This is why I, as an autistic person, think internally using a sort of infinite mechanical analog diagram sheet thing.
Physical analogies are beautiful for how quickly they can convey a concept. Those disconnected tracks are a great representation of the third party voting situation we face, the “throwaway vote” problem.
I like the disconnected track because I didn’t even notice it for like 20 seconds of looking at the image.
I support voting Democrat in this situation but after the election, people should support fair vote us to get ranked voting.
And I thought this was perfect for demonstrating why people avoiding the donkey track for a single issue, no matter how bad, really need to look at the rest of the video picture, the state of the other choices
If that third track were an option the trolley problem would never have existed. If there really is a third track in the real-life situation, then the trolley problem is not a good analogy of that problem.
Sadly, in this election there is no third track and we are forced into choosing the lesser of two evils.
If you want a third track, push for ranked choice voting!
the joke is that you are actively removing yourself from the situation by making a decision to do nothing. In essence, that track has no trolley on it, and no people on it, meaning nobody dies… As long as you don’t look over your shoulder.
meaning nobody dies… As long as you don’t look over your shoulder.
The real joke is how the “no choice” position is such extreme nonsense that even something as dumbed down as a meme can’t make any part of it seem logical.
it’s not explicitly nonsense, one of the decisions that you can make in the trolley problem is doing nothing, this is the equivalent of doing nothing in a comedic fashion.
Standing at the lever, close your eyes real hard and wish there was a third choice as you hope someone else makes that choice for you
plug your ears, close your eyes, and yell “I CANT HEAR YOU” repeatedly over and over again.
In the same way ‘would you rather’ is meant to force a decision between two unacceptable choices, the trolly problem is meant to highlight the morality of refusing to choose (and ensuring the worse decision).
The third rail is just redundant.
This is the problem with the trolley problem.
If it were replaced with, say, being told to shoot one group or another by a sadistic guard, the possibility of refusing to choose would be more obvious in terms of what it means morally.
The trolley is an inanimate object. It isn’t making choices.
Political parties are more like the sadistic guard. They are making choices.
In the same way ‘would you rather’ is meant to force a decision between two unacceptable choices, the trolly problem is meant to highlight the morality of refusing to choose (and ensuring the worse decision).
in a really reductive sense, yes. The trolley problem is at it’s heart, a question of whether being involved in an atrocity is better than being uninvolved in an atrocity.
Very well, I shall push for it by
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voting the same way regardless if the candidate supports it, and
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suddenly participating in direct action, because we weren’t already doing that.
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There literally is a third option that will be printed on most of not all ballots. Rank choice voting is huge but people should be willing to vote earnestly. Nobody wants to be the one to make the change and wants the world to change first but that’s not how it works.
In a FPTP voting system, you cannot vote earnestly. To do so all but guarantees the election of the opposition.
Explanation: https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
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that video explains well how strategic voting ends up with two parties.
And we have an electoral college, so actually you can still vote earnestly in most states without major concern.
No. In the current system you should not vote earnestly. In a fair system you should. Not in the one we have. The only moral choice is to select the lesser evil. Otherwise you might as well vote for the greater one.
Only if your vote might change the results. Which isn’t true for millions of Americans.
I’m with you on what the meme is trying to say, but the bottom track needs to be shown looping around to the Republican track and running over everyone.
Because that’s where the third track leads.
Yep, not voting is unironically pretty much the same as voting for the party you least want in charge.
Because you’re making it that much more likely.
Don’t throw away a right that your ancestors fought for, as it may result in future generations no longer having that right.
Hitler’s government was a popular government; the vast majority of Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise.
[…]
The former Berlin businessman I referred to earlier told me that he blamed his own group, people with the time and the money and the opportunity to know better, for what happened to Germany. “We ignored Hitler,” he said. “We considered him an unimportant fellow, not quite a gentleman, not of our own class. We considered it just a little bit vulgar to bother with him, to bother with politics at all.”
They thought of the government as “They.” The only possible route to a clear conscience in politics is to accept political responsibility, either as an active member of the party in power or as an equally active member of the loyal opposition.
—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government
That’s not how it went, though. It’s, in fact, the opposite of how it went. Hitler had relatively little popular support, but full support of the industrial elite. It’s blaming the people for the crimes of the elite. “They abdicated their franchise” no, fuckface, half of them voted communist. “We ignored Hitler” no, fuckface, you put him in power because you thought he’d be malleable.
