Misunderstandings that I heard in response to these tweets has encouraged me to try to explain more clearly the logic of why most eligible voters should abstain from voting. Think of each vote cast between two candidates as being either +1 or -1, so that the positive candidate wins if the sum of all votes cast is positive; the negative candidate wins otherwise. Abstaining is then a vote of 0. (If the vote sum is zero, the election is a tie.)
I really like this model challenging the naive assumption that everyone should vote, never thought of it like that!
If I understand correctly it assumes that the partisan votes even out on average. Given that I make the decision not to vote because of relative ignorance under the model, how can I be sure that I am not part of the partisan vote (and therefore would move the average by not voting). Is there a reason why this effect would average out if many people make this decision (it would average out if both sides of the partisan vote followed the model equally likely, but is that realistic)?
If people were really casting their votes to do what is "better for the world", the substantial correlations between political party and gender, race, wealth, educational achievement, geographical factors and the city-rural divide would make little sense.
In practice, voters have different values. They are clearly not all trying to do what is "better for the world". If voters suspect that other voters might have different values from them, then abstaining to give others more of a chance is likely to seem less attractive.
But what if you're somewhat informed? Do you roll a die with the number of sides determined by where on a scale of informedness you place yourself on? E.g. 1 side being totally informed, 2 sides giving yourself a 50% probability of not voting, etc.?
By people not giving a hoot about politics, isn't this die automatically rolled throughout society? Then it seems your argument is rather an appeal to not encourage people to vote unless they really have considered why themselves.
Voter turnout varies quite a bit across jurisdictions. In places with compulsory voting they typically get 90%+effective votes. In places with optional voting they get about half or a bit over of the population voting. Countries with higher turnout do not appear to produce concistently worse governments.
Voting is possibly not effective because of the choices made by voters. It's just a strong incentive for governments to not be too bad. Governing parties need to do things that they expect will be approved by a majority. They need to find out what people want, and try to do enough things to satisfy those wants. With all major parties doing this, it doesn't matter a whole lot who wins., as has often been observed.
One of the things I appreciate most about this blog is the frequent opportunities to see a skilled modeler try to come to grips with a wide variety of situations. Also the insightful critical commentary and back-and-forth that often results. Thanks all.
"Can you tell me ten things your 'side' is wrong about, and not in the 'not going far enough!' way?"
If the answer is "no", you are probably an underinformed partisan (or just so heavily partisan as to make no difference).
The thoughtful and informed people I know are less party partisan and more "I vote for this party typically because their policies are better for what I value" - but they can write a lot about how Their Party is imperfect and has planks they dislike, again not in the "not going far enough for The True Way" sense.
(It even works for libertarians; ask someone in the Ron Paul Love Cult and they may not even understand the question, they have so little awareness of that.
Me, I voted potato wedge this time, purely as a signal to the big parties.)
A problem with offering advice based on people's PR motives is that people then ignore the advice, because on some level, they recognise that it doesn't get them what they really want. Here is Robin Hanson on that topic:
"We usually point to particular motives as the most important, but those are much less important than we admit. We reward our policy advisors for pretending with us to pursue these usual motives. But we know at some level that we are not that interested in them, and thus also in policy reforms designed to better achieve them. Such reforms don’t solve our real problem."
The strategy would hurt if better-informed people systematically underestimate their informativeness, true? Also, the strategy loses the feature that everyone has stronger incentives to be informed, no? If the new normal becomes „Don’t vote“, we might in total lose informativeness.
I explain behavior using the hidden motives most likely to exist, but I advise based on the motives that people will accept as premises of their reasoning.
For the "X is not about Y" guy, Robin seems quick to assume that voters in large, national presidential elections vote in order to make the world a better place. That looks suspiciously like a PR smokescreen to me. An alternative possibility is that they vote because their brains have been hijacked by the memes of politicians and political parties. IOW, they vote because have been hacked by huge cultural superorganisms with lots of experience and knowledge about how to manipulate human beings for their own ends.
"I found that for a power less than 1/2, and ten thousand informed voters, everyone should vote in both extreme cases. That is, when info is distributed equally enough, it really does help to average everyone’s clues via their votes. But for a power of 3/4, more than half should abstain even if no one else abstains, and only 6 of them should vote if all informed voters abstained optimally. For a power of 1 then 80% should abstain even if no one else does, and only 2 of them should vote if all abstain optimally. For higher powers, it gets worse."
Could you provide the actual calculation? For me this is where I lose the thread of the argument. Thanks!
Close the system but keep your analysis.In the closed system we want informed voting distributed according the the voters position in the total government flow. This is information sharing, this is your equilibrium.
Each node in the government distribution network must be equally likely short or surplus in government intermediate good due to voter error. Thus each node on the network equally liquidity constrained. This implies minimally correlated ballot issues, that is, each ballot issue maximally treated as an independent issue. This is the part that decorrelates your informed and uninformed voter.
And, this solution leads to revenue sharing, the only method available for us to buy and sell government expertise (excess or shortage of intermediate government goods) , make the system equally liquid at all levels. We need to create a market between House and Senate to estimate the cost of ignorance ex ante, before each budget. The bets cover the risk of stupidity, in essence. We are removing all the loops in the government value chain, like Walmart does.
