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> If adults were rational they'd use their communication skills to form broad coalitions Yes. And in detail, with this model of a rational electorate, skilled

> If adults were rational they'd use their communication skills to form broad coalitions Yes. And in detail, with this model of a rational electorate, skilled influencers put the effort in to devise a policy platform and convince others that it is good for them. The majority pick a platform that they are convinced by. It's worth it for the influencers, because they have an outsized impact. It's worth it for everyone else only if choosing a coalition is very low-effort. Or if they are entertained by the influencers. Again, I'm an ardent democrat. I'm just pointing out the flaws in any argument that assumes rational voters are a good thing - because it's rational to not waste much time on voting. Instead, democracy works best when voters feel an arguably irrational sense of duty and civic pride.

roenxi 1y ago
> ...because it's rational to not waste much time on voting... But that wouldn't be rational. The rational approach is to vote when you are in (or plausibly in, or plausibly going to eventually be in) the majority coalition. The hyper-rational equilibrium is politicians do exactly what a majority coalition of voters want and no-one bothers to vote, but once the politicians start becoming flawed or preferences change over time the equilibrium shifts quite rapidly to a rational voter base forming large coalitions that turn up to vote. It isn't rational to vote if for people who aren't affiliated with a coalition to some degree (and never will be) but people like that are basically a political non-factor anyway and are probably legitimately wasting their time when they vote because there is no policy formula available that they want to support, by definition.
- anonymous_sorry 1y ago
  When I enter the polling booth, I never expect to effect the result, whether my coalition has a chance of winning or not. That is, I do not expect a candidate in any constituency I am voting in to win by exactly one vote (or tie and thereby have a 50:50 chance of winning by drawing lots). I think such an occurrence is exceedingly unlikely. A rational anaylsis would therefore conclude I'm wasting my time and energy even just walking to the polling station, let alone keeping up with political developments through the intervening months and years. As you say, in a hyper-rational world turnout would be way lower - whether it would oscillate and overcorrect as you suggest, or reach a stable equilibrium, I'm not sure. But whatever my motivation for voting and trying to stay informed, I do not believe it is primarily rational. It's probably some mixture of duty, diversionary entertainment, and ritual. If lowering the voting age to 16 could help inculcate that sense of duty and better establish that ritual, that would be a pretty convincing reason to do it in my opinion.
  - roenxi 1y ago
    > A rational anaylsis would therefore conclude I'm wasting my time and energy... No it wouldn't. You haven't established the link between your premise and conclusions and the rational view is the opposite of what you came to. You've established that in the best case the candidate you prefer will win by more than one vote - which is correct but not the end of the line of thought. Think of it like building an embankment. If you design the embankment to exactly hold back the maximum amount of water you expect it to hold it'll probably fail in an emergency when it shouldn't have because something slightly unexpected happens. The rational thing to do is engineer in a margin of safety. You're trying to optimise the wrong metric which is ~30-60 minutes of a voters time vs. probability of the legislature behaving in a way that is favourable to them. In both voting and embankment building it'd be silly (dare I say, irrational) to aim for a narrow success. The median election (analogy: median storm) should make the margins for your candidate (analogy: embankment tolerance) look excessive (analogy: over-engineered). Otherwise, you're basically arguing that rational people should optimise their way to being on the losing side of elections - which is a big tip-off you're making a logic error in your argument somewhere. Rational behaviour can't, almost by definition, predictably lead to bad outcomes.
    - anonymous_sorry 1y ago
      I find the embankment metaphor confusing, but to play along: I don't have the option of engineering a margin of safety because I only have one brick. Is it worth me lugging it to the riverside? Maybe, it depends on the risk and the distance I've got to carry it. In all likelihood many won't bother without being directed, encouraged or otherwise socially motivated. And they must ignore the surprisingly persuasive pro-flooding lobby, of course. > Rational behaviour can't, almost by definition, predictably lead to bad outcomes. Given you previously mentioned Game Theory, this is a surprising claim. Prisoner's dilemma? Tragedy of the commons? Note that I'm not sure how much any of this applies to the real world. My main argument is against a model of voters as purely "rational". They are not, and in some ways at least, that's probably a good thing. I certainly think rationality is a very poor argument against extending the franchise to 16 year-olds.

