When the Logical Go Fish
I’m not a believer in conspiracy theories. I don’t think the world is ruled in secret by the Illuminati or a group of lizard-descendants from outer space, or the mice. I can’t believe that if there is such a deep and wide-reaching conspiracy involving undoubtedly millions of people, no proof of it would ever leak out. I can’t believe that there exist such complex machinery and plot as to rule the world seemingly in perfect chaos, but all the while leading according to a singular design.
I firmly believe that the world is as frakked up as it is on its own; and we create all this chaos on our own. We don’t need vampires or the said lizards to be in charge behind the scenes to pollute, pillage, destroy, kill and harm. We are quite capable in that regard.
And my proof is that a bunch of humans slowly annihilating themselves and everything that is good is a much simpler explanation than the “300 Committee.”
But that’s not what I intended to write about.
I also don’t believe in smaller conspiracies. I don’t believe that all the elections in the world are fixed. I don’t believe that the NSA monitors everything on the Internet (they do, but they have no reason to care for my data, and I’m taking all the measures that I logically can, so if they really can break AES, well, there’s not much more I can do!) I don’t believe that the bank tellers are all my enemies. I also don’t believe that the Azad university teachers are forced to flunk students, so they have to pay the tuition multiple times. And so on and so forth.
Let’s get back to that election thing.
It’s getting near the presidential election here in Iran. And as always, people are all filled with false hope or with empirical pessimism. Many (most) of the people, specially the educated, believe that the election results are predetermined and fixed. They believe that no matter what their vote, the desirable candidate for the “powers to be” comes out of the ballot boxes. Other believe that the general, stupid public will vote for the worst of the worst and the worst of the worst will be president again.
Many people, smart people, people starving for change, people hungry for freedom, people who should know better don’t vote. Sometimes they don’t vote for even more stupid reasons; e.g. that their perfect candidate is not running for presidency or because all those who are running are bad.
I hereby ask the conspiracy theorists to think about it a little more. I’m not saying that a few hundred ballots here and a few thousands votes there are not bought, sold, exchanged, inserted, deleted or corrected! That’s human nature. But I don’t think that actually has any significant influence on the results. When you can coerce millions of people to vote for you with a ripped coat, a stupid smile and a promise to bring the oil money to their tables, why would you need a nationwide conspiracy to pad the ballots or fix the election or con the counting process?! Don’t you think the former’s much cheaper, more effective and less prosecutable (in this country, at least)?
I would ask the pouters to stop pouting and come and eat their dinner! I know the candidate selection and screening process in Iran is retarded and ridiculous. But one of these candidates is going to be elected your next president whether you vote or not. In any given group of candidates, there must be bad and worse. Go and vote for the least bad so the next president (hopefully) does the least amount of damage. Even bad is better than the possibility of worse. The only logical reason you might have for not picking a candidate in this case is if you genuinely believe that you are actually more likely to pick the worse! If you think you are worse than the average idiot who walks this country at picking the better (or least bad) among 5-6 guys for presidency, then you should not vote. But who really believes that?!
(Of course, I wish more people did, but as some very smart guy has said, the problem with the world is that wise people are always full of doubt but the idiots never have any! I’m sure that those who actually believe the above are almost definitely the ones that are way more qualified that the average populace to vote.)
In short, you have to vote even if you don’t like any of the candidates or the one you liked best is not among them.
The logical pessimists are the hardest to deal with logically. It is painfully obvious that the vote of one person has absolutely no significant significance in the result of the election. And any rational person should know this and would know this. However, if all the rational, logical and sane people sanctioned (or embargoed or whatever) the election it is obvious that all the voters will be the irrational, the illogical and the insane! It’s called “super-rationality” people! Look it up!
And there is always that group of people who can potentially vote, but are too lazy to travel to another city to vote at the embassy.
But seriously, you forgot to mention a key group of people who strongly believe that the act of voting itself is a measure of supporting the government. It is however, a stupid bet to assume that a huge percentage of people will not vote and the government will lose its support and collapse. What will happen is that the conservatives will take the power in all branches of the government, destroy whatever national resource they touch, and then force us to vote in large numbers next time so that we get out of our own crap.
I know I’m gonna outrage you again by saying this, but I just finished a whole thesis on this topic: Your argument has a big flaw. Logic is meaningless if you don’t consider uncertainties. It is true that there is definitely one candidate that is no worse than others, given any fixed measure of comparison. However, it is _not_ true that you are better off voting if you _think_ someone is a better candidate. I’m not talking about different evaluations based on different priorities. But rather on the fact that no matter how you define a good candidate, if you are not _sure_ about it, then it _might_ be meaningless (technically statistically meaningless) to assume the best you can do is to vote for the one you think is better. Weather or not your measure of comparison is any better than the average idiot, it matters if you are sure about it or not. Sometimes there is just too much uncertainty involved in the decision making process. In fact, I would rather see most people not vote, as they are ignorant about the candidates. Ignorance, when fed into the election process, biases the result towards randomness. Thus _anyone_ who suggests that people should vote _must_ ask them to get educated about the candidates’ policies first.
OK. Let’s wade down through the stack.
I have to agree that the masses voting without knowing and weighing the candidates might push the result towards randomness. However, what’s more likely is that those kind of people would vote based on their emotions or on the hollow and meaningless promises of the candidates. What I’m hoping to happen here is that because the people are under so much pressure and the status of the country is so bleak and hopeless, people would emotionally vote for some change. I’d be the first one to admit that it’s a long shot, but it may actually happen.
The other reason that I think people should vote no matter what, and that I try some (weak and informal) logical argument is that I’m hoping to convince the upper half of the society to vote. The average idiot will either vote (for the wrong person) or not and I don’t think I can convince her with anything except a promise to pay him 50K per month! I’m trying to make sure that the upper half of the society (or those among my friends who belong to the upper half) that the lower half will vote anyway and if they don’t, their voice won’t be heard. I’m again hoping that these people are at least more likely to vote better.
About the role of uncertainties, well… I’m no expert on this, but they are there anyway specially in these complex real-world situations. It’s quite improbable that every voter would go and research and read and investigate. I myself certainly don’t. I don’t kn ow what can be done to remedy that, except to try to discourage the people who are likely to vote with more thought from boycotting the elections.
Yes, I didn’t mention these group that hope to topple the regime with an election boycott, but I don’t count them as logical people! Or maybe they are, but they should be more realistic. You said what I would want to say perfectly, and I don’t see the need to add anything.
OK, I did not consider this group. I also forgot about the people who are in a coma, or a full-body cast!
Are you sure there is no way for you guys to vote in your own city? Isn’t there like a few thousand Iranians there?
On the other hand, why would the current government want a bunch of bright people to have easy access for voting?!