Democrats: Do you want the war to end?

[tolbiny]

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If Boro is claiming that others are wasting their time by voting:

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I am arguing that if a bunch of people are going to waste their time voting anyway



...then trying to influence their behavior is still a negative EV move. In other words, a losing play is a losing play.

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Wrong. Borodog doesn't lose when a person votes ineffectively, it doesn't cost him his time for another person to vote. much like if i sell TVs for less than it costs me to buy them it doesn't mean its a - ev play for you to buy one from me. You can gain from my loss, no problem.

[DVaut1]

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If Boro is claiming that others are wasting their time by voting:

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I am arguing that if a bunch of people are going to waste their time voting anyway



...then trying to influence their behavior is still a negative EV move. In other words, a losing play is a losing play.

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Wrong. Borodog doesn't lose when a person votes ineffectively

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Conversely, by claiming voting is a waste of time, Boro doesn't gain when a person votes effectively. That's what would make a waste of time. If he's not gaining or losing anything, then he's wasting his time trying to change voting behavior.

Unless he does gain or lose when someone votes effectively or ineffectively. Then voting is a productive use of someone's time, because it produces gains and losses -- which contradicts the claim that voting is a waste of one's time.

[SNOWBALL]

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Conversely, by claiming voting is a waste of time, Boro doesn't gain when a person votes effectively. That's what would make a waste of time. If he's not gaining or losing anything, then he's wasting his time trying to change voting behavior.

Unless he does gain or lose when someone votes effectively or ineffectively. Then voting is a productive use of someone's time, because it produces gains and losses -- which contradicts the claim that voting is a waste of one's time.


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I think what boro might be saying is "don't play hand X pre-flop, but if you insist on playing it, at least minimize your losses on later streets by doing Y."

[DVaut1]

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Conversely, by claiming voting is a waste of time, Boro doesn't gain when a person votes effectively. That's what would make a waste of time. If he's not gaining or losing anything, then he's wasting his time trying to change voting behavior.

Unless he does gain or lose when someone votes effectively or ineffectively. Then voting is a productive use of someone's time, because it produces gains and losses -- which contradicts the claim that voting is a waste of one's time.


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I think what boro might be saying is "don't play hand X pre-flop, but if you insist on playing it, at least minimize your losses on later streets by doing Y."

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This analogy isn't relevant; if Boro is spending him time trying to influence how people play those later streets, then he's implicitly conceding that it's a valuable use of one's time to play those later streets.

By granting that when we're talking about voting, we're talking about a behavior that produces 'gains' and 'losses' here -- and that there are ways to minimize 'losses' -- then we're talking about behavior that can in no way be described as "a waste of time".

[tolbiny]

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Conversely, by claiming voting is a waste of time, Boro doesn't gain when a person votes effectively

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WTF are you babbling about now? All borodog was claiming that the chances of altering an election with a single vote in a way that benefits you was very unlikley. Since it takes some finite amount of time to vote, and there are finite benfits to be gained a person could figure out if it was worth their time to vote or not. Once you realize that the denominator (chances of effecting the vote * amount of effort voting) is so large you know that your expected gain from altering the vote would have to also be massive to make it worthwhile.

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Then voting is a productive use of someone's time, because it produces gains and losses -- which contradicts the claim that voting is a waste of one's time.


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The fact that it produces losses does not contradict that its a waste of ones time, it confirms it. However a third party can gain from my loss, without it having been turned into a gain for me.

[phantomlimb]

If everyone who thought it wouldn't matter actually voted, there would at least be sufficient numbers added to the canidates you people support, perhaps getting some of their policies adopted by main stream canidates. I do not see a major loss to taking a half hour to vote.

[DVaut1]

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Conversely, by claiming voting is a waste of time, Boro doesn't gain when a person votes effectively

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WTF are you babbling about now? All borodog was claiming that the chances of altering an election with a single vote in a way that benefits you was very unlikley. Since it takes some finite amount of time to vote, and there are finite benfits to be gained a person could figure out if it was worth their time to vote or not. Once you realize that the denominator (chances of effecting the vote * amount of effort voting) is so large you know that your expected gain from altering the vote would have to also be massive to make it worthwhile.

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Boro claimed alot more than that; he claimed it was worth his time to influence others' voting behavior. And yet he also claimed those voters were wasting their time. This is contradictory on its face.

Imagine the people in question really were engaging in a time wasting activity; imagine they were going out to some field to dig holes, then fill them back up again. This is an obvious waste of time. I don't see how Boro can claim that while the act of digging holes and filling them back up again is an obvious waste of time, influencing diggers as to what manner they choose to dig-and-fill is worthwhile.

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Then voting is a productive use of someone's time, because it produces gains and losses -- which contradicts the claim that voting is a waste of one's time.


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The fact that it produces losses does not contradict that its a waste of ones time, it confirms it. However a third party can gain from my loss, without it having been turned into a gain for me.

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If the behavior in question is producing gains and losses, or if the behavior is minimizing losses experienced by someone, somewhere -- then it's not a waste of time. QED.

This is obvious; you can't say voting is categorically unproductive, then say influencing voters is worthwhile. It's a transparent contradiction that really can't be resolved.