this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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I’ve taught game theory. Voting isn’t the Ultimatum game, because the most a third party is going to do is shave off a few percentage points, resulting in the main party losing, resulting in the main party generally becoming more conservative. Look who ran after Reagan - the entire Democratic Party shifted right with the third way. Look who we ran after Trump.
In voting the way it’s currently configured, there are two elements from game theory that apply. The first is minimax strategy - minimize the maximum damage your enemy can do. Above all that means keeping republicans out of office if you care about minimizing harm to women, minorities and immigrants, the poor, and the LGBT community.
The second concept that applies is the BATNA - the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. If the negotiated agreement fails (we get a left democrat on the ballot) our next best alternative is to get a Democrat elected.
We came within a hair’s breadth of not having another election, and at the very least we will be looking at a roll back of LGBT rights, a nationwide abortion ban, and a massive crackdown that will make sure they don’t lose any more elections.
If the third party can force the main party to lose, then it holds ultimatum power and game theory rules apply. The main party irrationally keeps rejecting the ultimatum and as a result keeps losing. To execute the threat of the ultimatum even after the unfair split has already been offered is the paradox of game theory. You have to appear credible enough to carry out such a threat, but the only reliable way to appear credible is to actually follow through on such threats every time.
The Democratic party keeps losing and shifting right because it acts irrationally and fails to execute optimal game theory strategy. It could have offered the left a fair split and we could have all had guaranteed single-payer medical care, food, and housing, but instead none of us will have women's rights, and the immigrants and gays among us will be herded into cages.
That is literally not how it works. That’s how people think it should work, but when you see that it doesn’t, you have to turn back and review your premises and your model. I know the way you think it should work and how you want it to work, but when it doesn’t work you need to revise.
The problem is this - the feedback loop is insufficient and the correlation is unclear. If you are directly negotiating with someone, then you can play Ultimatum. If you are one of a hundred million people casting a vote for one person or another, you cannot. Perot cost Bush I the election, and Nader cost Kerry the election. Neither party decided that they needed to move in the direction of the spoiler candidate. They’re especially not going to do so for 3p candidates who pull in the low single digits, even if they lose by low single digits, because they’ll think they can get more by moving towards the center.
You can vote however you want, but don’t base it on a theoretical foundation that has less than zero application to the scenario you’re modeling. It really, honestly is a minimax choice, and if you are truly an ally for those of us in marginalized communities, you have to recognize it.
I’m not being a right winger here - I’m a member of the DSA and this is in line with what they (and people like Chomsky) advise. But I’m not talking about even that angle. I’m just talking minimax and BATNA. If negotiations fail (ie we didn’t get Bernie), the best alternative is Hillary. At least Roe wouldn’t have been overturned and we wouldn’t have states suing to make ten year olds give birth to their rapist’s babies.
So I am proposing that the Democratic party is acting irrationally and suboptimally, but you claim that the Democrats are acting most optimally, and it is the fringe left that is acting irrationally instead by refusing to accept a unfair split against all game theory guidance, causing all of us to eat shit (despite them making up only low single digits). Yet if the Democrats are so rational, how come they keep losing? Shouldn't they have found an optimal strategy to get around the irrational ultimatum of the left? Yet here we are.
I do not mean this to come off as blunt as it sounds, but I’m trying to be both clear and concise.
What you’re talking about is not how game theory works. What you’re doing is taking the most basic, highly abstracted representation of a generic idea and expecting it to correlate with reality. It’s the same thing people do when they ascribe some kind of wish fulfillment to the free market or to evolutionary dynamics. It’s not even a platonic ideal - it’s drawing a supply/demand curve and thinking you understand how prices work in a market economy. Here’s the main issues you’re running into when you try to play Ultimatum with something the size of the Democratic Party:
We as voters aren’t playing Ultimatum. Instead, we are playing minimax as an emergent strategy to defend the rights of marginalized populations.
Thank you for your detailed input!
You got me 😁. I love drawing supply-and-demand curves. Seems pretty hopeless then if to even begin to understand how to vote "correctly" you need 5 years of game theory PhD. Hearing someone say "just trust me bro, the optimal strategy is that one" is not good enough. Voting was supposed to be for the masses...
