"You dont Understand, you have to support the lesser evil"

a month ago by Salamence to c/memes

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jjj -9 points a month ago

It's not about voting for the lesser evil, but against the worse one. The way the United States is structured, which influences the way its people think about voting and vice versa, you are given only two options when voting for president:

  • Vote for the Democrat one
  • Vote for the Republican one

But... you might think you're clever and say "I should just vote for neither of them, nobody will stop me". If your state has RCV then put your preferred candidate as a first pick and just place Democrat before Republican. Problem solved, no more strategic voting. Unfortunately, precious few states have adopted this for any elections, let alone the presidency.

In states without RCV, there are 3 equivalent cases from your perspective:

  • Vote Republican: Increment their number by 1
    • Overall effect +1 for Republicans
  • Vote Democrat: Increment a threatening score by 1, thereby requiring Republicans to gain 1 more vote to win
    • Overall effect -1 for Republicans
  • Don't vote or vote for a non threatening party/candidate
    • Overall effect 0 for Republicans

Forgive me for assuming the reader wants to get Republicans (and Republican aligned Democrats) out of office. In this case, it is your responsibility to vote for the most threatening candidate. It's a sick trick of game theory, which is why RCV is so important.

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frisbird 35 points a month ago

You really just gotta get out of the private space of who people vote for and do actual work that matters. Wasting your energy trying to get polite genocidaires elected is costing lives every day. You only have so much time. Vote the way you understand the system works, assume everyone else is as smart or smarter than you and they can figure out how to vote. And then spend the other 364 days of the year putting all this effort you want to put into vote mongering and put it into dismantling the orphan crushing machine.

Because the way this works is that there's an orphan crushing machine and there are two parties who take turns operating the orphan crushing machine and we need all the help we can get dismantling the orphan crushing machine.

And when you spend all your effort screaming at the people who want to dismantle the orphan crushing machine that they should ALSO be sure they vote for the correct people to operate the orphan crushing machine, wait let me put it in your terms:

If you help us dismantle the orphan crushing machine, that's -1 for the orphan crushers and +1 for the people fighting the orphan crushers

If you don't help us dismantle the machine, that's 0 for the orphan crushers

If you consume time and energy from other people who would otherwise be convinced to help us dismantle the orphan crushing machine, that -1 or more for the people fighting the orphan crushers and +1 or more for the orphan crushers.

It's just the way game theory works out. Trust me. I'm a doctor of game theory.

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Squirrelanna -11 points a month ago

It's a little wild to tell someone they should spend this energy doing something about it instead of writing when you wrote more than them just to say it. It rings pretty hollow. Not saying this to tell you you're right or wrong, just some constructive criticism. Stick to the substantial arguments if you really want to change minds.

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buprenorffy 5 points a month ago

It’s a little wild to tell someone they should spend this energy doing something about it instead of writing

That's not what freagle said though. The argument wasn't that jjj shouldn't write or that they shouldn't try to influence people, the argument was that they shouldn't be wasting their time and energy trying to influence people to vote because voting is ultimately useless. Freagle never said that trying to influence people period is a waste. So no, what they said did not ring hollow and there was no hypocrisy in writing a long a comment explaining why it is a waste to try to get people to vote or to vote a certain way.

You either didn't understand or deliberately mischaracterized what freagle was actually saying so you can't claim it was just constructive criticism.

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Squirrelanna 1 point a month ago

On a more charitable reading I can see that meaning, and I probably came off with a tone I didn't mean over text. I don't think its an effective approach for convincing opposition though and would ask folks tempted to to consider why what seems like simple math isn't so simple for people focusing on a different variables.

But no, not deliberately misunderstanding and I appreciate your input.

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thanks for using Leebra!

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