Because the party in power feels like they can win > 50% of the 16-17 year old vote and therefore it is an advantage to them. They do not feel that moving away from FPP is an advantage to them. Functioning democracy is not their goal. Staying in power is.
The current first-past-the-post system works quite well, for those who have the power to change the system.
Vs. - in the last U.K. election, which party was the most vocal about that first-past-the-post system needing replacement? What % of the votes were cast for them?
This was relatively recently floated (2011) and thrown out to referendum (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternat...), where it was watered down to Alternative Vote rather than full PR and eventually rejected. Obviously none of these 16 year olds would have been old enough to vote in the referendum (or indeed have been born when it took place).
~One thing to bear in mind is that FPTP limits the influence of “extreme” parties on elections (see UKIP’s vote share in 2015), but at the expense of requiring more mainstream parties to pander to those voters to avoid splitting the vote share. Jury is still out I think on what’s “best” here and probably depends on what “best” means to the person forming an opinion.~
Edit: turns out the above is at best contested, at worst disproven.
It was a huge mess; basically the only people properly backing it were the Lib Dems, Labour were not out there in favor of it and in any case the media (overwhelmingly Tory) were against it. Just as with Brexit. The UK is basically not to be trusted with referendums.
The weird thing is how many different election systems are in use in the UK depending on what the politics of each devolved assembly is "supposed to be".
Tell me about it. The whole thing was basically a bone thrown to Nick Clegg to entice the Lib Dems into the coalition. As far as I can tell, this neutered referendum was the only thing the Lib Dems got out of the coalition government, and even that wasn’t the PR referendum they pushed during the election campaign.
I lived in his constituency at the time and I am ashamed to admit I voted for him. It’s a travesty to see what has happened since (not just the whole coalition thing, his work with Meta too).
FPTP tends to be the system that most reliably favours extreme candidates [0] - everything else promotes candidates who are most in tune community norms. Candidates who don't align with any of the voters tend not to get in under any fundamentally democratic system - someone who is willing to do what they're promising but more in tune with the voters have an easy time against that sort of candidate.
Although just from browsing the UKs AV proposal it does look like it'd be similar to IRV which has some wild results in certain tight races. Although I personally think that is fine; a little randomness is good for the system.
Interesting, I previously understood this as an established fact, but turns out there are some very convincing arguments that show that I am wrong on this. Thank you for the challenge and correction.
The article suggests that the people in charge of the system want children to be more involved in making political decisions. This signals a lot about what is happening in elite circles.
If that is the nature of the atmosphere then I doubt many important people are going to put their head above the parapet and call for reforms in the direction of adults getting better political expression. The power holders don't think that is favourable to them.
So 16 year olds are wise enough to vote, but not fully leave education, buy alcohol, drive a car, join the army and get married without your parents consent, the lists goes on.
There’s no one list. For all the things you mentioned, they are allowed to drive tractors or quads, get married with your parents’ consent, have kids, etc.
Think how weird this would be to someone from the UK a century ago:
"You can have a bisexual orgy on your 16th birthday where someone gets pregnant in celebration of their first time voting, but under no circumstances is the woman allowed to be married until the kid is 15 months old, at which point she can marry another woman. Photographs of the event will, in many jurisdictions, be treated as a criminal offence even though the act itself isn't and those same photos would be fine at 18, which is also now the age when they are no longer subject to a mandatory choice between ongoing education or an apprenticeship."
True, but even if you’re only in Harrogate until you’re 18, you are still signed up until you’re 22, meaning you can be killed on a battlefield aged 18 because of a decision you made when you were 16.
In the context of the discussion on voting, I think the “decision” part is the key point here.
Why do you think you need to have all civil liberties before being allowed to vote? Does it make you a better voter if you can leave school, drink alcohol, drive a car, join the army and get married without your parents consent? This is absurd.
So you're allowed to vote, but you don't need to pay your taxes. You're still considered a child regarding justice law, but considered adult regarding voting?
So basically you're not allowed to camp somewhere without the consent of your parents but you're "suddenly old enough" to judge about some laws?
I think the consensus is missing if voting is permitted by 16, but everything else stays the same.
If you have sufficient income or wealth at 16 you do have to pay taxes. It just happens that most 16 year olds don't have sufficient wealth or income to pay taxes. There is very little difference in terms of duties of a 16 year old and an unemployed adult who does get to vote.
Somewhere one has to draw the line, or you can go down to voting power for toddlers. And the best and obvious line was to treat an adult human as a "full" citizen with all the rights and duties.
So how far down in age would you go and why would you stop at that age?
I'd argue earliest age at which you can be drafted minus maximum term length (ie. 5 years in the UK) sounds good as a general rule. Otherwise people can get drafted by a government they didn't have a say in electing.
I'd also argue that there should be no lower age limit for voting for people with taxable income. No taxation without representation.