I’m not surprised Heinlein bought it, though. And I’m not surprised people here are buying it.
Similarly, MLK saw “the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice” as the biggest impediment to civil rights.
The bottom line is that being secure enough in your position in society to think you don’t have to engage in politics, or that you can afford to vote your principles instead of tactically, is itself a form of privilege. Those sorts of privileged people think themselves neutral or uninvolved or maybe (in the case of professed leftists refusing to vote Dem as a protest) on their own third side, but the reality is that they are the right-wing authoritarians’ greatest ally every single time.
Lol imagine thinking “moderate white” doesn’t perfectly describe the majority of people walking into the 2020 primaries and voting for Joe Biden.
You’re not wrong about the primary, but you are wrong to conflate the primary with the general election when it’s the latter that we’re talking about here.
Lol so I’m “radical” in the primaries when I don’t vote for Biden but I’m “moderate” in the general when I don’t vote for Biden?
That’s not how labels work sir.
The POTUS, from the party most opposed to civil rights act, is who signed it into law, very much so a white moderate more devoted to order. So, I’m gonna take a stance and say MLK was wrong about that one if that was his take before he died.
It’s funny that both democrats and third party voters will look at your comment and think you’re on their side.
Well, mathematically it’s only half as bad.
-1 lesser evil +1 greater evil
Vs.
-1 lesser evil +0 greater evil
Your math is wrong. You wouldn’t be cancelling out the greater evil with the vote for the lesser evil, so its actually twice as bad (or 4x what you were thinking).
0 lesser evil +1 greater evil
Exactly.
There is unfortunately no option to wind up with a non-evil result, your only options are greater evil result or lesser evil result.
By voting 3rd party you didn’t reduce the chance of greater evil result, AND you didn’t increase the chance of lesser evil result.
Well, I didn’t intend on voting for Trump but, fine, you’ve convinced me.
Yes, you of course weren’t already going to do that. 🙄
Hey, as long as you vote. Everyone should vote.
Like so?
Also, let’s have 'im on the track too.
“Oh, no, I’m not in any of those groups on the track, so I can safely not vote and have a clear conscience as it crushes everyone!”
Then they came for me…
“All men were created equal”
IS SLAVE STATE
always jave been coming for us.
What a sad misunderstanding of a quote literally describing state enforced genocide. I mean, this is how it starts. Both sides would kill Palestinians. Can’t do anything about it I guess. Oh well, best not put my foot down and take a principled stand here.
Who’s next?
You think that Republicans wouldn’t support genocide against anyone they consider to be their enemy?
I think that accepting that some groups, like Palestinians, will just be oppressed no matter what is what leads to things like the Holocaust. Saying you can’t afford to take a stand on your principles today and draw a line in the sand, but maybe you will tomorrow leads to the situation Martin Niemoller found himself in. It may be too late already, and making a stand won’t make a difference, but it’s never too early.
And what happens when a significant chunk of the electorate does that? I bet all those poor Palestinians will really feel good about Israel being given the green light to bomb them harder because a bunch of people protested and got a dementia riddled fascist elected.
These posts are just virtue signalling, because there’s never any forethought of what happens after the election to the people being discussed. You can speak from a place of privilege and moralize about the choice you’re making, but you’re pushing the same tactics that the republicans and alt-right push: don’t vote democrat.
I don’t like that I have to vote for Biden, but I actually want to minimize the harm being done to people, not just talk about it on the internet. Crazy concept.
These don’t-vote-for-Biden weirdos don’t understand that it’s wrong to use the idea of a minority to push your political interests in a way that hurts that minority.
If a significant portion of the electorate did that, Biden would be on the phone this minute applying all possible pressure to stop what is happening. Instead they are playing chicken with your vote. Children died today and every day for the past 8 months because a political party is betting that you’ll vote for them anyways.
Again, the original issue I raised is that it’s cruel to quote a man lamenting the fact that he and others like him didn’t do enough soon enough to stop the Holocaust. That same behavior is happening right now. But it’s fine. We just have to accept it. A few losses for the greater good. I’d bet you don’t have any Palestinian friends, but if you do, please let them know I’m the one who’s privileged and see what they say.
As someone who for the first time did not vote in 2016. I started voting in the Bush era. I fully agree, no action leads to fascism apparently. Don’t do what I did because I was pissed that Bernie was cheated out of the nomination. Vote or Trump will be back in office.
