My Vote Doesn't Matter

[Alcala-Cordel]

I don't have the time or the platform to run, and without corporate contributions I certainly won't be able to compete with those who do.

We would have strong disagreements if we ever debated, and I know this to be true. The real political situation in America is not a school house rock video.

I never said it was, but it is objectively true to say I do not have the resources to run a political campaign and it would be very difficult for someone with my views to end up in any substantial position of power

[Dimetrodon Empire]

We would have strong disagreements if we ever debated, and I know this to be true. The real political situation in America is not a school house rock video.

I never said it was, but it is objectively true to say I do not have the resources to run a political campaign and it would be very difficult for someone with my views to end up in any substantial position of power

I was agreeing with you wholeheartedly.

[Alcala-Cordel]

It wouldn't be elitist if it was run entirely on individual donations without having to make concessions to corporations and party leaders. Unfortunately that is not how reality works.


That is entirely relative to the area. Like I said, anything above a tiny town involves companies.

Still making generalizations.

You threw some specific examples at me a while ago and I showed that they took corporate money. It might be a blanket statement, but you haven't said anything to prove me wrong.

I never said it was, but it is objectively true to say I do not have the resources to run a political campaign and it would be very difficult for someone with my views to end up in any substantial position of power

I was agreeing with you wholeheartedly.

my bad, sorry about that

[Dimetrodon Empire]

my bad, sorry about that

No problem, I do that all of the time myself.

[Hwiteard]

Ok? I feel like you are in agreement with me. Correct me if I misunderstand.

I am, to a point.

Ah. Gotcha. I don't know much latin, so thanks for clarifying.

You're welcome.

I would disagree with that argument. John Addams and Thomas Paine both strongly advocated against slavery. And of course everyone's favorite founding father without a father (Hamilton may have owned slaves, it is a little unclear).
Thomas Jefferson when writing the Declaration of Independence's opening nearly completely copied John Locke. Jefferson gets way too much credit for this. Regardless, your argument is true. How can a nation full of slavers and enslaved claim to be a free nation for equality? At the time (note: for the time, not at all in modern terms. Still not a defense for the slavers), America was proposing ideas of radical freedom that most of the world hadn't seen practiced. Freedoms of Religion? Guaranteed Trial by Jury? Electing a major head of state? Radical ideas at this time that allowed them to make arguments that they were for "equality", although as we now realize, there was still a lot of inequality.

Radical ideas of dead white men.

I'm kind of confused by "the logical extreme" part. Would you mind explaining what you mean later?

The logical extreme of aforementioned counterargument (post edited accordingly).

White people can still make observations about how systems or people are racist, even if it doesn't affect them. Congress and The House of Reps were full of whiteys.

Yeah, but then you have white "anti-racists" like Heather Hackman and Robin DiAngelo—the latter of whom, may I remind you, has a bestselling tome on "anti-racism through white racial self-flagellation" on her belt (take it from John McWhorter). Talk about radical ideas.

[Ifreann]

By your standards almost everyone in the Roman Empire was a racist.

Sorry, what?

[Ors Might]

By your standards almost everyone in the Roman Empire was a racist.

Sorry, what?

Having racial prejudice in a society where such things are commonplace means you can't be racist. Or something. I'm not even sure if Roman society was particularly racist but San Lumen apparently thinks so?

[Chan Island]

By your standards almost everyone in the Roman Empire was a racist.

Sorry, what?

He's referring to the fact that racism as we understand it didn't really exist as much in ancient times. Skin colour as the metric by which we decide who is in what race became prevelant as a consequence of colonial era slave trading.

Of course, ancient people still had many prejudices, much stronger than today. Class, profession, nationality, bloodlines, religion, whether you were right handed or not....

But skin colour just wasn't one of them. For a roman, a black nubian centurion from a good bloodline was an esteemed person, worth far more than a white Christian barbarian.

[Forever Indomitable]

Alright, I'll bite.

You have absolutely not proven that politics is genetic, and this insistence that your sources say it does even though they really don't is unbecoming.

Your first source demonstrates that children often end up voting in the same way as their parents. An important plank in your argument, no doubt, but to just declare that that means job done is a disservice. Off the top of my head, I can think of many other reasons why this would be the case; upbringing, the values the parents teach their kids, geography, membership of the same social class or ethnicity, the similarity of experiences they are likely to face, just to name a few. To prove that politics was genetic, you have to demonstrate that all of these other factors are not having a significant influence.

