

An FAQ for the 2012 US Presidential Election - nitfol
http://norvig.com/election-faq-2012.html

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graue
This is possibly the most reasonable and cool-headed analysis of an upcoming
election that I have ever read.

I love how he concludes that voting is rational. I'd never thought to multiply
the, potentially massive, cost of the candidate I disfavor getting elected,
multiply it by the tiny chance my vote makes the difference, and compare the
result to the amount of money I make in an hour. He admits his cost figures
are fudged, but in principle, it works out.

Since I spotted this on the front page, it seems to have been nuked by mods.
Perhaps that's for the better, but I'd be much more interested in discussing
politics if everyone could handle it with the restrained style and tone in
this article. Interesting link.

~~~
abecedarius
That calculation assumes your judgement is better than the typical voter's.
You should weigh it by P(better)-P(worse). (I'm not necessarily saying people
with reason to think they have at-best average judgement should patriotically
not vote; but the calculation is.)

(It's also worth considering a la Hofstadter/Yudkowsky that something like
your decision process is instantiated in other people like you -- if you
decide not to vote, many of them won't either, even with no _causal_ link.)

~~~
graue
Also not everything is purely economic. If we assume that Candidate A would
cost the US $7 trillion while B would be revenue neutral, then A's election
would, on paper, be terrible. But how much would it actually make your life as
an individual worse in a meaningful way? I suspect that in many cases, the
practical impact of a presidential election on an individual's day-to-day life
is relatively low. And that probably drives the intuitive notion that voting
is irrational. Voting in local elections (mayor, city council, etc.) is
probably more rational, both due to bigger impact of your vote and larger
policy consequences for you as an individual.

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martythemaniak
Assuming nothing extraordinary happens, this election is Obama's.

Having said that, I find Washington state initiative 502 (and to a lesser
extent colorado amendment 64) to be the most interesting and important
elections this year.

Recent polls have shown support for marijuana legalization of more than 50%
and a state voting for legalization will be the start of the end of
prohibition.

~~~
jhspaybar
You're probably right, which as a Romney supporter makes me a bit sad.
However, I think there's a good shot you see Romney win the popular vote by a
.3% margin and still not pull down Ohio letting Obama win. I definitely can't
see the margin being more than 1% either direction in the popular...

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kbutler
By Norvig's calculation, the swing voters in the 2000 election voted wrongly,
costing the country $600,000 each. Much more rational and patriotic to not
vote, then.

Also, remember that Bush presided over two terms, winning two elections, and
the majority of the "cost" was in the second term and thus not a direct result
of the close 2000 presidential election he's analyzing.

Conclusion: Norvig's analysis in this case, in contrast to his technical work,
is not worth the paper it is (not) printed on.

Moral: Political speech is usually politically motivated, and is generally not
as strongly based in rational analysis as the speaker would have you believe.

~~~
halostatue
I agree with your Moral, but the rest of what you've said here doesn't quite
hold with history.

1\. The majority of the cost (the war in Iraq) was initiated in the first
term; a better president with better advisors (IMO, Iraq II was all Cheney and
Rumsfeld) would not have gone to war in Iraq with the flimsy justifications
presented. Thus, the continuing cost of that war would not have happened
during the second term. We may have seen an expanded conflict in Afghanistan,
but there was substantial international support for this, which would have
spread the costs around. It's a fair cop to place the whole cost of the Iraq
war on the election in 2000.

2\. The financial crisis was enabled by four primary factors: loosened
mortgage rules from _before_ 2000 (e.g., under Clinton), irresponsible tax
cuts (reducing real stimulus available to the government), the war in Iraq
(reducing real stimulus available to the government), and increased and
accelerated deregulation of financial players at a time when it was known that
there were some systematically bad players (see Enron and others). Given that
all four factors happened in the first Bush term, it's also fair to place at
least a large chunk of this on Bush.

I would fault Norvig's evaluation mostly on his view of a non-Bush presidency.
It is highly unlikely that Gore would have been revenue neutral. On some
aspects, it is almost certain that he would have been revenue neutral (no war
in Iraq, but possibly expanded action in Afghanistan). Even so, the cost of
9/11 outside of the Bush context would be impossible to determine. I suspect
that the TSA as it exists today would not exist; I fear that it could have
been replaced with something more expensive (although hopefully less
disdainful of civil liberties and the Americans they supposedly protect).

There are other things about the cost-benefit analysis that don't sit right
with me as I'm reading them (the way of thinking of a vote as worth 600,000 vs
pennies; it seems that more rational math would still be 600,000 vs 20,000),
but it's the weakest part of the article to that point. I know what he was
trying to do—but I don't think he made the case that it's patriotic to vote
based on a financial analysis. (I think it _is_ patriotic to vote, which is
why I do vote.)

Everything before is a good summary and pointers to other people doing solid
analysis.

The remainder of the article is fully political and can be treated as such
(even though I personally agree with him).

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hollerith
Norvig writes that the expected cost of voting is about one hour. That ignores
the hours needed to determine which candidate is better. That is very
intellectually demanding work, and e.g. the mainstream media strikes me as
more of a hinderence than a help.

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thebigshane
Given raganwald's recent "Tell HN", is it possible to keep the discussion on
this thread civil? I would assume it is still impossible to needlessly argue
politics here, but please prove me wrong.

~~~
anigbrowl
I must say, I've been flagging most election-related threads unless they're
clearly hacker-related (statistical anaylis, integrity of voter data etc.).

This is one of the most bilious elections that I remember and although I'm
interested to hear the spectrum of views on HN as a general matter I'm
depressed by the likelihood that the discussion would just degenerate into a
flamefest. I'd rather not see friends and fellow HNers slinging mud at each
other, because heaven knows there's enough of it on the rest of the internet.
Website comments on political matters make me question the whole premise of
democracy :-(

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beatgammit
Minor nitpick, shouldn't it be "A FAQ", not "An FAQ"? Does anybody really read
it "Eff Ay Queue" and not the monosyllabic "Fack"?

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aidenn0
OT, but interesting to see that Norvig pronounces FAQ eff-ay-cue not fack.