> Otherwise people can get drafted by a government they didn't have a say in electing.
This kind of thinking is not rooted in reality. When you were born, you were forced to accept the conditions you were born into. The same is true with laws. I understand that going to war is something else than going to school, but that's life.
> No taxation without representation.
"Representation" in the original slogans context does not really apply here (since it was about voting rights for a taxed population as a whole).
But for the idea of "anyone who has to pay taxes, must also have a say!", I can only say that it comes right back to the previous point: You could just as well argue the individual income tax rate must be zero, until a person had the opportunity to vote at least once. The world doesn't work this way.
When it was the last time we had an actual issue where 16yo voting had direct measurable negative impact on something in real life? I think it's as other said, we have to draw a line, and I think it's reasonable to debate this because maybe each nation prepares their kids differently so one nations 16yo isn't another, this way there isn't a universal rule. But arguing that you have to discuss ALL the other civil liberties before discussing 16yo voting rights is absurd because there is no connection between drinking and voting and all else.
If you have numbers that measure that, it probably will. The closest thing we have is vaccination rates by age group, which shows a lower percentage of younger age groups being vaccinated for covid.
We can try to argue all day along about whether or not someone 16 actually knows enough about what is going on to vote. But that completely falls apart when you can talk to many adults and they don't know either (see reactions to US election).
I think this also makes sense, I know when I was younger I was extremely frustrated to see adults making really bad decisions for my country that will have a much longer impact on my life than it will on theirs.
I think a minimum age makes sense, I don't think someone in elementary has any point in voting since most likely they would just do what their parents told them. But by 16 you are generally making your own decisions, your figuring out your adult plans, and not following everything your parents say.
> But that completely falls apart when you can talk to many adults and they don't know either
What all these "well adults are dumb too!" arguments ignore is that, those adults were even dumber when they were 2 (or 5, compared to the original voting age of 21) years younger.
At least when you are forced to be in school you are in an environment to likely absorb... something. We regularly kept up with current events in school.
I know many adults that have basically zero idea what is going on in the world.
Also I should note that I did not claim anything about intelligence, but just an awareness of what is going on and the impact of it.
I would possibly even argue that a 16 year old being in school likely has a fresher recollection of history than many adults. I mean how many adults remember all of the math they learned compared to 16 year olds.
People say that if 16 year olds can work, pay tax, and join the army, they should be allowed to vote, but that argument doesn’t really hold up.
First off, the UK has one of the most generous tax free allowances in the world, you don’t pay tax on anything under £12,570. Most 16 year olds working part time or on low wages aren’t paying any tax at all, so the whole “no taxation without representation” thing doesn’t really apply here.
And let’s be honest, most 16 year olds aren’t working anyway. They’re still in school or college, not out earning or dealing with adult responsibilities.
Some people say teens are too immature to vote. Personally, I think it’s more about naivety. At 16, you’re still figuring out who you are, let alone understanding politics or economics. If someone like KSI ran for office, half of them would probably vote him in as Chancellor just for the memes.
You learn a lot of tough lessons on the way to adulthood. At 16, you’ve got zero life experience, no bills, no mortgage, no kids, and probably no full time job. So when it comes to voting, they’re more likely to be swayed by TikTok trends or what their mates think, rather than actual policies or ideology.
And let’s be real, Labour knows this. Just look at the voting intention by age
However it will back fire because many that age will split the vote to Greens, Lib Dems and maybe even Corbynites.
Next question that courts might ask in cases are, if a 16 year old criminal gets away with more as they are counted as a juvenile, but is considered old enough to choose the lawmakers, does the same adult laws now apply to them? If they are not perceived as mature enough to be considered as an adult criminal, then why is it different for voting?
They can be made to turn out easily as children around that age - yes, children, teenage children but still children - are highly susceptible to group pressure. I do wonder whether the Labour leaders who thought this would help them win the next election have had a look at the results of many of those school polls which do not paint a rosy picture for old stodgy parties like Labour. It is far more likely for someone like Farage to benefit from 16yo boys being able to vote and whatever radical leftie - no name comes to mind which is a problem for the political left in the UK - to gain votes from 16yo girls.
One argument for lowering voting age is given by selectorate theory. Basically it argues that higher coalition size (the number of people that participate in decision making) is what causes democracy to benefit the masses. Because parties compete for votes, they are forced to distribute societal goods back to a large portion of the population instead of only distributing it to their cronies. Arguably the quality of voting in terms decision making is secondary, if it matters at all. By this theory, lowering voting age is a boon to democracy.
Adding 2 additional years of people won't make enough of a difference for that theory. The truth is, one party is pushing for this because they stand to benefit from it because it will slightly bump up their support numbers.
> Arguably the quality of voting in terms decision making is secondary, if it matters at all.
