An FAQ for the 2012 US Presidential Election
norvig.comThis is possibly the most reasonable and cool-headed analysis of an upcoming election that I have ever read.
I love how he concludes that voting is rational. I'd never thought to multiply the, potentially massive, cost of the candidate I disfavor getting elected, multiply it by the tiny chance my vote makes the difference, and compare the result to the amount of money I make in an hour. He admits his cost figures are fudged, but in principle, it works out.
Since I spotted this on the front page, it seems to have been nuked by mods. Perhaps that's for the better, but I'd be much more interested in discussing politics if everyone could handle it with the restrained style and tone in this article. Interesting link.
His reasoning is actually quite flawed. Even if you believe there is somehow a black and white $7.7 trillion value difference between candidates, betting on such long odds still isn't rational.
If we assume (using numbers from the article) that a vote costs $20 (an hour of our time), the odds are 1 to 10 million, and the payoff is $7.7 trillion (even though it's the country getting the benefit, not the voter) then the Kelly criterion* implies that it's only rational to vote if your net worth is more than $200 million. Somebody making $20 an hour probably isn't worth $200 million, and so even if voting did have a positive expected value, it's not a rational strategy.
TL,DR: There is more to betting strategy than expected valve, and no rational gambler takes a bet with 1/10 million odds for $20.
That calculation assumes your judgement is better than the typical voter's. You should weigh it by P(better)-P(worse). (I'm not necessarily saying people with reason to think they have at-best average judgement should patriotically not vote; but the calculation is.)
(It's also worth considering a la Hofstadter/Yudkowsky that something like your decision process is instantiated in other people like you -- if you decide not to vote, many of them won't either, even with no causal link.)
Also not everything is purely economic. If we assume that Candidate A would cost the US $7 trillion while B would be revenue neutral, then A's election would, on paper, be terrible. But how much would it actually make your life as an individual worse in a meaningful way? I suspect that in many cases, the practical impact of a presidential election on an individual's day-to-day life is relatively low. And that probably drives the intuitive notion that voting is irrational. Voting in local elections (mayor, city council, etc.) is probably more rational, both due to bigger impact of your vote and larger policy consequences for you as an individual.
This is possibly the most reasonable and cool-headed analysis of an upcoming election that <I have ever read>.
-- Its astonishing that there is nothing in this regarding the US Debt. eg http://www.kpcb.com/insights/usa-inc-full-report [1]
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[1] Summary> http://www.businessinsider.com/mary-meeker-usa-inc-february-...
Assuming nothing extraordinary happens, this election is Obama's.
Having said that, I find Washington state initiative 502 (and to a lesser extent colorado amendment 64) to be the most interesting and important elections this year.
Recent polls have shown support for marijuana legalization of more than 50% and a state voting for legalization will be the start of the end of prohibition.
You're probably right, which as a Romney supporter makes me a bit sad. However, I think there's a good shot you see Romney win the popular vote by a .3% margin and still not pull down Ohio letting Obama win. I definitely can't see the margin being more than 1% either direction in the popular...
By Norvig's calculation, the swing voters in the 2000 election voted wrongly, costing the country $600,000 each. Much more rational and patriotic to not vote, then.
Also, remember that Bush presided over two terms, winning two elections, and the majority of the "cost" was in the second term and thus not a direct result of the close 2000 presidential election he's analyzing.
Conclusion: Norvig's analysis in this case, in contrast to his technical work, is not worth the paper it is (not) printed on.
Moral: Political speech is usually politically motivated, and is generally not as strongly based in rational analysis as the speaker would have you believe.
I agree with your Moral, but the rest of what you've said here doesn't quite hold with history.
1. The majority of the cost (the war in Iraq) was initiated in the first term; a better president with better advisors (IMO, Iraq II was all Cheney and Rumsfeld) would not have gone to war in Iraq with the flimsy justifications presented. Thus, the continuing cost of that war would not have happened during the second term. We may have seen an expanded conflict in Afghanistan, but there was substantial international support for this, which would have spread the costs around. It's a fair cop to place the whole cost of the Iraq war on the election in 2000.
2. The financial crisis was enabled by four primary factors: loosened mortgage rules from before 2000 (e.g., under Clinton), irresponsible tax cuts (reducing real stimulus available to the government), the war in Iraq (reducing real stimulus available to the government), and increased and accelerated deregulation of financial players at a time when it was known that there were some systematically bad players (see Enron and others). Given that all four factors happened in the first Bush term, it's also fair to place at least a large chunk of this on Bush.
I would fault Norvig's evaluation mostly on his view of a non-Bush presidency. It is highly unlikely that Gore would have been revenue neutral. On some aspects, it is almost certain that he would have been revenue neutral (no war in Iraq, but possibly expanded action in Afghanistan). Even so, the cost of 9/11 outside of the Bush context would be impossible to determine. I suspect that the TSA as it exists today would not exist; I fear that it could have been replaced with something more expensive (although hopefully less disdainful of civil liberties and the Americans they supposedly protect).
There are other things about the cost-benefit analysis that don't sit right with me as I'm reading them (the way of thinking of a vote as worth 600,000 vs pennies; it seems that more rational math would still be 600,000 vs 20,000), but it's the weakest part of the article to that point. I know what he was trying to do—but I don't think he made the case that it's patriotic to vote based on a financial analysis. (I think it is patriotic to vote, which is why I do vote.)
Everything before is a good summary and pointers to other people doing solid analysis.
The remainder of the article is fully political and can be treated as such (even though I personally agree with him).
Norvig writes that the expected cost of voting is about one hour. That ignores the hours needed to determine which candidate is better. That is very intellectually demanding work, and e.g. the mainstream media strikes me as more of a hinderence than a help.
Given raganwald's recent "Tell HN", is it possible to keep the discussion on this thread civil? I would assume it is still impossible to needlessly argue politics here, but please prove me wrong.
I must say, I've been flagging most election-related threads unless they're clearly hacker-related (statistical anaylis, integrity of voter data etc.).
This is one of the most bilious elections that I remember and although I'm interested to hear the spectrum of views on HN as a general matter I'm depressed by the likelihood that the discussion would just degenerate into a flamefest. I'd rather not see friends and fellow HNers slinging mud at each other, because heaven knows there's enough of it on the rest of the internet. Website comments on political matters make me question the whole premise of democracy :-(
Minor nitpick, shouldn't it be "A FAQ", not "An FAQ"? Does anybody really read it "Eff Ay Queue" and not the monosyllabic "Fack"?
OT, but interesting to see that Norvig pronounces FAQ eff-ay-cue not fack.