I really like this model challenging the naive assumption that everyone should vote, never thought of it like that!
If I understand correctly it assumes that the partisan votes even out on average. Given that I make the decision not to vote because of relative ignorance under the model, how can I be sure that I am not part of the partisan vote (and therefore would move the average by not voting). Is there a reason why this effect would average out if many people make this decision (it would average out if both sides of the partisan vote followed the model equally likely, but is that realistic)?
If people were really casting their votes to do what is "better for the world", the substantial correlations between political party and gender, race, wealth, educational achievement, geographical factors and the city-rural divide would make little sense.
In practice, voters have different values. They are clearly not all trying to do what is "better for the world". If voters suspect that other voters might have different values from them, then abstaining to give others more of a chance is likely to seem less attractive.
I do NOT recommend randomizing here. Make your best estimate and act on it.
But what if you're somewhat informed? Do you roll a die with the number of sides determined by where on a scale of informedness you place yourself on? E.g. 1 side being totally informed, 2 sides giving yourself a 50% probability of not voting, etc.?
By people not giving a hoot about politics, isn't this die automatically rolled throughout society? Then it seems your argument is rather an appeal to not encourage people to vote unless they really have considered why themselves.
Voter turnout varies quite a bit across jurisdictions. In places with compulsory voting they typically get 90%+effective votes. In places with optional voting they get about half or a bit over of the population voting. Countries with higher turnout do not appear to produce concistently worse governments.
Voting is possibly not effective because of the choices made by voters. It's just a strong incentive for governments to not be too bad. Governing parties need to do things that they expect will be approved by a majority. They need to find out what people want, and try to do enough things to satisfy those wants. With all major parties doing this, it doesn't matter a whole lot who wins., as has often been observed.
One of the things I appreciate most about this blog is the frequent opportunities to see a skilled modeler try to come to grips with a wide variety of situations. Also the insightful critical commentary and back-and-forth that often results. Thanks all.
"Can you tell me ten things your 'side' is wrong about, and not in the 'not going far enough!' way?"
If the answer is "no", you are probably an underinformed partisan (or just so heavily partisan as to make no difference).
The thoughtful and informed people I know are less party partisan and more "I vote for this party typically because their policies are better for what I value" - but they can write a lot about how Their Party is imperfect and has planks they dislike, again not in the "not going far enough for The True Way" sense.
(It even works for libertarians; ask someone in the Ron Paul Love Cult and they may not even understand the question, they have so little awareness of that.
Me, I voted potato wedge this time, purely as a signal to the big parties.)
Any strategy can fail if, when you try to follow it, you actually do he exact opposite.
A problem with offering advice based on people's PR motives is that people then ignore the advice, because on some level, they recognise that it doesn't get them what they really want. Here is Robin Hanson on that topic:
"We usually point to particular motives as the most important, but those are much less important than we admit. We reward our policy advisors for pretending with us to pursue these usual motives. But we know at some level that we are not that interested in them, and thus also in policy reforms designed to better achieve them. Such reforms don’t solve our real problem."
The strategy would hurt if better-informed people systematically underestimate their informativeness, true? Also, the strategy loses the feature that everyone has stronger incentives to be informed, no? If the new normal becomes „Don’t vote“, we might in total lose informativeness.
I explain behavior using the hidden motives most likely to exist, but I advise based on the motives that people will accept as premises of their reasoning.
For the "X is not about Y" guy, Robin seems quick to assume that voters in large, national presidential elections vote in order to make the world a better place. That looks suspiciously like a PR smokescreen to me. An alternative possibility is that they vote because their brains have been hijacked by the memes of politicians and political parties. IOW, they vote because have been hacked by huge cultural superorganisms with lots of experience and knowledge about how to manipulate human beings for their own ends.
I put an added on the prior "Nobel Abstention" post with a link to my spreadsheet that I used to do these calls.
"I found that for a power less than 1/2, and ten thousand informed voters, everyone should vote in both extreme cases. That is, when info is distributed equally enough, it really does help to average everyone’s clues via their votes. But for a power of 3/4, more than half should abstain even if no one else abstains, and only 6 of them should vote if all informed voters abstained optimally. For a power of 1 then 80% should abstain even if no one else does, and only 2 of them should vote if all abstain optimally. For higher powers, it gets worse."
Could you provide the actual calculation? For me this is where I lose the thread of the argument. Thanks!
Close the system but keep your analysis.In the closed system we want informed voting distributed according the the voters position in the total government flow. This is information sharing, this is your equilibrium.
Each node in the government distribution network must be equally likely short or surplus in government intermediate good due to voter error. Thus each node on the network equally liquidity constrained. This implies minimally correlated ballot issues, that is, each ballot issue maximally treated as an independent issue. This is the part that decorrelates your informed and uninformed voter.
And, this solution leads to revenue sharing, the only method available for us to buy and sell government expertise (excess or shortage of intermediate government goods) , make the system equally liquid at all levels. We need to create a market between House and Senate to estimate the cost of ignorance ex ante, before each budget. The bets cover the risk of stupidity, in essence. We are removing all the loops in the government value chain, like Walmart does.
But I allow arbitrary other considerations, which I call "partisan".