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Hey you can elect this person that'll slap you or this person that'll stab you in the face.
Oh well the slapping is so bad we should just not choose either and give the win to face stabby candidate. That's the dumbass "logic" that got us here.
I mean, I fully expect it was also mostly a foreign psyop to steer votes toward Trump or at least generate apathy and keep votes from going to Kamala (same outcome more or less). Mostly because it's such a dumb premise of why you wouldn't vote for Harris and just sit out the election. So I can't imagine it was truly widespread and I think that's also why it's crickets now that the election is over and Russia's orange gremlin candidate for president of the USA won.
The actual choice:
A) Stabs you in the heart
B) Stabs you in the lung
C) No stabbing, picks wildflowers for you
And you guys go, "C isn't viable! At least you're less likely to die if you get stabbed in the lung - you have an entire hour to get to the hospital!"
Bro, C is right there. Was there the whole time. Why the fuck would we, AS A POPULATION, choose anything but the best option.
No, C is not "right there" when our electoral politics work the way they do. That's a huge strawman argument.
The reality is there were two choices, one clearly better for Palestinians.
A strawman argument is when they misrepresent something you're saying, not when you think they're wrong about how electoral politics work.
Yes, they took my argument and created a false third choice that was never part of the argument. Then said to choose that.
That's misrepresenting what I said to have that third choice.
Regardless we're getting very pedantic here and I'm not really disagreeing with you if that matters to you.
"Work the way they do". Oh, OK. If that's not how electoral politics work!
C got you trump you utter doughnut.
Game theory has consequences.
Did you see this part of my comment?
Why the fuck would we, AS A POPULATION, choose anything but the best option.
The population voting for C gets you....what? Let's think about this. Is it....C? Hmm, yes, it is.
Notice how I made a point to phrase it that way, to preempt comments like yours entirely? And then you went and posted that anyway, either because you didn't read my comment, or just felt like ignoring the point I was actually making?
You people INSIST we only ever look at it in terms of, "49.999 are voting Trump, 49.999 are voting Harris, your vote decides the election!" The pre-narrowed, individual choice. But that's not how the game theory applies here. The game in this case is that there's ~210M people with the ability to vote for anyone. There is no pre-narrowing. Their collective decision results in the electoral outcome. Your application of game theory here is literally incorrect.
People are not a hive mind.
People have both individual thought and herd-like psychological behaviors? Your comment could be read as either supporting or disagreeing with my comment, not sure what you're trying to say.
I'm saying that people who are paying attention can't know for certain that a sufficient number of other people are paying enough attention to even shift their vote from the democrats to a brand new leftwing party with sufficient "brand awareness" without undermining the lesser evil's chances by jumping over for any given major election.
Half the population pays virtually no attention to politics. Meaning trying for a third party for president is a laughably if not willfully ignorant unless you've done the ground work elsewhere in government built up awareness of the party from holding smaller offices first.
That is the problem I'm describing. It is the population's job to evaluate and choose candidates. Simply waiting for them to be handed to you gets you totalitarianism.
you’ve done the ground work elsewhere in government built up awareness of the party from holding smaller offices first.
This logic for a preemptive discreditation of a third party applies the same - incorrectly - to any office. The choice for a Senate or House or governor or even state legislature seat can face the same dilemma.
You're not voting for the party, you're voting for a candidate, and it's virtually irrelevant what other offices members of their party holds. An entire population voting on "brand awareness" is suicidal. A population must make educated decisions on political candidates or risk totalitarianism. I am well aware of the stupid processes people use to select political candidates, that's what I'm complaining about in the first place. The fact that we haven't solved this problem already got us where we are now.
OK, I actually think we might be getting somewhere for once. What exactly do you propose to solve that problem? Because saying people need to make more educated decisions isn't going to make it so. Most people do not want to even think about politics let alone become deeply educated about it, so its an uphill battle on somehow educating the masses before you have any actual political power to mandate that education.
I mean, I still think game theory applies with first past the post. Like for instance if you have 2 equally liked anti-racist candidates and 1 singular awful one that appeals to subconscious racism, the racist one is more likely going to win due to splitting the anti-racist vote. But still, I'm curious about your solution to the educated voting problem.
