
Ask HN: Brexit – Should I vote in or out? - vain
There are just days to go to the referendum that decides whether the U.K. stays in the European Union.<p>I am trying to cast an informed ballot, and get more confused with every article I read, every debate I watch.<p>I can not find an objective way of deciding this. How would you decide?
Please suggest ways in which I might perhaps quantify this?
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Millennium
Too much about the UK's status in the EU is subjective and opinion-based for
us, or anyone else, to give you an objective answer. I'm afraid that this is
an answer that's going to have to come from you.

I can only recommend the following. No one on the Remain side is going to
understate the benefits of remaining in the EU, and no one on the Brexit side
is going to understate the costs. They may overstate these things, but for
whatever reason, overstatement is generally easier to detect. So listen to the
Remain folks about the benefits, listen to the Brexit folks about the costs,
dismiss the BS from both sides as appropriate, and then decide for yourself:
are the benefits worth the costs? If you believe they are, vote Remain. If you
believe they are not, vote Brexit.

This is not a perfect process, but the perfect process does not exist. Do the
best you can with what you have, and that will have to be enough.

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rahelzer
The best way to quantify something like this is a "wisdom of the crowds"
method: basically let everybody vote and then aggregate the results.

For this to work, however, each of the people voting have to come to
independent decisions. The crowd can be as dumb as the dumbest person in the
crowd if the crowd falls victim to groupthink.

What I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't let anybody tell you how to vote.
Just vote for what you want to happen. Make the decision based as much as
possible in complete absence of being influenced by anybody else.

If everybody does that, chances are the result will be the right result.

~~~
vain
Public debate around this is an appeal to sentiment. The winner is whoever
rouses more rhetoric.

I don't see how the crowd can help in this. My sense of the situation is that
everyone is uninformed.

Richard Dawkins says "Ignoramuses should have no say on our EU membership—and
that includes me" [https://richarddawkins.net/2016/06/richard-dawkins-
ignoramus...](https://richarddawkins.net/2016/06/richard-dawkins-ignoramuses-
should-have-no-say-on-our-eu-membership-and-that-includes-me/)

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pknight
Is the world better off when countries band together to in an imperfect, yet
democratic framework, or is it better when every country seeks to be
independent and abide mostly by their own short-term interests?

If the answer is the second, is this a good time to do it, will it confidently
result in better outcomes?

I'm an EU citizen in the UK so I'm biased, I don't get a vote in this
democratic exercise, despite being half English with grandparents who served
in WWII, directly in the defense of Britain.

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mikebos
As far as I can tell there is a lot of future predictions with basically no
real evidence both for an exit and a remain. The main thing is you have some
control over your local government and you have (almost) zero control over
whatever the EU does. I think the question ins't what would happen but how far
do you trust your career politicians in the UK and the rest of the EU.

Have fun with the choice, wouldn't know which one I would choose.

~~~
Tomte
If you accept the premise that Britain dearly needs the Common Market, it has
two choices:

Be a member of the EU, pay some money (but because of the "special British
rebate" rather little money), accept all regulations and have a say in them.

Or exit the EU, negotiate an agreement (time frame unknown), pay a little less
money (but not very much so, because the rebate is not going to carry over to
these deals), accept most regulations and have no say in them.

To me it seems to be a no-brainer, but it's obviously mostly an emotional
referendum.

From "the other side" I believe a Brexit would be bad for us, as well, but
there's still an uncivilized, gleeful, action-craving part of me that hopes
for the Brexit. :-|

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herbst
Swiss here. I think you guys will have a hard time to copy our economical
model and the EU will surely not be as nice to you as they are to us.

But anyway, is Brexit now really realistic? Can it happen? I would be so proud
about you guys!

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zaro
Politics and objective decisions:) these two work together only in delusions I
think..

So just vote emotionally as everybody else ;)

