site banner
TripleInterrobang  1mo ago (youtu.be)   1386 thread views

Voting for the lesser of two evils

youtu.be

In the past I have made video essay content about SSC/ACX articles. My most popular remains my summary of the concept of Moloch.

Today I've made something a little different. It is a video summarizing the arguments surrounding voting for the "lesser evil". If this interests you, give it a watch and let me know if I missed anything or if you agree/disagree.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=46gi-ODAjF0

Note that I do not make any money off this or other videos. I also apologize if I have broken a rule I didn't see by posting this.

-13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Okay, now I've watched your video and see that your intended audience is young progressives, socialists, oppressor-oppressed ideologues etc. for whom Kamala is too centrist and therefore not pure enough.

Your reasoning might land pretty well if the people you're trying to reach are only social justice oriented 18-year-olds, especially if they're not very bright. But this is not the only cohort whose political consciousness has been manufactured over the past decade. Potential voters who don't concur with your assumptions and priorities will simply be offended by the obvious biases in your argument.

I have yet to view your video, but wonder if choosing the lesser of evils is necessarily one's only option.

For instance, in the upcoming election I will go to the polls, but unless something happens between now and election day to change my mind, I intend to write in for President and Vice President the names of Israeli hostages held or murdered by Hamas.

I have the leeway to do that because I live in a blue state where I know the effective absence of my vote will have no impact: my state is going for Harris. If I lived in a red state I would probably vote Democrat in the knowledge that my vote also would not affect the outcome of the election, but that voting "against" Trump would be a way to send a message to analysts about trends and preferences on the hard right's own turf. Then again, I might make the same calculation I do in my blue state: if my vote itself will have no impact, I might still be able to convey information about what matters to voters like me via my write-in.

Only if I lived in one of the seven swing states would I be up against the lesser of evils problem. In that case I would probably be influenced to choose based on the behavior of people around me. IOW, the more hostile, power-hungry, irrational, conspiratorial, antisemitic, otherwise hateful, entrenched or illiberal the progressive left or nativist right was in my state, the more likely I would be to vote against that intolerable contingent.

An even more important factor in my decision would be my calculation of the odds of the country surviving and ultimately recovering from one bad Presidential choice versus the other. Yet if on balance I still felt compelled not to vote for the least-bad candidate, I would consider myself disenfranchised and vote for neither of them.

I'll be honest, your video didn't move me away from my decision to not vote this November. You regurgitated the same talking points that I've heard read online and I've heard from my own friends and family about why my decision to abstain is wrong. I get it. I understand that perspective completely. But I think that most people who will abstain from voting are doing so because (1) the politicians in office now, and the candidates running for office are more concerned about making personal or inflammatory or rage-bate-worthy attacks at the opposition as opposed to addressing specific matters of policy; and (2) our election system is no longer appropriate for how globalized, multicultural and nuanced Western society has become in the past century.

You offer no solution to either of these problems. You suggest nothing of platforming politicians who can actively listen, practice mutual respect, have kindness and compassion towards all people, that aren't funded by corporations or special-interest groups. What you are suggesting is just the status quo; you appear to want nothing more than the continued waging of the war between the two major parties and demanding everyone fall in line.

If I'm wrong in any of this, please tell me.

Are you talking about not voting for president or not voting at all? Because as the other person said, regardless of where you live and what ideology you favor, you should still be voting in local elections. The more local the election, the greater your voice-- and the more important the people you're voting for. A president has a lot less impact on your town's crime rate than the policies of your sheriff, mayor, and prosecutor.

Not voting at all

That's dumb. I guarantee your local morons running for city council aren't important enough to be puppeted by whatever evil group you think controls america. Yes, choosing between the soccer mom who thinks harry potter is satanic and should be banned from every school in the district versus the strung-out ex-hippy that wants the police to raise sales taxes by 0.5% to fund their vision of renovating the playground in park fuckhill is less glamorous that voting for GOOD versus EVIL in the national elections. But mediated by the fact that local elections are often one or lost by only hundreds or even dozens of votes, the compounded effect of voting in your local elections dramatically outweight any possible impact you could have in national elections-- and that's even if the national elections were actually composed of the good party and the kicking-puppies party.

