Stoneykins [any]

Well if there is no practical point in our communicating, with our senses of morality being so alien to each other, could you at least avoid doing it anyways for the sake of being so insulting to me?

I don’t need that condescension, thanks, I’m all topped up.

Not to be rude but this is an oversimplified and incorrect view of voting and is the exact kind of mindset I am against.

If you try to insist non-voting is somehow support for a specific candidate, what does that say about people who can’t vote for personal/health reasons? If someone working poverty wages, unable to get the day off to vote, can’t get their vote counted, are they somehow a bad person?

Additionally, although less significant, I can’t consider it morally wrong, ever, to vote third party. Strategically wrong, sure, it often is, but the point of a vote is to choose, and I can’t blame someone for using their right to choose to be an idealist rather than a strategist. And honestly, in an election like this with so much frustration towards the major parties, 3rd party has a better chance of winning than usual… although I’m sure that is a stressful and unpleasant thing to hear if you dislike third parties.

That’s the basis of what the spoiler effect is and why it’s a problem to consider, yeah.

I just think it is better to be clear about how it works and what it means. Non-voting and third party votes being described as explicit support for trump has some troubling implications.

I just want to point out a thing said in this, that I have seen said hundreds of other times, which is not correct.

Due to the spoiler effect, a leftist vote for a third party candidate is essentially a vote for trump

This is incorrect, most charitably interpreted as an exaggeration, but it is said so often I think people are misunderstanding the spoiler effect.

The spoiler effect is real and it can suppress a victory of not-as-bad candidates if they have a popular opposition, but it is never as bad as “essentially voting for trump”. It is equivalent to not voting at all, at worst.

And it is also a simplification of the situation to imply that the spoiler effect only affects democrats. There is a similar thing going on with conservative third parties.

I feel like if it really mapped so cleanly onto the trolley problem, there wouldn’t need to be 4 paragraphs of text included throughout the meme in an attempt to head off any arguments…

I’m not sure why anyone would expect trump to not also fund the genocide of Palestinians.

Bluntly, the policy differences between the two are insufficient, but the behavior of trump supporters themselves is part of my considerations. Having trump as president for 4 years inspired incredibly fucked up behavior from conservatives.

I can only accept that as an argument for why strategic voting is smart. It doesn’t make sense to me as an argument for saying voting for the candidate you want is morally wrong in contexts where it could cause a spoiler effect. This is where people are blurring the line that bothers me.

I agree with all that. Your point about ranked choice is why I personally think state elections are more important than presidential at the moment, and is one of the major reasons I have for still voting democrat.

I think when it comes to telling other people how to vote, people should be more careful to not accidentally encourage hopelessness and voter apathy by the way they phrase it.

I don’t agree with saying anything but voting for joe biden is totally equivalent to voting for trump, which is being said a lot… I don’t see why.

Not voting or voting 3rd party can cause a spoiler effect. But obviously that effect is less than directly voting for the worse guy. Mathematically they aren’t the same.

It is causing a lot of conflict to try and place a moral obligation on strategic voting specifically.

Everyone who is about to yell at me: I’ll probably vote strategically, that is my plan. I just don’t agree with all this hatred for 3rd parties.

Global climate change and the all the plants and animals that have gone extinct makes Africa a different place than it was when hominids first evolved. And the population sizes were on entirely different magnitudes pre-agriculture. And even then, when they did start spreading, many of them starved or died from other things we would consider preventable in modern contexts.

So whether or not people are currently dealing with food insecurity in Africa has pretty much nothing to do with where humanity evolved from. The explanation for what is going on, even though we have agriculture and could feed everyone, is colonialism.

Idk if you can make a genetic argument about centaurs breeding with horses tbh. I think that conversation only happens if you handwave DNA lmao

I agree with and understand a lot of your frustrations, as they are also my frustrations.

But you basically said “I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils, so now I will vote for the greater of two evils.” Just vote 3rd party or something, and try to not take it personally when people are assholes about elections.

The two party problem as a result of first past the post means that not voting against the party you dislike more can result in a spoiler effect, and reduce the chances of the not-as-bad mainstream party winning the election. But, I reject that that spoiler effect is necessarily as bad as voting directly for the worse candidate, it is mathematically untrue. Many people try to insist they are equivalent to try and motivate voting, but I think it has the opposite effect, making people feel apathetic about the entire voting process.

Under first past the post we cannot be free of the biases of the system that enforces two parties, BUT it is possible to rarely, with a big movement of people, swap a third party with on of the major parties to replace it as a major party. The way I see voting 3rd party in situations like this is like the prisonor’s dilemma. People are motivated individually to cast their votes strategically for the major party they prefer by the spoiler effect, but if enough people collectively vote 3rd party then the outcome would be better for everyone. Thus, I cannot agree with or accept people claiming voting third party is unacceptable. It might not be likely to be effective, but it is hopeful and not nearly as misguided as people try to insist it is.

Also, Idk if this even applies to me, I’ll probably be using my vote strategically. I just support people’s right to vote 3rd party.

I’m so tired of people saying not voting for biden is completely equivalent to voting for trump, but this is stupid.

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Hi! I don’t know what this means.

Ehh, they have parts similar in their concepts but in practice I wouldn’t say they are super similar. Pretty different vibes.

Edit: also Vintage Story is exactly as hard as you want it to be, the world gen and difficulty settings have a lot of options.

It started life as a minecraft mod called vintagecraft. I believe you could say terrafirmacraft was one of it’s inspirations. They made this a standalone game when they got frustrated with minecraft’s limitations.

Nice to see it on lemmy. I really like this game, feels like the Primitive Technology videogame.

Edit: I should point out that this game also has amazing mod support and there are good mods for it. If you like modding minecraft you will like this game, I’m almost certain.