It doesn't matter who we vote for, as long as we vote? What a bad joke. By this theory, all foreign interference, propaganda, education, control of the news, etc.. are completely irrelevant, nothing we should be concerned about at all. Just vote and it'll be fine!
>It doesn't matter who we vote for, as long as we vote?
More that voting egotistically (in contrast to trying to predict what is best for society as a whole) is sufficient to create the incentives that benefit the many, as long as the number of voters makes up a high enough share of the population.
Horrific idea. Those paying into the system should have the strongest stake, not those with elementary ideas and no stake at all (or worse, those dependent upon the system's rewards).
If you're implying that money printing significantly benefits the generation which instates it and bankrupts everyone who comes after, then I agree. And democracies have a long history of relying on debasement to fund their excesses, a significant factor in their implosions.
16-year-olds do pay into the system. Some may have jobs or apprenticeships that pay them, for which they're directly taxed. Some may have started their own business, which will pay tax. All will pay VAT when they buy products and services.
Can you explain why you think that? Do you think person's voting power should be directly proportional to how much they pay in taxes? (Beyond the already indirect influence of money)
In a very important sense, 16 year old has a much bigger stake in the future of their country than a 70 year old.
>Do you think person's voting power should be directly proportional to how much they pay in taxes?
Not quite, because that would grant power and influence to the rich that is already quite heavy on account of their wealth and ability to employ constituents. Qualifying voting power by way of being an active payer is, however, absolutely sensible.
>A 16 year old has a much bigger stake in the future of their country than a 70 year old.
They also have nothing to lose. With the least invested in a system's continuation, history is rich with young teenage raiders, conquerors, mutineers, revolutionaries, and rioters. They are the primary demographic with the lowest stake, and have the least concern for any Chesterton's fences. They are also the poorest equipped to make decisions concerning material resources, since utopian idealism is common at that age. They haven't yet suffered or built much at all, and it's easy for them to dismiss the sheer volume of accumulated knowledge, material, and labor that sustains civilization.
Those paying the most already are more invested in the outcomes of the country, do you mean their vote should count for more or less based on how much they pay in taxes?
I'd be interested in a system where you can gain additional voting power based on $stake. Everyone gets a vote, but based on $criteria, you gain additional votes.
Youth and parents get an extra vote on school stuff. Those whose education or career are related to a field get an extra vote. In some cases, you may hold 5x the voting power of someone who is removed and unfamiliar with a topic.
I'd hate to see that system implemented. The point of every person getting one vote is to even the playing field. Everyone living under that authority's rule should have an equal say in who runs that authority.
Allowing people to have more or less say based on stake would lead to a spiral. Those in charge take care of the people they care about, those people would continue to elect the same politicians, and everyone else would be left aside while power (and stake) consolidates.
Graduated income taxes level the playing field; wouldn't a graduated voting system level the playing field?
Why should someone who knows nothing of field have a say in laws that over represents their knowledge and stake?
I don't think my vote for what you feed your kids should count the same as your vote on what you feed your kids.
The worry about votes and power collecting is sane. It happens already through propaganda and ill informed (usually due to low perceived stakes) voters. We need a system that counters the negative effects if low informed masses.
Well we definitely disagree there, but that's probably a deeper rabbit hole than is worth diving down here.
> Why should someone who knows nothing of field have a say in laws that over represents their knowledge and stake?
I don't think voting rights should be gated on education, experience, or opinions. I already hesitate with age, but saying a child shouldn't vote feels much less offensive than saying a person with money or education should get more votes.
> I don't think my vote for what you feed your kids should count the same as your vote on what you feed your kids.
I don't think either of us should have any say in what the other feeds their kids, the law should definitely not have a say in that either.
> We need a system that counters the negative effects if low informed masses.
I think we pretty well agree here, except for maybe the angle of a solution. I'm of the opinion that we can't force people to be better educated, nor should we prevent them from voting. In my opinion the government should only have as much authority as we are willing to hand over to an official elected by today's voting population. If we fear the mob or the uneducated voter than the issue is with how much power our government has rather than who does the voting.
Net tax payers in past parliament. Receive private pension or public health care or use some public service. Well you are out of voter pool. Corporate handouts should also be counted. Own stock in company that gets some public funds and that is counted against you.
I don't get why letting a few thousand extra people participate in politics gets people so worked up. I think it's good to get people involved in politics while they're still learning about it. You can tell them the importance of democratic participation and also let them actually engage in it instead of it falling to the back of their mind and being forgotten years later when they can actually vote.
Also I was more politically aware at 16 than most adult I know now.
16-17 for each gender looks to be a little under 400K for each
So (4)(400,000)(0.536) = 857,600
So thousands.
Either way it's not like they're all going to vote one way and it's not like they can seize the government with their own special interest party that only caters to 16-17 year old even if they all managed to vote one way. So really as far as results it will mostly be a wash, but has the benefit of potentially creating some more engaged and politically active citizens which is a win for democracy.