And then furthermore explain some vast, high profile discrepancies with the assertion such as the Brexit referendum, which saw age being the strongest predictor of how someone would vote. Demonstrably in this case, millions of britons decided to vote the opposite direction as their own children or parents- presenting a serious challenge to the notion that politics is genetic.

This notion is made further weakened then by your other source, arguing that people often prefer spouses that hold similar political opinions. OK, I agree. But that argument also doesn't prove it's genetic. Once again, I can think of many reasons off the top of my head that could also explain it, like exposure, culture, agreeability, shared experiences and political environment. And once again, I think everyone here knows someone who's married and had kids with someone of a completely different political worldview. It's a bit of a leap of logic to therefore argue that that's a reason in favour of politics being genetic.

Completely agree with you on the criminal justice reform part. Well, except with all of that mumbo-jumbo about single-dimensional people. But if you like, there is a lot of ways in which you could get involved with changing criminal justice. In fact, in the US you have a fairly unique level of influence on that realm; you get to vote on judges, sheriffs and direct ballot initiatives that all can reflect whatever view you like on criminal justice. And even huge states like Florida have voted to give felons the right to vote, so this assumption that you can't mobilise vast numbers of people to vote the right way on these issues is baloney. Put up the pressure, fight where it hurts, and it's remarkable how much you can achieve in a democracy.

Your first source demonstrates that children often end up voting in the same way as their parents. An important plank in your argument, no doubt, but to just declare that that means job done is a disservice. Off the top of my head, I can think of many other reasons why this would be the case; upbringing, the values the parents teach their kids, geography, membership of the same social class or ethnicity, the similarity of experiences they are likely to face, just to name a few. To prove that politics was genetic, you have to demonstrate that all of these other factors are not having a significant influence.

Alright, here's another source that further elaborates on the heritability of personality:
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ersonality
I'd post snippets that directly contradict you, but that'd be the entire article, so have yourself a read.

Second, what people don't understand is that environmental influence is filtered & interpreted through the genetic lens. For example, we have various instances of minorities in history diverging from popular opinion. When there was slavery in the US, we had abolitionists; we've had atheists, agnostics and heretics in all religious eras; we have political dissidents in every type of authoritian environment where social influence thoroughly saturated every aspect of someone's life. What happens environmentally passes through a person's "operating system" & just because an environment can produce variance does not mean that it is divorced from the genetic base. Think of a rottweiler and a corgi raised in the same home from birth - through selection, they have come to have different temperaments and traits. You can treat them the same way, but you will not observe the same output of behavior from them. This absolutely and unequivocally applies to humans, too, the difference being that humans have more cognitive complexity, so a greater range of behavior is possible.

Well, except with all of that mumbo-jumbo about single-dimensional people.

It's not mumbo jumbo. The overwhelming dominance of a 2 party platform demonstrates that a narrow process of genetic selection has funneled large swaths of the population into relatively stereotypic archetypes.

In fact, in the US you have a fairly unique level of influence on that realm; you get to vote on judges, sheriffs and direct ballot initiatives that all can reflect whatever view you like on criminal justice.

Well, I'd like to abolish such positions altogether. I will try to keep an eye on who is the least horrendous, though, in case a practical option comes along (doubtful).

Put up the pressure, fight where it hurts, and it's remarkable how much you can achieve in a democracy.

That only applies to people with popular opinions.

[Forever Indomitable]

And you base that on...?

Existing scientific evidence, observation and admission from scientists that they're only beginning to understand the depth of influence that genetics has.

Not necessarily. For example, stubborn, belligerently right-wing homophobes can beget a stubborn, belligerently queer leftist. Both are stubborn and belligerent in terms of personality, but their politics couldn't be more different.

Right, they have similar social personalities, but the "queer leftist" part could be a result of hormonal influences in the womb, recessive traits or simply a result of how the parents' contributing traits express themselves. The "queer leftist" might be just as disagreeable as the parents, but happened to be born with a higher level of openness that influences their politics. It could be many factors and all of them have a biologically mechanistic base. If they were raised in such a household, why did they just happen to turn out that way? If environment was so strong, we wouldn't have closet gays in some Muslim countries where they could be put to death. People are born who they are. When they change, it's change that's guided by their biological identity.

[Chan Island]

Alright, I'll bite.

You have absolutely not proven that politics is genetic, and this insistence that your sources say it does even though they really don't is unbecoming.

