I bow out of voting in a small group whenever all the other members are better informed than I am on the question at hand (think of a board meeting). But in national votes I'm thinking of all the less informed folks voting opposite me.
I'm skeptical of my individual duty to vote because of opportunity costs (including the cost of informing myself to adequacy) and expected value. I can always think of alternative beneficial processes I could be spending my time on.
Great post, Devin! Let me ask about the “duty to vote well,” which you characterize as a duty to vote on the basis of justified beliefs.
Suppose each of us has weak evidence. We’re only 51% likely to guess the right candidate.
If there are many of us (independently reasoning), Young proved that majority rule is the optimal voting rule for maximizing the likelihood of our collectively picking the right candidate. We’ll do a pretty good collective job!
But obviously I can’t justifiably believe that I’m voting for the right candidate.
How do you think about this sort of case? Should we not vote, or should we? (Or perhaps we should though there’s not a consequentialist duty?)
I bow out of voting in a small group whenever all the other members are better informed than I am on the question at hand (think of a board meeting). But in national votes I'm thinking of all the less informed folks voting opposite me.
I'm skeptical of my individual duty to vote because of opportunity costs (including the cost of informing myself to adequacy) and expected value. I can always think of alternative beneficial processes I could be spending my time on.
Great post, Devin! Let me ask about the “duty to vote well,” which you characterize as a duty to vote on the basis of justified beliefs.
Suppose each of us has weak evidence. We’re only 51% likely to guess the right candidate.
If there are many of us (independently reasoning), Young proved that majority rule is the optimal voting rule for maximizing the likelihood of our collectively picking the right candidate. We’ll do a pretty good collective job!
But obviously I can’t justifiably believe that I’m voting for the right candidate.
How do you think about this sort of case? Should we not vote, or should we? (Or perhaps we should though there’s not a consequentialist duty?)