roenxi 1y ago

> ...because it's rational to not waste much time on voting... But that wouldn't be rational. The rational approach is to vote when you are in (or plausibly in, or plausibly going to eventually be in) the majority coalition. The hyper-rational equilibrium is politicians do exactly what a majority coalition of voters want and no-one bothers to vote, but once the politicians start becoming flawed or preferences change over time the equilibrium shifts quite rapidly to a rational voter base forming large coalitions that turn up to vote. It isn't rational to vote if for people who aren't affiliated with a coalition to some degree (and never will be) but people like that are basically a political non-factor anyway and are probably legitimately wasting their time when they vote because there is no policy formula available that they want to support, by definition.

anonymous_sorry 1y ago
When I enter the polling booth, I never expect to effect the result, whether my coalition has a chance of winning or not. That is, I do not expect a candidate in any constituency I am voting in to win by exactly one vote (or tie and thereby have a 50:50 chance of winning by drawing lots). I think such an occurrence is exceedingly unlikely. A rational anaylsis would therefore conclude I'm wasting my time and energy even just walking to the polling station, let alone keeping up with political developments through the intervening months and years. As you say, in a hyper-rational world turnout would be way lower - whether it would oscillate and overcorrect as you suggest, or reach a stable equilibrium, I'm not sure. But whatever my motivation for voting and trying to stay informed, I do not believe it is primarily rational. It's probably some mixture of duty, diversionary entertainment, and ritual. If lowering the voting age to 16 could help inculcate that sense of duty and better establish that ritual, that would be a pretty convincing reason to do it in my opinion.
- roenxi 1y ago
  > A rational anaylsis would therefore conclude I'm wasting my time and energy... No it wouldn't. You haven't established the link between your premise and conclusions and the rational view is the opposite of what you came to. You've established that in the best case the candidate you prefer will win by more than one vote - which is correct but not the end of the line of thought. Think of it like building an embankment. If you design the embankment to exactly hold back the maximum amount of water you expect it to hold it'll probably fail in an emergency when it shouldn't have because something slightly unexpected happens. The rational thing to do is engineer in a margin of safety. You're trying to optimise the wrong metric which is ~30-60 minutes of a voters time vs. probability of the legislature behaving in a way that is favourable to them. In both voting and embankment building it'd be silly (dare I say, irrational) to aim for a narrow success. The median election (analogy: median storm) should make the margins for your candidate (analogy: embankment tolerance) look excessive (analogy: over-engineered). Otherwise, you're basically arguing that rational people should optimise their way to being on the losing side of elections - which is a big tip-off you're making a logic error in your argument somewhere. Rational behaviour can't, almost by definition, predictably lead to bad outcomes.
  - anonymous_sorry 1y ago
    I find the embankment metaphor confusing, but to play along: I don't have the option of engineering a margin of safety because I only have one brick. Is it worth me lugging it to the riverside? Maybe, it depends on the risk and the distance I've got to carry it. In all likelihood many won't bother without being directed, encouraged or otherwise socially motivated. And they must ignore the surprisingly persuasive pro-flooding lobby, of course. > Rational behaviour can't, almost by definition, predictably lead to bad outcomes. Given you previously mentioned Game Theory, this is a surprising claim. Prisoner's dilemma? Tragedy of the commons? Note that I'm not sure how much any of this applies to the real world. My main argument is against a model of voters as purely "rational". They are not, and in some ways at least, that's probably a good thing. I certainly think rationality is a very poor argument against extending the franchise to 16 year-olds.