Your first source demonstrates that children often end up voting in the same way as their parents. An important plank in your argument, no doubt, but to just declare that that means job done is a disservice. Off the top of my head, I can think of many other reasons why this would be the case; upbringing, the values the parents teach their kids, geography, membership of the same social class or ethnicity, the similarity of experiences they are likely to face, just to name a few. To prove that politics was genetic, you have to demonstrate that all of these other factors are not having a significant influence.

And then furthermore explain some vast, high profile discrepancies with the assertion such as the Brexit referendum, which saw age being the strongest predictor of how someone would vote. Demonstrably in this case, millions of britons decided to vote the opposite direction as their own children or parents- presenting a serious challenge to the notion that politics is genetic.

This notion is made further weakened then by your other source, arguing that people often prefer spouses that hold similar political opinions. OK, I agree. But that argument also doesn't prove it's genetic. Once again, I can think of many reasons off the top of my head that could also explain it, like exposure, culture, agreeability, shared experiences and political environment. And once again, I think everyone here knows someone who's married and had kids with someone of a completely different political worldview. It's a bit of a leap of logic to therefore argue that that's a reason in favour of politics being genetic.

Completely agree with you on the criminal justice reform part. Well, except with all of that mumbo-jumbo about single-dimensional people. But if you like, there is a lot of ways in which you could get involved with changing criminal justice. In fact, in the US you have a fairly unique level of influence on that realm; you get to vote on judges, sheriffs and direct ballot initiatives that all can reflect whatever view you like on criminal justice. And even huge states like Florida have voted to give felons the right to vote, so this assumption that you can't mobilise vast numbers of people to vote the right way on these issues is baloney. Put up the pressure, fight where it hurts, and it's remarkable how much you can achieve in a democracy.

Your first source demonstrates that children often end up voting in the same way as their parents. An important plank in your argument, no doubt, but to just declare that that means job done is a disservice. Off the top of my head, I can think of many other reasons why this would be the case; upbringing, the values the parents teach their kids, geography, membership of the same social class or ethnicity, the similarity of experiences they are likely to face, just to name a few. To prove that politics was genetic, you have to demonstrate that all of these other factors are not having a significant influence.

Alright, here's another source that further elaborates on the heritability of personality:
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ersonality
I'd post snippets that directly contradict you, but that'd be the entire article, so have yourself a read.

Second, what people don't understand is that environmental influence is filtered & interpreted through the genetic lens. For example, we have various instances of minorities in history diverging from popular opinion. When there was slavery in the US, we had abolitionists; we've had atheists, agnostics and heretics in all religious eras; we have political dissidents in every type of authoritian environment where social influence thoroughly saturated every aspect of someone's life. What happens environmentally passes through a person's "operating system" & just because an environment can produce variance does not mean that it is divorced from the genetic base. Think of a rottweiler and a corgi raised in the same home from birth - through selection, they have come to have different temperaments and traits. You can treat them the same way, but you will not observe the same output of behavior from them. This absolutely and unequivocally applies to humans, too, the difference being that humans have more cognitive complexity, so a greater range of behavior is possible.

Again, congratulations on proving that personality is somewhat inheritable.

That still doesn't prove that politics is genetically inherited, which was the original point of contention. After all, lots of people with apparently similar personalities vote for different political parties. I remember from secondary school watching 2 of my acquaintances, both in the rugby team, both the size and build of fridges, both white, both deeply catholic... arguing passionately about whether to Obama or Romney would be better for the world.

And when there was slavery in the US, some people were slave owners, and some even were slave owners who enthusiastically beat or raped their slaves. The existence of dissidents in the era of slavery only proves that dissidents exist. It does not prove that being a dissident is genetic.

Nothing you said about the dogs matter in this discussion. You claimed that politics is genetically inherited- I don't give a damn about what dogs do in this discussion about human behaviour. Human behaviour by the way which you still are not explaining why they diverge from your claim, like the Brexit referendum being a vote almost entirely drawn on age lines. If politics was inherited, why did millions of British voters vote the opposite of their parents then?

Well, except with all of that mumbo-jumbo about single-dimensional people.

It's not mumbo jumbo. The overwhelming dominance of a 2 party platform demonstrates that a narrow process of genetic selection has funneled large swaths of the population into relatively stereotypic archetypes.

The overwhelming dominance of the 2 party system demonstrates the suppressive, awful consequences of a first past the post electoral system. I grew up in Luxembourg, mate, that country has 7 parties represented in the Chamber of Deputies, of which 3 of them are in government. The difference is that they use a proportional representation system instead of a horribly constricting voting method.