Doesn’t matter where the track leads if the trolley can’t get to it. It could lead to rainbows and sunshine, but that isn’t where the trolley is headed because there is no possibility that someone other than Trump or Biden is elected president. A few cry babies voting third party won’t get some third person elected. A vote for the third track is a vote for a track that will not be ridden.
It could be a little model trolley track going in a loop with no trolley on it.
It makes sense because you can see that the track exists and is better, but there’s no way to actually get the train onto it
the bottom track needs to be shown looping around to the Republican track
Okay, but the guy at the controls needs to be the swing vote on the SCOTUS.
I’m assuming the third track being entirely disconnected and therefore not a real option is intentional.
Either way, accurate
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So, why do some blue states want to continueusing FPTP voting? Why continue using a voting system favored by Republicans? In states controlled by Democrats, there’s no Republican opposition hindering electoral reform efforts.
FPTP favors whichever party is currently in power in a two party system. Solid blue states don’t want to switch because it makes their hold on power less secure. Same reason as Republicans in red states.
You’re factually correct, and I support your long term goal, but it’s not something we can achieve by November.
I swear I hear this regardless of how close we are to the next presidential election. Can we maybe focus on some of the other races on the ballot? I would love if we could get a Congress that was actually able to make good things happen, instead of trying very hard to do nothing so bad things don’t happen.
Congress might also have been able to get more done if there was a filibuster-proof majority for more than several months in the last several decades.
I do vote for the most progressive person available in the primaries tho.
The fact that we even need a filibuster proof majority to get anything done is yet another glaring example of how fucked we are.
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Yeah, the focus on winning the presidency ignores the down ballot, small market and “off-cycle” races, and, to get to fillibuster-proof majorities, those races are the ones that need to be won. Berating progressives in urban areas to vote for moderate liberal candidates for president is not exactly harm reduction.
Sorry, media is now handled at the national level so covering local and state races outside of ones that get clicks isn’t profitable
Oh, good! Is it also owned by large corporations who have interests that cause them to favor certain stories because it impacts their bottom line and the editorial desk does not have strong independence from the business side of things because of a monoculture of publishers? Surely, this will bring us a wide variety of political candidates and not an endless parade of arch-capitalists and fascists who give kickbacks to corporations!
Electoral systems is a pretty nerdy topic (despite how important it is for who gets power), so it is not an issue the typical voter cares for. Therefore there is not enough political capital for such large reforms to be taken on by politicians.
Based on the about of Lemmy comments advocating for it, it seems like the typical voter is pretty passionate about ranked choice voting.
Based on a super niche subset of chronically online youth - this applies to everyone. 🤪
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You’ll have to be more specific about what blowing up the train maps to in real life before I can tell you whether or not doing so would also kill a shit ton of people.
But to keep it in metaphor, there are also innocent people riding the train and blowing it up would kill them, too.
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Propaganda of the deed is a powerful message
Yeah, if you made a habit of doing that we’d end to with more deaths and a lower quality of life overall.
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Most of them, sure. But killing them with any kind of regularity would have a number of knock-on effects that would severely decrease many people’s quality of life.
If your friend has a brain tumor, you don’t point a gun to their head and shoot it out. You find brain surgeons and have them remove it under controlled conditions. Supposing you can’t find a brain surgeon, it would still be better to learn brain surgery yourself and do a careful and thorough job than it would be to just shoot your friend in the head and hope for the best.
People like op.dont care and are bad faith trolls
You say that as if you’re not a liberal pretending to be a leftist.
You say that as though you’re the arbiter of what’s “left” and what’s not.
Call us whatever you like. We don’t vote for strike blocking genocide supporting candidates.
Cool, have fun with apathy, I hope it magically results in a revolution.
I hope your strike blocking, genocide supporting candidate magically results in more workers rights and less genocide.
The plan fails, the top track gets removed due to terrorist activities, and even more things are on the remaining track.
(If you ask me: Jan 6 should have had even more consequences for republicans, but they like to bend the rules to their own benefits)
It’s close enough to the tracks that it would hurt the hostages, and the wreckage would probably have enough momentum to hit them anyway.
This is a good analogy actually. Blowing up the train would feel good, but that isn’t going to stop the momentum, and it’s unfortunately virtually impossible to outright stop it’s momentum at this point. All that blowing up the train would accomplish is sending fiery wreckage towards the middle track.