I can't magically change everyone's behavior. I'm not a deity. All I can do is describe what behaviors are required of a population in a representative democracy, for the system to not turn on them, or to reverse the grip of a system that has already turned on them. Each one teach one.
Game theory of course applies. But the game has hundreds of millions of participants (ignoring the broader global population, which also influences it). The error in analyzing election choices is to only myopically look at the "what do we do if it's a 49.999% 49.999% split" and ignore the behavior of the entire GROUP. The fact that every member of the population has the power to make arbitrary choices in the election, and entirely determines the result of the election, including the supposedly predetermined 49.999%x2 split we keep ending back at, prior to the election actually taking place. We create this reality by assuming its inevitability - no more, no less. There's literally infinite pathways for social organization among the general population, but in ignoring them, we completely sacrifice our own power.
You need to stop believing you know anything about game theory because the Dunning-Kruger klaxon is going off and you can't seem to hear it.
You claim I don't, but you don't show it. That's the big red flag for "Dunning-Kruger" - unsubstantiated claims, or claims with faulty arguments behind them.
And for the love of god, don't respond to that with anything but specific responses to the actual claims I made. I cannot take anymore of these circular arguments today.
Go read even a little bit of game theory, like an introductory video on YouTube even, before you start claiming it supports your illogical nonsense take. Introductory test: how many players?
And, lo and behold, he did not respond with specific responses to the actual claims I made. On reddit, this is when I would hit the "block" button, because I know they're just wasting my time. But here they just keep responding forever until I stop responding myself.
Crazy. Your debating opponents don't have to follow your weird rules you set in advance for how they are allowed to contradict you on the Internet, and it's an obvious fallacy to infer truth or falsehood based on whether someone obeys you or not.
There's a block button. You are free to use it, but the claim I was addressing was your clearly false claim to understand game theory.
Anyone who claims that game theory somehow meant that Shill Stein could have been president is talking out of the wrong orifice.
By your logic, choices A through Z all have equal odds of winning.
They don't.
I can go into a full explanation about how you're wrong and you are also to blame for this happening, but I won't cause were so far past the tipping point there no reason to explain it to you anymore. Just know most everyone here knows you're either ignorant or dumb. The rest of us know you're both
The odds of winning, for the candidate that secures a majority of EC votes, is exactly 100% (so long as that process is followed). The determining factor of that is the voting decisions of the population. That is not a function you can describe only in probabilistic terms. By all means, let's hear your broken explanation filled with omissions and logical errors.
No, I don't care nor are you important enough to do that. I just want to reiterate that you're dumb
Case in point - pigeon on the chessboard. You shouldn't even comment if this is your attitude.
Case in point - the commenter above me is still dumb.
49% of the country is voting for A
49% of the country is voting for B
2% of the country is voting C
Idunno guys, I just feel like if we work really hard to siphon votes away from B, we can make it work
Yes, I have heard this math. Many, many, many, many times. Now, try the math where this is a democracy, we have the right to vote for whoever we want, the election results aren't magically predetermined, and the 100% can be subdivided in any way among the group of all candidates - so long as the population, or even just a majority of it, isn't religiously locked into the idea that they must vote for whatever candidate has a specific label or color next to their name.
There are no wildflowers on the road to hell, but it is paved with good intentions.
C is right there only if you're naive enougn to believe it.
Most people don't want war. Yet they will go to war, each side convinced in their own self-righteousness. That is the human condition. Picking wildflowers isn't going to stop the Nazi boot or anything else for that matter. Another way to think about it - Charlie Chaplin's messages in the 1930s were great, full of hope, and reached a lot of people. But that was nowhere near what was needed. Tens of millions had to die. It's not gonna be any different this time around, Chaplin or no Chaplin.
It's not the "human condition". All of these things are products of cultural practices and belief systems. Not all societies wage war. Not all societies put mass murderers in control. You cannot be so careless with your logic and hope to ever arrive at a correct conclusion.