In fact, in the US you have a fairly unique level of influence on that realm; you get to vote on judges, sheriffs and direct ballot initiatives that all can reflect whatever view you like on criminal justice.

Well, I'd like to abolish such positions altogether. I will try to keep an eye on who is the least horrendous, though, in case a practical option comes along (doubtful).

What's the alternative you would prefer? Not hostile, just curious.

Put up the pressure, fight where it hurts, and it's remarkable how much you can achieve in a democracy.

That only applies to people with popular opinions.

[/quote]

And how do you think those opinions got popular? Sorry, apart from genetics, which still saw the British vote radically different from their own children.
Those opinions got popular because individuals pushed them and people were influenced into believing them. There is no law of physics that says that people's opinions can never change. The field is wide open, just gotta take the opportunity.

[Platoon of Peace]

I'm gonna be honest FI, I don't think that genetics play the role that you think that they do. My Grandpa on my mothers' side is a diehard republican, and my mother is very borderline republican. And I'm not a red voter as of right now.

[Forever Indomitable]

Bumping for when I get around to the response I owe.

[Informed Consent]

I'm gonna be honest FI, I don't think that genetics play the role that you think that they do. My Grandpa on my mothers' side is a diehard republican, and my mother is very borderline republican. And I'm not a red voter as of right now.

I never knew my father, and until I was about high school age, Mom only voted Democrat because she felt culturally obligated to, and did not want to further endanger us as our streets were challenging enough to navigate safely without drawing undue attention to ourselves over ideological concerns.
It is an intellectually subjective experience complicated or eased by objectively experienced environmental conditions.
The sum of human development is not nature or nurture, but nature and nurture working in tandem with your conscious effort to weather them.
Molding you every day into the person you ultimately die as.

Too much is given to genetics as some laypeople in tandem with politically compromised researchers and practitioners attempt to use it as a keystone for a pseudoscientific based support of, or opposition to, elements of human behavior.
Ideologues have a terrible habit of confusing many of our ever evolving inclinations with fixed orientation, thus spawning a counter evolutionary hell scape of indoctrination for the sake of reinforcing confirmation bias.

[San Lumen]

And you base that on...?

Existing scientific evidence, observation and admission from scientists that they're only beginning to understand the depth of influence that genetics has.

Not necessarily. For example, stubborn, belligerently right-wing homophobes can beget a stubborn, belligerently queer leftist. Both are stubborn and belligerent in terms of personality, but their politics couldn't be more different.

Right, they have similar social personalities, but the "queer leftist" part could be a result of hormonal influences in the womb, recessive traits or simply a result of how the parents' contributing traits express themselves. The "queer leftist" might be just as disagreeable as the parents, but happened to be born with a higher level of openness that influences their politics. It could be many factors and all of them have a biologically mechanistic base. If they were raised in such a household, why did they just happen to turn out that way? If environment was so strong, we wouldn't have closet gays in some Muslim countries where they could be put to death. People are born who they are. When they change, it's change that's guided by their biological identity.

There is absolutely zero evidence politics is genetic. If it was explain to me how voting coalitions and areas change how they vote over time?

[East Florida]

I still believe voting is an essential democratic right. It may be hard to believe but your vote matters. You may seem insignificant, but you're really not.

[San Lumen]

I still believe voting is an essential democratic right. It may be hard to believe but your vote matters. You may seem insignificant, but you're really not.

Every vote in every election matters.

[American Legionaries]

I still believe voting is an essential democratic right. It may be hard to believe but your vote matters. You may seem insignificant, but you're really not.

Every vote in every election matters.

That's provably untrue. Donald Trump is no more president today than he would be had I not voted for him.

[Terra Saare]

I'd vote so I can't blame myself if my favoured candidate loses lmao

[San Lumen]

Every vote in every election matters.

That's provably untrue. Donald Trump is no more president today than he would be had I not voted for him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... on_results

Here is a list of close election results

[Forever Indomitable]

Bumping for when I get time to respond.

[The Black Forrest]

Bumping for when I get time to respond.

Oh don’t bump threads. They give you a search function and you can search for your posts…..

[Necroghastia]

I still believe voting is an essential democratic right. It may be hard to believe but your vote matters. You may seem insignificant, but you're really not.

Every vote in every election matters.

electoral college whomst

[San Lumen]

Every vote in every election matters.

electoral college whomst

There are other things besides president.

[Forever Indomitable]

Alright, I'll bite.