This is why accelerationism is stupid.
You first.
That would just stop time itself
this one is actually really funny, i like this one.
Good shit.
I appreciate OPs honesty that Palestinians are dead either way.
stop the trolley, dumb fucks 😂
Guys, I don’t know what’s going on in the world and their wars. I just want a president who isn’t abhorently evil. Do we have to revolutionize to find that 3rd option orrr?
Do we have to revolutionize to find that 3rd option
Pretty much. It’s against the interest of both parties to have more options because both are near-guaranteed to lose power if there were more options.
I assume your “abhorently evil” comment is based off support of the genocide in Palestine (which is a completely reasonable thing to describe as abhorently evil, I’m just being clear about my premise).
In which case, sorry, bad news, you can’t have that. Your options this time round are genocide supporter or genocide supporter. Somewhere down the line, years from now, the US electoral system may have been sufficiently reformed to make third parties viable. But this year that’s not going to happen.
So that decision is completely out of your hands. But here’s what you do get to decide; you can have an outright fascist, leading a party of outright fascists who have openly publicised their plans to turn your country into a fascist theocracy. Or you can have the guys who strengthened workers rights and went after major companies for union busting, hit Microsoft for $20 billion in back taxes, had the FBI raid a major landlord for illegal price hikes, brought antitrust lawsuits against Amazon and several other large tech firms, and secured billions in aid for Ukraine in their fight for their freedom. And that is literally just a tiny sampling of the good things that Biden’s government has done.
I don’t even see how that’s a choice. One of these two options is clearly and manifestly better than the other, no matter how disgusting it feels. A vote for Biden is not an endorsement of his position on Gaza. It is a tactical choice, nothing more. And if nothing else, its a tactical choice that will prevent the fascists from filling even more seats on the supreme court.
It sucks, but those are the only options. Sometimes life just be like that.
This guy gets it. I don’t see how this is so difficult to understand. Not voting is essentially skewing the vote towards the diaper-wearing Nazi-Clown you once already had for a president. Vote for the least evil party, it’s all you can do.
Then you all should have voted for someone better in the 2020 primaries.
Your argument is made every four years. The someday you talk about never seems to arrive. Which means the reasoning is missing something important.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
I think the choice is really: Does America deserve the lesser evil?
But what if I am a bad faith actor that only pushes the “no moral choice” position because I want to ensure that the fascists take power? Better yet, what if my Russian paycheck demands it. Then what do I do?
Are you forgetting about all the registered Democrats who voted uncommitted in the 2024 primaries? Not everybody who hates Biden is a Russian troll bud.
I’m certain ballots with good options are unavailable absent a revolution, but if we tried under present conditions we’d likely only get worse governance and maybe destabilize the global balance of power catastrophically.
Thank you! We may eventually have to but revolutions do not have certain outcomes and we face a second problem that in general will require a mechanism for global cooperation which is hard to do when the state with the military, cultural, and economic influence the US currently has plunges into chaos
We can have it for the low price of demanding it. Tell the Democrats you won’t vote for Biden if he doesn’t stop supporting the Israeli genocide.
You realize why the Ashley Biden rape showers with grandpa suddenly became nearly mainstream news and will suddenly go away if Biden does what he’s told?
If that’s how it is then we’ve already lost. People who would make up stories like that would rather take the mask off and destroy democracy then let us get in their way.
Oh, I didn’t say it was made up. That diary seems to be real.
I’m guessing the joke is that third party voters ignore the trolley about to go down one of two paths, instead deciding to stand next to a short piece of track connected to nothing with no trolley on it, so they can pretend the imminent disaster happening on the other track isn’t real
And there’s also a contingent of people on the trolley who are trying to get it to slow down, working their asses off to improve long term actual outcomes in the real world, whether related or not to the little lever, and the guy standing next to the empty disconnected track is claiming to be one of them and saying you must be against them and how dare you, you person-running-over-enabling monster, if you say anything against his strategy.
Fuck me this comment section is toxic
Funny thing is, that’s what’s called a controlled derailment. It’s the engineering answer to the situatuon, if the situation were real and not a contrived philosophical dilemma.
This guy gets it
The Biden approach
And the third track has buffers at both ends, is covered in weeds and somebody has stolen some of the sleepers to make a nice planter for their garden.