The article doesn't feature even a single opinion opposed to lowering the voting age. Interesting. I guess the British public unanimously supports this change?
The article does include at least one opinion opposed to lowering the voting age:
> However, Conservative shadow minister Paul Holmes said the government's position was "hopelessly confused".
> "Why does this government think a 16-year-old can vote but not be allowed to buy a lottery ticket, an alcoholic drink, marry, or go to war, or even stand in the elections they're voting in?" he asked in the Commons.
Good. Given Keir Starmer's abysmal behaviour, this is about the only chance there is of keeping a Tory/Reform coalition out at the next election. I would like to see voting age capped also, at 70. Increasingly senile and racist pensioners in comfortable homes are dominating British politics with horrific consequences.
Ehhh so Starmer being a doddering idiot should be countered with keeping those who want to topple him from doing so? That does not make sense, does it? Whither democracy when those who 'vote wrong' can simply be labelled 'senile and racist' or similar and kept from casting their vote?
I think this is necessary but I also think it's not sufficient: FPTP has to go, it's a cancer on British elections and maintained by leftists who believe in the potential for an enduring super majority which cannot be demonstrated to exist: the socialist democracies of Europe with complex coalitions may appear weak but have enduring qualities a British house of commons cannot demonstrate.
That, and finishing reform of the lords. And separating the English parliament from a federal parliament over the separate nations in the federation.
Absolutely shameful reform, the only reason it's happening is because Labour holds a majority in that age bracket. This will backfire spectacularly once the younger generation flips to some kind of tik-tok popular right wing strongman.
A radical proposal: there is no minimum voting age, but to enrol to vote you must pass a civics exam-so a 12 year old who passes the exam can vote, but a 50 year old who fails it (or refuses to sit it) can’t.
I really doubt this proposal would ever actually be implemented, but still it is an interesting idea to ponder-in the abstract it seems fairer than a semi-arbitrary cutoff based on chronological age
I think the intention behind things makes a big difference. The tests you are talking about were deliberately introduced as a scheme to deny a racial minority the right to vote; my idea has a very different intention behind it.
Of course, I totally see how it might lead to unintentional indirect discrimination (“disparate impact”)-but there is a difference between that, and what was essentially direct discrimination covered with a thin veneer of “plausible deniability”.
That just gives power to whoever administers the civics exams - which would obviously be a government controlled body.
Better idea should just be that you should be a taxpayer to vote. No tax = no vote. Why should people who aren't contributing decide how to spend the money of those contributing?
A 16 year old who works has a bigger stake than a 21 year old jobless bum stuck in their parents home smoking weed and playing vidya games.
Because this only happens because of the misguided belief that young people will always vote Labour. It's nothing more than age-based gerrymandering to manipulate voting outcomes.
To the extent this is true, I would phrase it the other way: women are becoming less conservative, while young men are drifting towards the extreme right.
Just because everyone around you (which is academia) thinks this, doesn't mean its true. Because the data says the complete opposite: men drift towards the center/right, women to the extreme left.
Data by "German General Social Survey", Infratest/Dimap (an established and respected polling institute):
I have plenty of right-wing economist colleagues, thanks. And these data are for Germany, while we’re commenting on a thread about the UK.
I suspect this is also a hard thing to ‘prove’ with data, since it’s importantly about a shift in how people label left/centre/right. (No left-wing parties I know of are currently suggesting returning income tax rates on the rich anywhere near to historically normal levels, for example).
It's hard to know what to make of this without a better understanding of the methodology. But the supposed leftward shift of men and women in the UK is kind of hard to square with an increasing vote share for the hard-right morons of Reform UK.
> I have plenty of right-wing economist colleagues, thanks.
Can you name one?
> I suspect this is also a hard thing to ‘prove’ with data, since it’s importantly about a shift in how people label left/centre/right.
This is rather easy to prove with data: which type of concrete policies are they in support of (as opposed to some label, or party name or whatever, which might change its "content" over time). As a matter of fact, this being done and the trends hold.
Fully agree. The extreme left barely exists in the UK, Labour are perhaps a little right of centre, and the extreme right is all too well—funded and high-profile.
(Thought I was adding this to my previous post, but in fact I was replying). I think part of the mechanism here is the normalisation of Trump. An authoritarian/trending fascist US President is continuously reported as mostly business-as-usual, and this inevitably shifts the discourse rightwards.
According to a Prognos poll, 46% of the 16-17 year old women in Germany would vote for Die Linke, which is the successor party of the communist SED of DDR fame.
But 16 is not enough to die for your country. 16 year olds can join the military (only with parental consent btw.) but cannot be deployed to combat zones until they are 18.
Lowering it to 16 is a good start, but really it should be lowered to 0. Otherwise, how will those aged 0-15, "without a voice", prevent the older voters from confiscating all their possessions, sending them to work in the mines, and harvesting their organs once they're used up?
