Vote!

I encourage everyone to use the voting system in the comments section to:

  1. Vote up comments containing facts with sources.
  2. Vote down ad hominem attacks directed at anyone.
We all share the same goal of minimizing the amount of suffering in the world.  Name-calling is completely unproductive.  Ad hominem attacks cause to the emotional limbic system to steal the cognitive reins from our rational pre-frontal cortices.  This process makes primates out of philosophers.

Note that I am not encouraging anyone to vote in an actual election. Many people vote for the for the lesser of two evils with the belief that their vote will be more likely to affect the outcome of the election. However, it really doesn’t matter who you vote for. There’s less than a 0.00001% chance that your vote will be the tiebreaker that decides the outcome of a national elections.You are more likely to be injured in a car accident driving to the polls (0.002% chance).  Hence, if you are trying to make a practical improvement in your life and those of your loved ones, it is much more rational to just stay home on election day.

However, if you have an relatively informed opinion on the ability of the candidates to reduce suffering in the world, you should exercise your irrational desire to vote. At least then you can say that you’re part of the solution rather than a part of the problem.  But if you do this, you should vote based on your civic duty to express your opinion about who would be the best person for the job.  It’s quite likely that this person will either be running on a third party ticket or (most likely) will not even be on the ballot.

So write the best person in, if necessary.  But do not vote cynically and pragmatically for someone who you do not believe will make our country a radically better place.  Because, I assure you that your vote will not influence the outcome of the election and only serves as one opinion in a public opinion poll.

Many people will vote for a Republican or Democrat with the full knowledge that someone else would actually do a better job at reducing suffering in the world.   These people are lying in this public opinion poll we call an election.  They are violating their civic duty and they are contributing to the destruction of their country.  If that doesn’t fit the definition of treason, I don’t know what does.

 

 

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Mike Sinn

Radical Utilitarian at QuAnTiMoDo
Before I die, I will abolish all unnecessary suffering on earth by replacing our corrupt governmental institutions with a system of crowd-sourced direct democracy described at CrowdSourcingUtopia.com. This rational resource allocation system will redirect money currently spend on various types of warfare to positive endeavors such as commercial in vitro meat and life-extension technologies. However, in order to take control of the levers of world power from the psychopaths and idiots which currently wield them will require that we first eradicate mental illness by crowdsourcing positive psychology research QuAnTiMoDo.com. In order to abolish suffering, we much first abolish politics. In order to abolish politics, we must first abolish mental illness.
  • guitarsam3891

    Your argument commits a classic fallacy, called the fallacy of division. What it is is saying that what must be true of one must be true of all or some of its parts. The problem is that voting is a collective effort, not an individual one. One person’s vote in and of itself may not affect the election, but 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + ad infinitum definitely has a much larger if not dispositive effect.

    • http://thinkbynumbers.org/ Mike P. Sinn

      OK. But you only have control over your own vote. The people reading this are individuals not collective society. These individuals do not have control over collective society. They only have control of their own actions.

  • guitarsam3891

    I disagree. Collective society is necessarily comprised of individuals and there is necessarily a net effect of their actions with respect to voting. While we as individuals may not be able to affect the vote to the extent we hope, there is still is some effect. A vote that is virtually ineffective still is something, as opposed to pure nothing.

    But I wholeheartedly agree that who we vote for really doesn’t matter, so long as Congress is dependent on campaign donations. Have you read Republic, Lost by Lawrence Lessig? It’s the subject of the entire book. Your comments about campaign finance made me think of it.

    • http://thinkbynumbers.org/ Mike P. Sinn

      I have not read that book. But I will put it on the long list of books that deserve my attention in the hopes that it will eventually be put on the short list of books that actually receive my attention.

      Can you quote the specific sentence in which I make an objectively false statement? I’m not seeing where our specific disagreement is.

      • guitarsam3891

        Sure, it’s the statement(s), “The people reading this are individuals not collective society. These individuals do not have control over collective society. They only have control of their own actions.”

        My point was that individuals are necessarily part of collective society because collective society is necessarily comprised of individuals. Individuals of no effect on collective society may exist in theory, but in reality they are always a part of that society and the acts of those individuals necessarily have some effect on collective society. Even though the effect one individual’s vote has is marginal, it still is an effect. Virtually no effect is not the same as no effect at all. There’s still something there. Accordingly, if I am an individual who comprises a necessary part of a collective society whose vote has a marginal effect on society, then it follows that while I cannot control the actions of collective society outright I can at least have some effect on it.

        • http://thinkbynumbers.org/ Mike P. Sinn

          Two Questions
          1. How do you have an effect on the outcome of an election if you aren’t the tiebreaker?
          2. Why do you want to change the outcome of the election?

          • guitarsam

            1. Because without my vote, the tie-breaking vote would not have become the tie-breaking vote. There cannot be a tie-breaking vote without all the votes that preceded it.
            2. I want to change the outcome of the election because I believe that our state/country would be better led by the candidate I vote for.

          • http://thinkbynumbers.org/ Mike P. Sinn

            1. So are you telling me that you changed the outcome of the election on Tuesday? Is this country is now materially better off because you voted?
            2. Why do you want the country to be better led?

          • guitarsam3891

            1. Yup
            2. Why not?

          • http://thinkbynumbers.org/ Mike P. Sinn

            1. So you’re saying that we would have a different president in January if you didn’t vote on Tuesday?
            2. Is the the reason you want the country to be better led because you want to improve the lives of the people you care about?

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