I think my main contention with your post is simply that my goal is to argue about the question of voting for the lesser evil. I don't move on to issues like "what would a better system look like" because that is not the topic of the video and my goal was to make it as short as possible. I chose the arguments I chose because they rebuke the most common talking points I hear to the contrary. I am always interested to hear about arguments I missed.

I do try to argue that change is possible while still voting within the system. I cover this in sections 5 and 7.

OK. I agree with you on Section 5, but your argument in Section 7 feels very weak to me. I'm 31M, I live in a solidly blue state, the people representing my Congressional District are all career politicians and have been so for decades. I have never had anyone come to my door canvassing for a candidate, and even if they did, I'd be as blunt about my decision to not vote as I am being with you. If a party wants to listen and understand what their constituents want, they would be holding open forums across the country where people can get together and actively listen and respond to each other's ideas. I see very little of that going on.

I'll be straight up with you too, I'm 100% politically disillusioned thanks to all the rage-baiting and bitterness and snark everyone is throwing at each other on social media. No one is critically thinking about making things better. It's all just mud-slinging and about who slings the most of it. I have ideas about how to make the issues facing our country better, but who in the hell is going to listen to me? I don't have money. I don't have power and influence. I mean nothing to the people we elect. And when we get third-party candidates who try to run, we get told "don't vote for them, you'll take votes away from my candidate hurr durr." So I ask you, what am I supposed to do with that? Because it seems like everyone wants me to keep endorsing our election system though it's clearly flawed. Well, if that's the case, then I choose not to participate in it anymore.

I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm rambling, but this a very emotional topic for me.

If a party wants to listen and understand what their constituents want, they would be holding open forums across the country where people can get together and actively listen and respond to each other's ideas. I see very little of that going on.

Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Many if not most all politicians do in fact hold open forums on a regular basis. You have a very high chance that even in a district that’s an easy pickup/single party, that there exists a chance for you to meet and ask approximately one question to the candidate directly per event. Multiple events, if you really keep your ear to the ground. The caveat is that you need to make at least some attempt to follow socials and/or sign up via email to hear about these.

Your vote probably doesn’t matter, but you know what does? Your “memetic vote”. If you are vocal about your opposition or reluctance to voting, you actually do have a measurable deterrent effect on the people around you voting. And vice versa!

Additionally, you’d be surprised at how many politicians, even national ones, tend to go off of vibe checks. That means they are actually fairly vulnerable to pressure campaigns, in the sense that if you get for example even a dozen people to phone them directly about an issue, they usually both pay at least a little attention as well as assume (rightly or wrongly) that the phone calls represent the tip of the iceberg. So yes, calling your representative’s office also has a small but real effect.

Finally, we live in a big country. Americans often forget how big. National voting trends dominate attention but the simple fact is there are millions and millions and millions of voters, so expecting to have a major personal impact simply isn’t realistic. Local, local, local! Your chances of having a direct conversation with candidates for a city level position approach 100% if you try.

Not OP, but please go vote. There are usually quite a few local referenda and elections that will matter to you and your neighbors.

You don't have to vote the whole ticket.

Manipulative and disrespectful. If you're clearly biased and trying to push your audience in one direction, it's more honest to be open about it than try to herd them like cattle.
This is a common habit for "breadtuber' types, seeing their viewers as passive vessels for propaganda.

Noticed you have a similar video about how the "solution" to cancel culture is to "turn the temperature down" so the frog boils slower and social stigma can be used against people more effectively.
You even just assumed that bullying an artist for drawing skinny characters was wrong... just because it wasn't the most effective way to force her to stop, not for any other reason. You smuggle extreme leftist bias into every sentence, and I find the Voxsplaining act viscerally repulsive.

I really think most articles / video essays, including those on SCC/ACX represent an attempt to convince the reader/viewer of something. It is generally more annoying when that thing is something you disagree with, but I do think you may have misunderstood at least some of my arguments.