Honestly I'm surprised this hasn't happened already, given how they "have no voice"..
"It doesn’t matter how smart teens are or how well they scored on the SAT or ACT. Good judgment isn’t something they can excel in, at least not yet."
"The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so."
"In fact, recent research has found that adult and teen brains work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences. Teens process information with the amygdala. This is the emotional part."
The lack of maturity also needs to be stacked up against the stake youth has in the future. Why should a 90-year old with little stake in the future be allowed to vote while young people who will live for another 70 years be at the mercy of that 90-year old's voting?
I think there is a good argument to be made that young people are the biggest stakeholders in our future, and should have a say.
I would like to link this "under 25 are babies who are too young to do anything" thread to yesterday's "why is nobody having children any more, especially young people" thread.
I'm certainly not saying "under 25 are babies who are too young to do anything", but in response, I would point out that if adults weren't working so hard to prevent it, a lot more young people would have babies by 16.
Should we include an equivalent analysis of the declines in cognitive function after 70. In my experience they are much more marked than any deficits teenagers may have.
Why not go further and also consider the cognitive implications of being ill, depressed, obese, stressed, parent of a newborn, or any other condition that could have short or long term implications on mental sharpness?
I really hate when these ideas come of that effectively boil down to creating some kind of litmus test for who can be "trusted" to vote. We have an age limit, maybe the UK wants a lower limit, but at least that's a pretty simple and clear line to be drawn.
It's important to note the current discourse that Biden (82) is far too old and in a cognitive decline, while Trump (79) has a state of health that is beyond question.
> "In fact, recent research has found that adult and teen brains work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences. Teens process information with the amygdala. This is the emotional part."
This is a ridiculous claim. If you believe children think at all, they do it with the prefrontal cortex, just like every other mammal.
I know. The point was the ridiculous claim that adults think with brain part X but teens instead do it with Y. The amygdala is not going to do your math homework, that's for sure. And adults, obviously, are nowhere near free from emotional decision-making.
You seem to be saying it's a "ridiculous claim" because you're limiting the word "think" to math homework. The article is using "think" in a broader sense that includes decision making, a process that involves the limbic system and other primitive parts of the brain.
It's certainly true that those parts of the brain continue to influence decision making in adults. Nonetheless, research has shown that those parts of the brain are far more influential in teens.
It's an oversimplification to be sure, but based on solid science. There's no hard line "with seemingly magical properties" at 25, but there are enormous changes between 16ish and 25ish. The author you cited agrees, on the same site, in a different article:
> A growing body of research strongly suggests that brain development continues well into people’s 20s and beyond. ... There is strong scientific consensus that people’s decision-making abilities can evolve between their early and late 20s
That's a good followup article, but it doesn't really contradict anything and the myth is still a myth. So no, it is not based on solid science, and the whole framing should be discarded because it will just be used to rescue the hard line oversimplification. (fMRI research by itself is also not solid science; it can definitely be a useful tool and can support things, especially if paired with other behavioral and developmental science, but it has many flaws with methodology in interpreting data as well as often being statistically underpowered. At least the papers themselves are typically better than press in using appropriately uncertain language. e.g. an imaging study mentioned in the article found huge variation in actual age with a "maturation index", showing 8-12 year olds can have the same maturity as 25-30 year olds, the r^2 for their asymptotic growth curve was only 0.555.)
Some things that are better supported by multiple lines of scientific research, to quote two consecutive bits from the second article: "young people’s general cognitive skills, including their ability to reason, don’t change much after the age of 14 or so." "What does change with age is the ability to reason while distracted; emotions and peer pressure are more likely to hamper decision making in teens and early twentysomethings." These things are really outside of the pop idea of "your brain isn't fully developed until 25".
> Some things that are better supported by multiple lines of scientific research, to quote two consecutive bits from the second article: "young people’s general cognitive skills, including their ability to reason, don’t change much after the age of 14 or so." "What does change with age is the ability to reason while distracted; emotions and peer pressure are more likely to hamper decision making in teens and early twentysomethings."
Yeah, that's pretty much saying the same thing I posted.
"Young people’s general cognitive skills" (SAT and ACT scores) develop early and "don’t change much after the age of 14 or so."
"What does change with age is the ability to reason while distracted; emotions and peer pressure are more likely to hamper decision making." In other words, "Good judgment isn’t something [teens] can excel in, at least not yet."
By the way, I don't know if you noticed, but what I posted wasn't a popsci article, it was from Stanford Children's Health.
No, I really don't think it's accurate to say that the line about peer pressure and emotional distraction having more of an impact on teens than adults, which is grounded in research on risk-reward behavior in presence of peers, is just "in other words" the same as the claim about teens not being able to excel in good judgment. That's a huge leap and not supported. Teens can and often do exercise good judgment, including in high-stakes or emotionally charged situations. They often fail, too, but so do adults, even sometimes adults who "excel" at it. A key phrase in the Slate quote is "more likely to hamper" -- this is important and careful wording, because context matters, both in teens and adults. Sometimes a specific context (like presence of peers) matters a lot more in teens.
