessary.
Second, the pro-life movement is driven by women to an extent unusual among conservative causes. Women care about babies more, and men sometimes feel out of place—at least, those are the causes, I suspect.
Felagund
2mo ago
There's a lot on this. First past the post isn't a very good system. See wikipedia on voting methods for an intro—there's a bunch of different desirable properties, only some of which are compatible.
Felagund
2mo ago
Yeah, I'd be inclined to agree. Kavanaugh, at least, would agree as well (he said so in Dobbs), so I imagine that's true of Roberts too. It'll die if it makes it to the Supreme Court.
Felagund
2mo ago
because I think another President DNC is preferable to a President Kamala.
In what ways?
Felagund
2mo ago
I assume you're including tests in the first portion? It doesn't look like they have all that many nuclear weapons.
Monkeypox is currently mostly an STD, especially between men, right? I imagine, then, you could look at the spread of past STDs. Not sure how you'd try to account for evolution of the disease.
States mattering seems ordinarily to be due either to economic power, or to willingness and ability to use or threaten violence in a way that would have an impact on the global economy (e.g. North Korea, Houthis). Are there other major factors? Israel seems like it might be cared about more than by that simplistic analysis. No idea how best to model all that. Clearly culture is big for willingness to use violence.
Who will be on the ballot in the swing states?
I figured this is something that's in the news, especially regarding RFK, but generally hasn't been comprehensively compiled. There's a helpful wikipedia page. The election's close enough, given current polling, that the 3rd party candidates could matter.
Arizona: Trump, Harris, Stein (Green Party), Oliver (Libertarian party).
West (ex-Green Party) tried to be a write-in, but failed. RFK successfully dropped out. There's technically Shiva Ayyadurai as a write-in as well (if wikipedia's right), but I never heard of him, and it looks like he's ineligible anyway? Overall, this is pretty typical: Oliver gives unhappy R-leaners an out (though he's socially more progressive than those who care about abortion, for example); Stein gives unhappy D-leaners an out.
Nevada: Trump, Harris, Oliver, Skousen (Constitution party).
This is about as D-friendly of a slate as it gets, at least, in states keeping RFK off. Stein was kicked off on technicalities (the people in the government gave her team a form, but it was missing a field, so it was invalid. The requirement of that field was merely by rules, not even by statute.), per a recent (politically-aligned) supreme court ruling. Nevada has no write-ins (along with 9 other states), so West and Stein will get 0 votes. Skousen's with the state constitution party, but they broke with the national party in nominating him over the official Constitution party candidate (more on that later). He seems to be running as a generic non-Trump Republican (It's an ugly website). Pretty bad arrangement for Republicans, where R-leaners will have other options, but the best option for single-issue Palestine voters is the libertarian candidate.
Georgia: Trump, Harris, Stein, Oliver, West, De La Cruz (Party for Socialism and Liberation).
This is about as R-friendly of a slate as a state gets, which is still only moderately so, as Oliver is on the ballot. The democrats have been trying to get Stein, West, and De La Cruz off the ballot, but it looks like the Secretary of State thinks they've qualified.
North Carolina: Trump, Harris, Stein, Oliver, West, Terry (Constitution Party), and maybe RFK?
North Carolina has the five most common candidates. Terry's the national Constitution Party candidate, unlike Skousen in Nevada. His biggest thing seems to be abortion, which seems like it could actually draw some dissatisfied voters—I'm hoping not. RFK's the big thing—he tried to drop out, but they'd already printed a bunch of early ballots. They've delayed distributing the ballots because of him, but haven't yet decided whether they're going to print new ones, or just go with what they have.
Pennsylvania: Trump, Harris, Stein, Oliver.
Pennsylvania is one of 9 states where there's automatic write-in access. Everywhere else requires the candidate to register. That is, they'll only count your vote for your dad if you happen to live in Alabama, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, or Wyoming. I personally find it a bit sad that those votes aren't even counted everywhere else. On the other hand, this must really slow down elections, as they would have to read and tabulate all candidates, presumably, not just those on a set, narrow list?
Anyway, that means that West is available if people really want him, as is literally everyone who's eligible for the presidency. (Courts ruled against him being put on a ballot, because he had filed paperwork for the candidate, not for each of his electors.) Not sure what to make of the radical freedom, but the slate on the ballot itself seems fair.
Michigan: Trump, Harris, Stein, Oliver, West?, RFK?, Terry, Kishore (Socialist Equality Party).
RFK's still going through the process to get himself removed. The Michigan Supreme Court's relatively partisan, though, so I have no expectation that they'll uphold the appeals court: he's probably staying on. West's ballot is also headed to the Supreme Court, over signatures and affidavits and such. Kishore talks about Gaza—I'm wondering if he's trying to appeal to muslims, it being Michigan. RFK should hurt Republicans, I imagine?
Wisconsin: Trump, Harris, Stein, Oliver, West, Terry, De La Cruz, RFK.
RFK's suing to get his name off after the elections commission ruled that he stays on, but I don't expect that to work out. This seems to have candidates on both sides, but keeping on RFK is probably what matters most.
In sum, then, we have:
3 states possibly keeping RFK: Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina. (These also happen to be the ones with Terry.)
3 states with no RFK, and with Stein: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania.
1 state with neither: Nevada.
The 1st and 3rd slates are ones Democrats should be happier about, the 2nd are ones that Republicans should be happier about. If this was the sole factor we cared about, Democrats would win, 273-265.
Bonus: a few more marginal states.
Maine has the main five (and so is in category 2. Yes, it is one of the ones RFK chose to withdraw from. One of its electoral votes could go either way.)
Nebraska has the main 5, plus RFK. I'm surprised RFK didn't try to withdraw here; that one electoral vote could matter.
New Hampshire has automatic write-ins like PA, but on the ballot proper only adds Oliver and Stein.
Virginia has the ordinary five, plus De La Cruz.
Florida is unusual. No West, but it has De La Cruz. It has Terry, and the American Solidarity Party's Peter Sonski. The ASP seems to be a pro-life, somewhat anti-capitalist party. Unlike the Constitution Party, a good-looking website. I'm sure they're delightful people, but we'd have different economic views.
Texas has the minimalistic 4 on the ballot, and as write-ins: West, De La Cruz, and Sonski.
I'll probably add in some edits down below here if I hear of any updates. I suppose the overall takeaway here, assuming you're R-leaning, is to see the situation in NV, WI, MI, and maybe NC as slightly worse than you would have thought otherwise, and GA, AZ, and PA as normal.
EDIT: RFK off the ballot in North Carolina, on the ballot in Michigan. West on the ballot in Michigan.
Felagund
2mo ago
In the primaries, is it of more value to try to get more electable Republicans, or to get less crazy Democrats?
What sort of church do you go to? That might affect what's popular, as preferred translations shift, and some theological opinions. I believe knowableword.com rated a bunch of study bibles, but I haven't looked at that in a long time, and have no idea to what extent I'd agree with their rating system.
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