I could get onboard with ranked-choice voting. My city used IRV for our latest mayoral primary election, and even though none of my ranked candidates won, I felt extremely satisfied that at least my voice was finally being heard. When a literal police-mayor got elected (winning primary by only 7000 votes), I had the comfort of full knowledge that this was not due to any spoiler effect on my part, but solely simply due to more people voting for him. If we'd campaign for ranked-choice voting in federal elections - presidential primaries and general - we can eliminate all the above hand-wringing. The Democratic party should be totally on board with this since they could finally get the Green protest vote.
Not having another sham election sounds like a great outcome to me.
Sounds great, but then the genie grants it and you don't get any more elections, sham or otherwise. I'll take the illusion of democracy over blatant mask-off fascism, personally.
If you live in the "illusion of democracy" then the elections don't matter in the first place, so we may as well forego the mask so taht even blind people like you can see it. And polite fascism is actually worse because then liberals like you will support it and chastise others for pointing out the emperor has no clothes.
For example, do you know who started using drones to bomb civilians? Do you know who first started putting kids in cages? Because liberals like you think he was the greatest president to ever president, and you gleefully supported him since he was polite with his fascism.
Lotta unsubstantiated assumptions about me there. Maybe reassess your own biases before offering analysis.
I'm just making assumptions based on your own words.
This is what liberals believe.
It is what pragmatists believe. Some pragmatists are liberals, other pragmatists have other ideals. The coincidence of pragmatic results is not indicative of a coincidence of pre-pragmatic ideals. Your framework is too simplistic to be interesting or useful.
Lol I'm sure pragmatcists(?) have a cohesive framework they all draw from, and I'm sure it is definitely different from the current Neo-liberal zeitgeist.
Some people believe that stringent adherence to idealism is paramount, despite the material suffering of others implementation of that ideal causes. Other people have empathy, and are willing to analyze the actual consequences of political action independent of idealism, prioritizing actions which do tangible good over performative platitudes. Pragmatists fall in to the second camp, you certainly appear to fall into the first. The first are boring and impotent everywhere but their own minds.
If you would rather support the illusion of democracy despite the material suffering it is currently causing, you just value the status-quo over all other concerns. People who value the status-quo over all other considerations have innately conservative and reactionary outlooks. Those people could also be described as polite fascists, i.e. liberals.
And if you would rather support the dissolution of the democratic process despite the material suffering it will certainly cause, you just value your ideals over all other concerns. People who value ideals over all other considerations have innately Ineffective outlooks. They are useful tools that allow fascists to accumulate power.
You said it yourself, you want the illusion of democracy, you don't actually care that we do not live in a democracy. The Liberal must maintain the illusions or the cognitive dissonance makes them go mask off. Keep Calm and Carry on, and all that.
And that is why events like this happen. https://truthout.org/articles/schumer-slammed-for-speaking-at-pro-israel-rally-along-antisemite-john-hagee/
You aren't upset that Schumer and Jeffries are supporting genocide, you are upset that they aren't hiding it better, they aren't maintaining the illusion. Well your comfort is leading to fascism while you criticize anyone who dares point it out.
Sure, but your alternative is blatant support of genocide. It's well and fine to say who ought to be in charge, but mathematically it's one of two people. I agree that the options suck, but I will use the powers that I have in their proper places. Vote for the lesser evil, and advocate against evil entirely elsewhere. You act like liberal is worse than fascist.
In a way it is. If someone is an out and out fascist, it's easy to point at them and get people to stop supporting them, i.e. Trump. If someone is a polite fascist, i.e. liberal, then you will have thousands of people hand-wringing about lesser evils, and strategic voting, being a pragmatist, etc etc, meanwhile kids are still in cages. Guantanamo is still open, and torturing people. Unlimited funding for additional death and destruction around the world occurs, and all the polite liberal does is shrugs their shoulders. Because that stuff isn't happening to them.
The liberal is comfortable enough to attempt to stop that shit from happening to anyone, but they'd rather defend the status quo and criticize those who speak out.
Stop voting for genocide, it's literally the least you can do and it cost you nothing.
Agree to disagree. I'm not content to let the bodies pile up to revolution levels, those lives are more than just metrics to spur on dissidence. People are still voting for Trump, obviously that strategy doesn't even work even if it weren't ghoulish. The logistics of keeping the evil hush-hush results in fewer bodies than out and out ethnic cleaning. I'm on the side of fewer bodies.