Yes, I did notice the source, and I found that more unfortunate because it's using Stanford's name to peddle crap. It might not be a literal popsci magazine piece, but it's peddling the same popsci flavored falsehood about how the brain isn't "fully developed" until age 25 or so and it follows the same popsci tropes of grossly oversimplifying, exaggerating, and using science words to sound legitimate while discouraging actual scientific inquiry. The article's actual audience is layman parents, not even the general public, and clueless ones at that if they need to be reminded about things like "become familiar with things that are important to your teens". As another example, its claim of saying "Adults think with the prefrontal cortex ... Teens process information with the amygdala" is not just grossly oversimplifying, it's just wrong. Both use both. It's just a very bad article.
I think you're taking it far too literally (do you also complain that the 2D illustration of gravity wells is inaccurate?), but I don't care to argue about it all day. Take it up with Stanford.
Though at least with gravity well diagrams, it's often (though not always, or explicitly enough) marked up as just a conceptual aid in grasping how the trajectories and orbits we can see arise without Newtonian forces. It's not passed off as the whole thing. Nor, importantly, is it used to justify policies about what people can do or should be allowed to do, or can be seen as responsible for. This bad article isn't just oversimplification, it's a gross misrepresentation of actual developmental science and the name of the site it's on just lends it fake scientific authority that will only further encourage people to use it to justify real decisions based on the false claims. That's not harmless. It's somewhat contained, being an article aimed at clueless parents of teens, until it's spread around more reinforcing the "brains don't mature until 25" meme. I hope you'll at least reconsider if you think of spreading it again.
Sure, though I'm curious if you think some voluntary pyscho-analyzing changes anything about the truth. Or are you just looking for paper links? It's one of my minor hobbies over the years to sometimes browse various papers for fun (childhood mastery of conservation of volumes is pretty interesting) or to check what the scientists actually claimed about various things, the Slate article wasn't the first I'd heard of this particular myth being a myth but it still seems like a good reference to point out the problems that I could quickly find again, and it's got links to enough papers (like the 'maturity index' one https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3135376/) that it didn't seem necessary to find or recall more. It's not so much that I have a very strong opinion on this in particular so much as I have negative opinions about false popsci memes being spread in general, and today I decided it'd be fun to try and briefly swat at another one. I had an aside to Dunning-Kruger at the start. Dunbar's number is another false meme. Here's a small collection of others, though I'd say the chess one isn't particularly damaging apart from being false: https://danluu.com/dunning-kruger/
Sometimes a meme claim just doesn't stand up if you actually look at the paper(s). First you have to find the papers, if a citation isn't forthcoming, but if there even is a literature you can just read some of it. To check if a meme matches, you don't even need to be an expert or have real scientific training, or read the whole thing, all that's needed in many cases is just: read the abstract, the conclusion, check if it matches the meme. Sometimes looking at charts or seeing wait a minute they are basing this supposed human universal on one undergrad subject (or finding fMRI brain activity in a dead fish) can also be illuminating. There's a lot of bunk science out there, and reproducibility is a problem everywhere. This is irritating, though it's not like I'm thinking about it much of the time or crusading to correct everyone wrong on the internet.
More directly on the brain maturity thing, I suppose part of the interest also comes from how I really find the ongoing infantilization of western society grotesque and see the meme as part of it. I also just remember being a teen, and remember many teens around me from then. Some were scouts, some had jobs, a lot of us drove carefully, some not so carefully. There were temptations, some succumbed and some didn't. We were alright, overall. People change, but not usually by a huge degree, this cuts both ways for those who were more responsible and those who were more reckless. Still, comparing stupid stuff done then with stupid stuff done now by 30-somethings... a lot of the time it's a tossup which is really more stupid. The 30-somethings can cause a lot more collateral damage though, generally having greater assets and responsibilities.
So… block people below 25 from anything that requires good judgement like choice of intoxicants, driving, operating heavy machinery, joining the military, having children, getting married?
Or accept that growing up is part of life, and that there are short term consequences of political choice too that groups of people are currently denied?
“The U.K.’s stock and bond markets have shed at least $500 billion in value since Liz Truss was formally appointed to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister on Sept. 5.”
If adults thought completely rationally they wouldn't vote at all, since the chance of their single vote making any difference is insignificant.
Or even if they did, the amount of effort they'd put in researching, considering and modelling the potential outcomes would would be commensurate to the impact they would expect their vote to have. I suspect for a good chunk of adult voters, this is in fact the case.
So it's not obvious to me that including more voters whose decision-making is more emotional will necessarily produce worse outcomes. It's conceivable it'll produce better outcomes.