You have absolutely not proven that politics is genetic, and this insistence that your sources say it does even though they really don't is unbecoming.

Your first source demonstrates that children often end up voting in the same way as their parents. An important plank in your argument, no doubt, but to just declare that that means job done is a disservice. Off the top of my head, I can think of many other reasons why this would be the case; upbringing, the values the parents teach their kids, geography, membership of the same social class or ethnicity, the similarity of experiences they are likely to face, just to name a few. To prove that politics was genetic, you have to demonstrate that all of these other factors are not having a significant influence.

I never said environmental influence isn't significant, but that genetic influence is significant to the point of being predictably deterministic. Research supports this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4038932/
"We find that genetic factors account for a significant amount of the variance in individual differences in ideology across time, location, measures and populations, with one exception, which we discuss below."

"The results, presented in Figure 1, provide evidence of a significant and substantial genetic influence on ideological formation across every measure, population and period with one exception: a measure that explicitly used the phrase “Left or Right”.

"Outside of the phrase “Left-Right”, the influence of genetic factors on the development of political ideology appears to be reasonably uniform across time, measure and country, while the influence of common and unique environmental factors differs with the shifting political and social factors in various circumstances. We thus demonstrate systematic, cross-temporal, cross-cultural genetic influence on the emergence of political ideology."

Essentially, genetics can reliably map ideology across culture, environment and time, with "Left-Right" being subjective due to the localization of where it is used and its historical context. This supports my assertion that personality (of which is proven to be significantly influenced by genetics) is inseparably linked to politics as is also supported here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22400142/

" Here we test the causal relationship between personality traits and political attitudes using a direction of causation structural model on a genetically informative sample. The results suggest that personality traits do not cause people to develop political attitudes; rather, the correlation between the two is a function of an innate common underlying genetic factor."

Environment is filtered through genetics, not the other way around.

And then furthermore explain some vast, high profile discrepancies with the assertion such as the Brexit referendum, which saw age being the strongest predictor of how someone would vote. Demonstrably in this case, millions of britons decided to vote the opposite direction as their own children or parents- presenting a serious challenge to the notion that politics is genetic.

I'm not British or knowledgeable of British politics. That being said, according to the very article that you posted, age wasn't the single biggest factor, education was:
" The most dramatic split is along the lines of education. 70% of voters whose educational attainment is only GCSE or lower voted to Leave, while 68% of voters with a university degree voted to Remain in the EU. Those with A levels and no degree were evenly split, 50% to 50%."

Ironically, educational attainment is another aspect significantly influenced by genetics:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-017-0005-6#Sec11
"Strong evidence shows genetic factors account for a substantial proportion of variation in educational attainment and its many precursors."
Therefore, if according to your article that illustrates education was the biggest correlation in Brexit voting, and if educational attainment is significantly influenced by genetics, then the vote was de facto significantly affected by genetic influence.

This notion is made further weakened then by your other source, arguing that people often prefer spouses that hold similar political opinions. OK, I agree. But that argument also doesn't prove it's genetic. Once again, I can think of many reasons off the top of my head that could also explain it, like exposure, culture, agreeability, shared experiences and political environment. And once again, I think everyone here knows someone who's married and had kids with someone of a completely different political worldview. It's a bit of a leap of logic to therefore argue that that's a reason in favour of politics being genetic.

It's not a leap at all and people reproducing with those significantly different from themselves is a statistical rarity, which reinforces the notion of heritability. As you can refer to the previous source I posted, even when controlling and measuring for environment (experience), there is still a significant, proven genetic influence. If you want to dispute this, you have to dispute the science which demonstrates a good degree of determinism. Again, environment is important, but environment is filtered through the genetic and physiological lens.

Completely agree with you on the criminal justice reform part. Well, except with all of that mumbo-jumbo about single-dimensional people. But if you like, there is a lot of ways in which you could get involved with changing criminal justice. In fact, in the US you have a fairly unique level of influence on that realm; you get to vote on judges, sheriffs and direct ballot initiatives that all can reflect whatever view you like on criminal justice. And even huge states like Florida have voted to give felons the right to vote, so this assumption that you can't mobilise vast numbers of people to vote the right way on these issues is baloney. Put up the pressure, fight where it hurts, and it's remarkable how much you can achieve in a democracy

Actually, science says I won't make a difference. Fear is a primary factor in voting on issues and people aren't willing to leave their comfort zone and the capability for abstract thought is painfully limited amongst the generic masses. Economic influence is where I put my faith. Money is power.