The point about drawing skinny characters is intended to point out that the actions of the cancel mob are counterproductive by their own standards. That is, they are attempting to support diversity in body type representation, but by bullying an artist to suicide they drive others away from their own cause. I do not assert that getting people to stop drawing skinny characters is right or wrong. Most examples are from the left because most recent cancellations have come from the left.

I do honestly believe that social stigma is necessary for a functioning society and I tried to give examples that both sides would agree with. When I gave the example of freedom as an important value with a visual of the statue of liberty, I did so attempting to make it clear that both political sides have values they would like to preserve with social stigma.

  1. I notice that 100% of what you've said both in your blurb here and in your blurb on YouTube avoids the appearance of partisanship, but the actual video is very clearly intended to get people to vote for Harris. This is disingenuous.

  2. You have zero mention of the issue that, hey, this situation sucks and that preferential voting would help avoid these kinds of dilemmas.

  3. You paper over the issue that while politicians do often keep their promises, a lot of things simply aren't on the ballot. You don't even acknowledge the possibility that for some people, not voting for either major party is in fact the correct choice because there's no difference on the relevant issues. (To give an example, I tried to single-issue vote on civil defence last election year here in Australia, but I couldn't, because all parties' civil defence policies were the empty string; I eventually gave up on that and voted on other, less-important issues, but like 80% of what I wanted simply wasn't available to vote for.)

  4. Your description of the case for not voting for the lesser evil as an excuse for "it feels bad" is to a fair extent a strawman (also your naïve first-order consequentialist point is greatly exploitable), and reeks of using Dark Arts to shame people into doing what you want i.e. voting for Harris.

Overall, this is get-out-the-vote propaganda masquerading as a fair look at the options, I'm disgusted, and my opinion of you is drastically lowered. This is the case even though I would mildly prefer that Harris won.

Heya. I'm sorry this video gave you such a negative reaction. Did you have an opinion of me before this video lowered it?

  1. I am open in the comments that, while the rest of my videos aim to be nonpartisan, I do have partisan motivations for this video. In the end, this was the factor that motivated me to make another video after a long hiatus. I can understand why you feel it is disingenuous but my intent was not to deceive. The actual arguments I believe to be nonpartisan, though the presentation and set-dressing is partisan.
  2. (And 3 also): The goal of the video was to address the philosophical question of whether it makes sense to vote for the "lesser of two evils". This is why I don't address either alternative voting systems or people that cannot decide on a "lesser evil". The assumption is that someone has identified one as the lesser evil, and must decide whether to and how to engage with the electoral system. Again, I know my presentation is partisan, but the arguments I present work exactly the same if you assume I support Trump.
  3. (This is actually 4 but I don't know how to get it to format it that way.) This is solely based on my observations of these kinds of debates as I don't have the data to examine true nonvoter motivations. I also agree that not everyone feels this way, though I think the assumption that people do most things because it is comfortable is generally true. The presentation of this point was intended to invite introspection: "am I doing what I am doing for a principled reason, or because it is the thing that makes me feel good". I don't assert that everyone is acting without principles. If you have some good alternate motivations I am interested to hear them, and I have been engaging with people in the comments so I can hear about them.

The only thing I can assert to defend against the label of "propaganda" is that I am making what I feel are sound and nonpartisan arguments (not attempting to mislead), but doing so with a partisan framing. I can openly say I am hoping to affect my audience, but I think all of my videos are like that. Even when I end a video, as I did with my last one, with a plea to consider the merits of both the "conservative" and "liberal" mindsets, I am doing so with the hope that I will have an effect on the viewer (reduce partisanship).

I am open in the comments that, while the rest of my videos aim to be nonpartisan, I do have partisan motivations for this video. In the end, this was the factor that motivated me to make another video after a long hiatus. I can understand why you feel it is disingenuous but my intent was not to deceive. The actual arguments I believe to be nonpartisan, though the presentation and set-dressing is partisan.