Edit: I'm being downvoted. To be clear, I'm an ardent democrat, but the idea that people vote analytically and rationally doesn't make sense for the above reason. The most informed voters are, in my experience, often highly emotional.
If adults were rational they'd use their communication skills to form broad coalitions to make sure that policies they like get put in place. Which is largely what happens.
> Or even if they did, the amount of effort they'd put in...
This is actually quite an interesting area if you look into the game theory of making choices in a group setting. Strong strategies typically often don't involve doing much research, but they are rather frustrating for the people who take an interest in politics. Real-world behaviours are arguably quite reasonable on this front too, although they are limited by the ability of the average person to reason their way through the policy suggestions being made by though leaders.
Although I do agree that more voters isn't better. There is a certain level of objective correctness in political decisions if we admit basic ideas like "policies should be tested to see whether they achieve the goals that they were intended to" as a measure of success and the point should be to design systems that optimise on it to some degree.
> If adults were rational they'd use their communication skills to form broad coalitions
Yes. And in detail, with this model of a rational electorate, skilled influencers put the effort in to devise a policy platform and convince others that it is good for them. The majority pick a platform that they are convinced by.
It's worth it for the influencers, because they have an outsized impact. It's worth it for everyone else only if choosing a coalition is very low-effort. Or if they are entertained by the influencers.
Again, I'm an ardent democrat. I'm just pointing out the flaws in any argument that assumes rational voters are a good thing - because it's rational to not waste much time on voting. Instead, democracy works best when voters feel an arguably irrational sense of duty and civic pride.
> ...because it's rational to not waste much time on voting...
But that wouldn't be rational. The rational approach is to vote when you are in (or plausibly in, or plausibly going to eventually be in) the majority coalition. The hyper-rational equilibrium is politicians do exactly what a majority coalition of voters want and no-one bothers to vote, but once the politicians start becoming flawed or preferences change over time the equilibrium shifts quite rapidly to a rational voter base forming large coalitions that turn up to vote.
It isn't rational to vote if for people who aren't affiliated with a coalition to some degree (and never will be) but people like that are basically a political non-factor anyway and are probably legitimately wasting their time when they vote because there is no policy formula available that they want to support, by definition.
When I enter the polling booth, I never expect to effect the result, whether my coalition has a chance of winning or not. That is, I do not expect a candidate in any constituency I am voting in to win by exactly one vote (or tie and thereby have a 50:50 chance of winning by drawing lots). I think such an occurrence is exceedingly unlikely.
A rational anaylsis would therefore conclude I'm wasting my time and energy even just walking to the polling station, let alone keeping up with political developments through the intervening months and years. As you say, in a hyper-rational world turnout would be way lower - whether it would oscillate and overcorrect as you suggest, or reach a stable equilibrium, I'm not sure.
But whatever my motivation for voting and trying to stay informed, I do not believe it is primarily rational. It's probably some mixture of duty, diversionary entertainment, and ritual. If lowering the voting age to 16 could help inculcate that sense of duty and better establish that ritual, that would be a pretty convincing reason to do it in my opinion.
> A rational anaylsis would therefore conclude I'm wasting my time and energy...
No it wouldn't. You haven't established the link between your premise and conclusions and the rational view is the opposite of what you came to. You've established that in the best case the candidate you prefer will win by more than one vote - which is correct but not the end of the line of thought.
Think of it like building an embankment. If you design the embankment to exactly hold back the maximum amount of water you expect it to hold it'll probably fail in an emergency when it shouldn't have because something slightly unexpected happens. The rational thing to do is engineer in a margin of safety. You're trying to optimise the wrong metric which is ~30-60 minutes of a voters time vs. probability of the legislature behaving in a way that is favourable to them. In both voting and embankment building it'd be silly (dare I say, irrational) to aim for a narrow success. The median election (analogy: median storm) should make the margins for your candidate (analogy: embankment tolerance) look excessive (analogy: over-engineered).
Otherwise, you're basically arguing that rational people should optimise their way to being on the losing side of elections - which is a big tip-off you're making a logic error in your argument somewhere. Rational behaviour can't, almost by definition, predictably lead to bad outcomes.
I find the embankment metaphor confusing, but to play along: I don't have the option of engineering a margin of safety because I only have one brick. Is it worth me lugging it to the riverside?
Maybe, it depends on the risk and the distance I've got to carry it.
In all likelihood many won't bother without being directed, encouraged or otherwise socially motivated. And they must ignore the surprisingly persuasive pro-flooding lobby, of course.
> Rational behaviour can't, almost by definition, predictably lead to bad outcomes.
Given you previously mentioned Game Theory, this is a surprising claim. Prisoner's dilemma? Tragedy of the commons?
Note that I'm not sure how much any of this applies to the real world. My main argument is against a model of voters as purely "rational". They are not, and in some ways at least, that's probably a good thing. I certainly think rationality is a very poor argument against extending the franchise to 16 year-olds.
> I find the embankment metaphor confusing, but to play along: I don't have the option of engineering a margin of safety because I only have one brick. Is it worth me lugging it to the riverside?
Yes. You should put the brick where the engineer tells you too, and at the end of it you will observe there are more bricks than were strictly needed. Any other approach would be reckless.
Again, you're arguing that the rational thing to do is to not build the thing properly. You've misunderstood rationality and you're getting nonsense conclusions where people choose to get to get poor results by their own standards because they aren't very good at risk assessment. That isn't how rational actors behave. Rational people take a holistic view of all the foreseeable costs and benefits of an action (like, for example, having a government that aligns with their policy preferences) and are capable of probabilistic thinking.
> In all likelihood many won't bother without being directed, encouraged or otherwise socially motivated.
Well sure, but in practice people aren't rational. If they were rational, they would just quietly assess whether their coalition had the potential to win at some point and - if so - identify that it is in their best interests to vote. Then do it without prompting.
> Given you previously mentioned Game Theory, this is a surprising claim. Prisoner's dilemma? Tragedy of the commons?
The game theoretic optimum in both those cases is to achieve the best possible result through communication and coalition building.
I think this disagreement stems from the fact that, by instinct, you think socially. When I hear the word "rational", I think of the economist's model of a individual acting to optimise their own utility.
Of course in many (most?) situations, we get the best outcome overall by acting socially. But, to me, free-riding on the socially-motivated activities of others is a "rational" strategy (with a insignificant chance of one brick/vote making a difference), if not a laudable one. Which is why I don't advocate the "rational" strategy.
I appreciate your point that if everyone took that strategy we'd all suffer. I can never control what everyone does, but maybe I can build or support a big enough coalition to improve outcomes for the majority, or at least people like me. But free-riding will still be an option many choose, unless punished severely (which most countries don't when it comes to voting).
I don't argue that people "choose to get poor results", I argue that some proportion may recognise their possible effect on the democratic outcome is so small that on some level they have no effective choice at all. That's just the reality of being one among an elaborate of many millions. Democracy is still the best option we have, I hasten to add.
In Prisoner's Dilemma, as originally formulated, I believe communication is expressly forbidden. And even where it's allowed, in a one-off game the optimal strategy for an individual uninterested in the welfare of their comrade is to collaborate with the authorities. If both participants take this strategy, it's to the detriment of both. This apparent paradox is what makes it so interesting. Now you can solve the paradox with communication through repeated games, which I think is what you allude to.
> I think this disagreement stems from the fact that, by instinct, you think socially.
No, the disagreement stems from different beliefs over whether you've taken a rational position. Especially odd since at some level you understand it is an irrational conclusion since you're voting anyway.
What you are calling "rational" probably would make sense in a world where people were unable to communicate and playing a one-off game. The issue that idea runs in to is people can communicate and elections are a repeated game. If voting is modelled as a game where people don't communicate then a lot of nonsense results turn up. The rational strategy for most people when communication is possible is to join up with a coalition that can win, then vote. There is a minority of people with unusual enough political opinions that they can't realistically join a coalition and they rationally wouldn't vote, but by definition they are fringe groups. In the main, most people would vote if they are rational. And indeed, in a move that makes one hopeful for humanity, most people do indeed make the rational decision on that one.
Any study of coalition games like voting quickly discover that voting is entirely rational and a theoretical optimum in practice for most participants in a society. If you do a course on game theory there should be entire lectures on the subject. I suspect you might have done a course on game theory so I'm not sure why that wasn't drilled in. The mechanics of coalition building among rational actors is a fundamental topic.
> In Prisoner's Dilemma, as originally formulated, I believe communication is expressly forbidden.
You can look it up [0]; as originality formulated it was a 100-round game where cooperation is an entirely rational behaviour (for most rounds, anyway). It is a very powerful example of how cooperation followed by tit-for-tat is a near-optimal strategy under a lot of realistic assumptions and requires only the tiniest of communication channels to pull off and improve from an inefficient Nash equilibrium to a Pareto efficient one.
In fact, I suspect the actual mistake you're making is thinking that a Nash equilibrium is equivalent to a rational one, when in fact it is not. When communication and coalitions are possible the Nash equilibrium is usually just a starting point for negotiations before the rational agents decide to get a better result for themselves.
I was uneducated on the subject of coalition games, so looked it up. But I leaned these games are defined by a mechanic where players can form binding contracts with external enforcement/punishment.
I don't see how this applies to voting at all in countries without compulsory voting.
Communication and iterations also don't seem that relevant to my argument about free-riding, since one's voting record is not usually visible.
It feels like we don’t have a functioning democracy in the U.K., and that gets in the way of pretty much everything else.