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TripleInterrobang  6d ago (youtu.be)   1180 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.

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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.)

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