Penn Jillette: Voting For Lesser Of Two Evils Always Leads To More Evil

underweargnome04 · 1 day

I have a problem with evil.

The issue is ranking.

Absolutely it would hurt the Republicans.

And that is why first past the post leads to two parties.

underweargnome04 · 1 day

Maybe you should post over on ELI5 to have someone explain this phrase to you.

Do you have a problem with lesser?

Wrong. We have two parties because the two parties have a monopoly on the system.

Really read up on First Past The Post. We have had more than two active parties several times in our history. A new party can displace an old one but you end up with two. If you also think that mathematicians are part of the conspiracy do the work yourself. Two is the stable solution.

You could just as easily have three or four parties in a FPTP system.

Not with rational voters. Look at how everyone here says that an independent Paul run will hurt the Republicans.

underweargnome04 · 1 day

By definition, the lesser of two evils is more evil.

No the lessser is less evil.

Your condescension be damned, I think it's you who doesn't understand the process.

Or you could respond to the substantive points. We have two parties because of how we vote, not because of a grand conspiracy against you. If you have three parties and our voting system you get far worse results.

andyboy100 · 1 day

I'm sorry, but millions were displaced by the 1948 Partition (India/Pakistan), not tens of thousands. How come the UN figures are so small?

andyboy100 · 1 day

Israel was set up to prevent such things from happening again. When people give up their bigotry then Israel won't need to exist. When Muslims are willing to stop treating dhimmi as inferior then Israel will have less reason to exist. Of course at the same time other nations won't need to exist either.

andyboy100 · 1 day

How are they not refugees?

Because they have not been forced off their homes.

There is a strange and rather new idea coming from Israel supporters that somehow the children of refugees are themselves not refugees.

There were 50 million war caused refugees in 1950. Their descendants today are hundreds upon hundreds of millions. Only the Palestinians call themselves refugees. What you see as strange and new most people see as normal.

axolotl_peyotl · 1 day

The client Afghan government's military has been shown to be completely infiltrated by Afghan resistance movements including the various groups called Taliban in the Imperial press.

Imperial press? Anyway, not it has not been shown to be completely infiltrated. It is far from great, far even from good, but it is not a Taliban arm.

There are two possibilities:

No, there are more. Apparently the goal is to keep Pakistan from falling apart, they are willing to allow Afghanistan to keep its low scale war going.

underweargnome04 · 1 day

From the perspective of the individual (the only real perspective) in large elections, it is not rational to vote tactically, because it is exceedingly unlikely that an individual vote will change the outcome of the election.

That logic says don't vote. No matter what voting system you have any given vote is unlikely to change the outcome.

The only thing you accomplish by voting is to send a very small signal of who you think is the best candidate (incrementing their final vote tally by 1).

And now you switch your logic to claim that there is some signal, some value, to the vote.

If you vote tactically, you fail to do even that, and actually send a small signal saying you support someone you actually don't.

You say you prefer.

It is, however, rational to tell large groups of people tactical voting is rational in order to manipulate them into voting for someone you support but they don't.

So now mathematicians are part of the grand conspiracy against libertarians.

underweargnome04 · 1 day

Potato, potato (obviously pronounced differently). You call it tactical voting, I call it lesser of two evils. If you choose the lesser of two evils, you're still picking someone you think is evil.

Not really. Did you read the article or just look at what it is called? What you are doing is ranking candidates. You could have two saints and still call one the lesser of two evils. The issue is ranking.

In my opinion both options would have an undesirable outcome.

Again, ranking is what matters.

Just because he refuses to vote for the lesser of two evils doesn't mean he doesn't understand tactical voting.

He did not simply refuse, he said it always leads to more evil. That shows that he does not understand the process.

We're only given two choices because the powers that be decided these would be our nominees.

That shows you don't understand first past the post. Two parties is the only stable solution given the voting system we have.

secaa23 · 1 day

Sure, but there is no rational relevance. I was talking about the /r/libertarian arguments and the current political campaign.

Thenamesjames87 · 1 day

Everything about the Iraq War violate the Powell Doctrine. There was no vital national security issue at stake, we had not analyzed costs and risks, etc. It went against his very public statements about the lessons of Vietnam. It is a distraction to talk about the Bush lies, they were lies but not the point. The war was remarkably stupid as it was conceived even if there was evidence of some small Saddam nuclear program.

underweargnome04 · 1 day

Voting for the less of two evil is actually tactical voting. It is the rational action in a wide range of voting systems. You can read up on our First Past The Post system where tactical voting is quite reasonable.

underweargnome04 · 1 day

He is getting down voted because people don't want to see questions they can't answer.

underweargnome04 · 1 day

If you refuse to choose then don't bitch that you got shot in the knee.

underweargnome04 · 1 day

What a surprise, he does not understand tactical voting or how first past the post works. But he is angry and that is important.

axolotl_peyotl · 1 day

I might have to appologize.

Either you apologize or you don't. Try to decide.

I have seen you with jcm267, NoLibs &Co.

What does that mean? I post here and in /r/libertarian. So do they. Why do so many insist on treating "us" as a group?

continue to be in favor of all and any war (especially if it kills Muslims).

I am treated better and with far more respect in /r/Islam than I am treated here.

Now can we address the points in my comments?

Sure, probably tomorrow.

axolotl_peyotl · 1 day

I'm sorry, but when did I defend any endless war? I was on-line opposing the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars in 2001/2. The Iraq War in particular was a clusterfuck of almost unparalleled extent and dimension. The Afghanistan War was closer to merely horrendously stupid.

Where we disagree in on how to characterize the current actions and what might be the appropriate action now. You and yours have a fundamentalist black and white approach: since I do not agree with Paul 100% I am clearly a horrible paid agent out to destroy the world.

lib3rty411 · 1 day

The government is "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" with this mandate.

Nope. The Free Exercise clause is not a get out of jail free clause. That a particular action happens to fit or conflict with a religion does not mean that the government has to allow/deny that action. A city can generally prohibit animal butchering in a city. What they can't do is enact a law with the intent to stop the activities of a specific religion. The basic idea is the Lemon Test, there needs to be a valid secular purpose for the action. It is clear and obvious that this preventative medicine rule is not set up to prevent a religious practice. But if you want a further explanation look at the Employment Division case where Scalia argues that a general purpose law that happens to prohibit a religious activity is constitutionally valid. (And the birth control rule does not prohibit a religious activity.)

YesYesLibertarians · 1 day

Maybe never is the answer and the Republicans that existed are the true Republicans.

axolotl_peyotl · 1 day

Seems to me that it was the war with the Romans that destroyed them.

Thenamesjames87 · 1 day

Colin Powell has never been one to hold his tongue if he disagrees with the Republican party on something

Except for when it mattered.

axolotl_peyotl · 1 day

I always thought the claim was that Afghanistan was where empires die and are buried. If the claim is that they fail to conquer it (except when they do) I am less impressed.

secaa23 · 1 day

Because I am so amused by the talk of how successful Paul is and how he is going to win. And people explain to me over and over that it isn't so that 90% of GOP voters voted against Paul.

My point is that if you want to be consistent then if the headline is true then 90% of Republican voters opted for "Not Paul".

axolotl_peyotl · 1 day

Because when you decided to make this some sort of personal attack I lost interst.

AISim · 1 day

A Buck Tweed bicycle.

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