The only reason to vote at all is because of the Kantian categorical imperative, which is usually seen as a deontological view of ethics "Even if it doesn't matter if I personally do it, I should act in the way I expect everyone else in the world to act"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
If NOBODY voted then the system would collapse, therefore I owe it to the world to act like I expect everyone else to act ...But if that's true, then I should act according to deontology in general If I think Ralph Nader should be President I should vote for him
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Even if I'm the only person in the world who votes for him and I've thus "thrown my vote away" After all you just said that I shouldn't think about how much difference my personal vote makes but should act the way people in general should act
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
If me voting for Ralph Nader doesn't matter because I'm only one person and Nader would never win the election anyway then why does my vote for Al Gore matter? Mathematically they're the same percentage of the total vote
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
I've thought about the answer to this question a lot and, in fact, I actually still don't know It sounds like this is a good argument for "voting your conscience" but if you extrapolate this argument it also makes the system fall apart
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
After all Ralph Nader wasn't considered a *perfect* candidate by most of his supporters either The only person who agrees with *all* of my political views is me If I really voted according to what I truly thought everyone should do, I would write in a vote for me
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
It doesn't matter that most people have never even heard of me and I literally can't officially be on the ballot - I'm voting according to my principles
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
It's actually pretty hard to figure out a solid moral foundation for ANY theory of why exactly you should vote one way or another The way most people talk indicates it's some kind of possible world theory
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Whether or not my vote directly causes it, my vote makes one future world *more likely* than another, by a smidgen And there's greater ethical value to that act based on how already probable that future world was vs its rivals
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
But it's hard to articulate how exactly this works and this is exactly what people get so angry about (What does it mean to say that Gore beating Bush was "possible" but Nader winning was "impossible"? Only the world where Bush won actually happened)
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I'm just talking intellectually, I'm emotionally as mad at nonvoters or third party voters as anyone else - more because it signals the way they look at the world makes them a different kind of person than me (virtue ethics) than because I'm confident about the moral duty though
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