If you think that the general form of an argument is valid in a non-partisan way, but you also care about a particular partisan variant, it's almost always preferable to first - and spend the most time - to make a strong, general case, and then make a distinct follow-up with an appropriate title on how you think this applies to the partisan issue you care about. If you start with the partisan case, not only will people who disagree on politics shut you out from the start, there is even a high chance that they will conclude that the entire general argument is just yet another partisan ploy.

Did you have an opinion of me before this video lowered it?

"Well-intentioned but overly simplifies things".

I am open in the comments that, while the rest of my videos aim to be nonpartisan, I do have partisan motivations for this video.

That's all well and good, but comments are typically something seen after the video, not information that's examined when deciding whether to watch it.

This is why I don't address [...] people that cannot decide on a "lesser evil".

Yes, you do. Section 3, "Does voting accomplish anything?", is basically addressing these people (though I suppose it's possible you haven't realised that this rhetoric comes from this position).

If you have some good alternate motivations I am interested to hear them, and I have been engaging with people in the comments so I can hear about them.

The reason I called your position "naïve first-order consequentialist" is that, while you deny it*, the motivation for parties to change their policies is less "what the base wants" and more "what undecideds want". If your vote is not realistically swingable (either from one party to another, or between one party and staying-home/third-party), the parties have no game-theoretic motivation to care about what you want. Naïve first-order consequentialism asks only "is choice A better than choice B?". Consequentialism with decent decision theory asks "are the choices I'm being offered contingent on how I choose between choice A and choice B, and what choice mechanism on my part gives the best incentives to offer me better choices?".

(With that said, the primary system in the USA does a hilarious job of making it very difficult for parties to behave rationally, and also one does have to vote sometimes for the game theory to kick in; a permanent nonvoter is also a sunk cost.)

The funny bit here is that these kinds of decision-theory issues are why evolution designed us to often defy shitty choices; you might be smarter than the people following their gut instincts, but that doesn't mean you're smarter than the process creating those gut instincts.

*I assumed your denial probably meant you understood this issue and were bullshitting; I suppose that was uncharitable and I should have considered that maybe you hadn't actually thought it through before trying to debunk it.

I guess I should start with two assurances:

  1. I am not trying to be sneaky and any errors in the video are my own.
  2. The positions I attempt to debunk in the video are the ones I see in the wild the most often, which is why I choose to address them and not other hypothetical arguments.

Regarding consequentialism: The trend I see from the last ~20 years of US politics is away from catering to undecided votes and towards riling up your base. While a highly partisan voter might never actually switch sides, motivating them to show up seems to be the primary tactic employed by both parties today. For this reason it seems like the most effective way to sway a party is to be a part of that party, vote for that party, and attempt the change the party from within. This is the point I am making in the sections of the video about low turnout rates.

Regarding section 3: While it is true that this argument could be leveraged to argue that people who don't see a lesser evil should still vote, that is not how I intended it. It addresses the common position that one candidate is better, yet electing either candidate won't make a difference.

Regarding consequentialism: The trend I see from the last ~20 years of US politics is away from catering to undecided votes and towards riling up your base. While a highly partisan voter might never actually switch sides, motivating them to show up seems to be the primary tactic employed by both parties today.

To the extent this is rational on the parties' part, it is because these people don't show up all the time to vote for the lesser evil! If they did, then the portion of this pandering that is rational (as opposed to the portion dictated by the primary system, which is significant) would go away! This is my point.

(To be clear, I think that "get out the vote"-based politics is bad for the USA and that Australia's mandatory IRV which mostly negates it is very good for us (IRV's clone independence also provides an important guardrail against "well, the special interest bought out both major parties, I guess we're fucked"). But that doesn't change the incentives for a US voter as it stands.)

I suppose I agree that if every person always voted for the lesser of two evils then the incentives would be very different, but in our current system, on the margins I still support more people doing so and think it will have a bigger impact on outcomes than abstaining.

That's a valid position! But you can hopefully now see how your argument comes across as a strawman, because you didn't engage with the actual argument for the "you didn't earn my vote" position.

(And I'd have to agree with @RenOS: either be upfront partisan or be actually, for-reals nonpartisan. People really hate getting suckered.)

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats