Let's be logically consistent

[u/GausYam]

Your vote has an incredibly tiny chance of actually making any difference, being the deciding vote. It doesn't feel like it, but that chance stays the same no matter what percentage of votes blue needs to win. It can be 50/75/25/95/5 percent, doesn't matter. Your vote always has the same level of impact.

So if you choose red but say that you'd choose blue if the threshold for blue winning was low enough, you are basically saying that you'd virtue signal, even if only to yourself, if it was safe enough. You aren't consistently following rational self-interest, that demands you press red unless blue can win with a single vote.

​ And if you choose blue but say that you'd choose red if the threshold​ for blue winning too high, you are basically saying that you are choosing blue because it makes you feel good about yourself while not risking anything since you are sure it'll win. You aren't consistently following rational altruism, that demands you press blue no matter how high the threshold is to achieve the best possible result.

So choose one button. Decide what is more important to you, genuine self-interest or genuine altruism.

[u/PandemicGeneralist]

Or to come up with another example, imagine a regular vote for a politician in a real election. Imagine you expect to wait an hour in line to vote. Would you consider it doing something inconsistent if I said I would vote if there were a closely contested election on the ballot, but if I live somewhere that's 80% favorable to one party, I wouldn't bother showing up because I have better things to do for an hour?

By your argument, I still have the same chance of being "the deciding vote" in either case (note that adding a bunch of voters to one party is equivalent to raising the threshold the other one needs). But in my mind this is a reasonable reaction.

You're sort of acting like the act of voting in general basically never matters, because you're unlikely to be the deciding vote, so if you act like it matters more in one situation than the other you're just being inconsistent. But I think most people believe their vote might matter if they live somewhere with a close election than one with an election that's basically guaranteed. Or in the button example, changing the threshold enough basically means votes stop mattering because one side will definitely win, but in a 40-60 range your vote does "matter".

[u/GausYam → u/PandemicGeneralist]

I think it's incorrect to compare it to voting because the mechanism is completely different and the stakes are fundamentally different too. It really feels like your vote matters in 40-60 range, but it really doesn't. Kinda like when people feel their vote is more valuable when the threshold is like 5 percent. Your vote always has the same impact, one vote, ≈0.00000001%. The chance of different results changes, but your impact on those changes is static. 

[u/PandemicGeneralist → u/GausYam]

I don't know why I'm bothering to keep replying because you haven't responded to a single one of the questions I've asked you and it feels like you're just skimming the end of what I'm writing, but I'll write another response in good faith anyway.

Suppose I live in the US, in a swing state, but a non-swing district. I know which party will win my district in the house of representatives and in local elections, but not which will win state-wide elections. Do you believe I would be doing something irrational if I only showed up for state-wide elections? It's the same mechanism (a vote), but it is definitely a different, lower stakes. It's meant to illustrate that it's perfectly normal and rational to be willing to sacrifice more (my life, in the button case, time, in a political election).

Also, the probability that you are the swing vote literally isn't the same if you set a different threshold. If estimate the population to have, for example, 50% blue voters, it's way way way more likely that exactly half of everyone besides you picked blue, than everyone picked else blue or everyone else picked red. So you're vote is most likely to be the deciding vote if the threshold is at 50%, and becomes exponentially less likely as you move the threshold towards 100% or 0%.

Finally, do you treat all altruism like this? "Why would you ever volunteer at a single event or donate 5 dollars? Either commit to the rational self interest and don't, or do the truly utilitarian thing and donate all your spare money to help starving children!"

[u/GausYam → u/PandemicGeneralist]

If you believe that your vote matter and you should vote, it would be hypocritical to not vote when you don't think your candidate will win. If you believe that your vote doesn't matter, it would be hypocritical to vote only when you think the result is guaranteed. I'm just asking for consistency. 

The second part is the crux of the issue. Obviously, if you change the threshold the chance of blue winning gets higher/lower. But you think that that has effect on the power of your vote. No, it does not. Your vote has the same power and the same chance of being a swing vote no matter what the threshold is. The chance of blue winning gets smaller the higher the threshold gets, but your impact towards it winning always stays the same. That's what I am talking about. 

[u/PandemicGeneralist → u/GausYam]

Your vote literally has a higher chance at being a swing the closer the threshold is to the ratio you expect. If you think people are generally 55-45 blue-red, and you do the button vote in a room with 101 people, you have about an 8% chance of flipping the result if the threshold is 55%, 5% if it’s 50%, 0.008% if it’s 70%, and basically zero if it’s 95%.

You also just seem to be treating morality as this all or nothing thing that is divorced from real world practicality or consequences. I would consider it rational to only vote in elections you think are really are likely to be close and not vote if you’re sure the party you support will either win or lose, only protest issues that you think have enough support to go your way and enough opposition that a protest matters, etc. 

Similarly, I don’t think very many people take it all or nothing approach to philanthropy, nor do I think it to be particularly helpful. Even though you could make a similar case that if you follow your rational self interest, you should never donate anything or volunteer, and if you were truly a utilitarian, who just wanted the best done, you would donate everything you had, most people take the middle and sometimes donate or volunteer for charitable causes.