1d ago

Consent machine

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C got you trump you utter doughnut.
Game theory has consequences.
- Did you see this part of my comment?
  Why the fuck would we, AS A POPULATION, choose anything but the best option.
  The population voting for C gets you....what? Let's think about this. Is it....C? Hmm, yes, it is.
  Notice how I made a point to phrase it that way, to preempt comments like yours entirely? And then you went and posted that anyway, either because you didn't read my comment, or just felt like ignoring the point I was actually making?
  You people INSIST we only ever look at it in terms of, "49.999 are voting Trump, 49.999 are voting Harris, your vote decides the election!" The pre-narrowed, individual choice. But that's not how the game theory applies here. The game in this case is that there's ~210M people with the ability to vote for anyone. There is no pre-narrowing. Their collective decision results in the electoral outcome. Your application of game theory here is literally incorrect.
  
  People are not a hive mind.
  
  People have both individual thought and herd-like psychological behaviors? Your comment could be read as either supporting or disagreeing with my comment, not sure what you're trying to say.
  
  I'm saying that people who are paying attention can't know for certain that a sufficient number of other people are paying enough attention to even shift their vote from the democrats to a brand new leftwing party with sufficient "brand awareness" without undermining the lesser evil's chances by jumping over for any given major election.
  Half the population pays virtually no attention to politics. Meaning trying for a third party for president is a laughably if not willfully ignorant unless you've done the ground work elsewhere in government built up awareness of the party from holding smaller offices first.
  
  That is the problem I'm describing. It is the population's job to evaluate and choose candidates. Simply waiting for them to be handed to you gets you totalitarianism.
  you’ve done the ground work elsewhere in government built up awareness of the party from holding smaller offices first.
  This logic for a preemptive discreditation of a third party applies the same - incorrectly - to any office. The choice for a Senate or House or governor or even state legislature seat can face the same dilemma.
  You're not voting for the party, you're voting for a candidate, and it's virtually irrelevant what other offices members of their party holds. An entire population voting on "brand awareness" is suicidal. A population must make educated decisions on political candidates or risk totalitarianism. I am well aware of the stupid processes people use to select political candidates, that's what I'm complaining about in the first place. The fact that we haven't solved this problem already got us where we are now.
  
  OK, I actually think we might be getting somewhere for once. What exactly do you propose to solve that problem? Because saying people need to make more educated decisions isn't going to make it so. Most people do not want to even think about politics let alone become deeply educated about it, so its an uphill battle on somehow educating the masses before you have any actual political power to mandate that education.
  I mean, I still think game theory applies with first past the post. Like for instance if you have 2 equally liked anti-racist candidates and 1 singular awful one that appeals to subconscious racism, the racist one is more likely going to win due to splitting the anti-racist vote. But still, I'm curious about your solution to the educated voting problem.
  
  I can't magically change everyone's behavior. I'm not a deity. All I can do is describe what behaviors are required of a population in a representative democracy, for the system to not turn on them, or to reverse the grip of a system that has already turned on them. Each one teach one.
  Game theory of course applies. But the game has hundreds of millions of participants (ignoring the broader global population, which also influences it). The error in analyzing election choices is to only myopically look at the "what do we do if it's a 49.999% 49.999% split" and ignore the behavior of the entire GROUP. The fact that every member of the population has the power to make arbitrary choices in the election, and entirely determines the result of the election, including the supposedly predetermined 49.999%x2 split we keep ending back at, prior to the election actually taking place. We create this reality by assuming its inevitability - no more, no less. There's literally infinite pathways for social organization among the general population, but in ignoring them, we completely sacrifice our own power.
  
  You need to stop believing you know anything about game theory because the Dunning-Kruger klaxon is going off and you can't seem to hear it.
  
  You claim I don't, but you don't show it. That's the big red flag for "Dunning-Kruger" - unsubstantiated claims, or claims with faulty arguments behind them.
  And for the love of god, don't respond to that with anything but specific responses to the actual claims I made. I cannot take anymore of these circular arguments today.
  
  Go read even a little bit of game theory, like an introductory video on YouTube even, before you start claiming it supports your illogical nonsense take. Introductory test: how many players?
  
  And, lo and behold, he did not respond with specific responses to the actual claims I made. On reddit, this is when I would hit the "block" button, because I know they're just wasting my time. But here they just keep responding forever until I stop responding myself.
  
  Crazy. Your debating opponents don't have to follow your weird rules you set in advance for how they are allowed to contradict you on the Internet, and it's an obvious fallacy to infer truth or falsehood based on whether someone obeys you or not.
  There's a block button. You are free to use it, but the claim I was addressing was your clearly false claim to understand game theory.
  Anyone who claims that game theory somehow meant that Shill Stein could have been president is talking out of the wrong orifice.

351 comments