A bad option doesn’t become a good option when a terrible option is present.
Tell that to the US Democrats.
Submitted 4 months ago by YICHM@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
A bad option doesn’t become a good option when a terrible option is present.
Tell that to the US Democrats.
What?
They kept running on, “we’re not Trump!” instead of much of anything good to actually promise their constituents.
I’ve heard it referred to as “The worst negates the bad” fallacy.
For my work, we sometimes use “don’t let perfect get in the way of good enough,” but at this point in time your framing seems particularly apt.
Binary thinking is what got us where we are in politics.
First past the post has entered the chat
I have no idea about what this means. Would you like to explain?
First past the post is a method of voting, wherein voters mark one candidate as their favoriite, and the candidate with more first-preference votes than any other candidate (a plurality) is elected, even if they do not have more than half of votes (a majority).
This forces the voter to strategize and vote for what they think is the ‘least worst’ candidate that has a chance to receive the most choices, rather than their favorite candidate. It’s therefore probably the worst form of election, as it encourages status quo and voting based on popularity rather than ideas and programs.
Voting system where you only get to vote for a single candidate on the ballot. Basically always means people will vote for the “least worst” candidate
Less bad is still bad, but preferable to worse.
Less bad is still bad.
If exactly one of the bad options will come to pass anyway though, and you get to influence which one, why wouldn’t you opt for less bad?
It also usually means you have a better chance of good in the future.
The sources of this post are usually the situations where the options are artificially limited, which are infuriating.
Maybe I should stop add ‘the’ into my sentence…
Your thought-compressing skill is much better than mine.
HubertManne@piefed.social 4 months ago
why would you not choose the good option regardless? This makes no sense. I mean if good is not an option and its between bad and terrible I will take bad. Like if I break in the woods and can’t get to a hospital for surgery I rather have an impromtu splint than impromtu amputation.
YICHM@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I didn’t say that I won’t choose the better (not terrible) option.
HubertManne@piefed.social 4 months ago
I don’t get the point then? I mean yeah take the bad option but strive to have a good one on the table or to change the bad option to be less bad at least. By no means take the terrible one though or abstain from the 4 person vote where 2 people are gung ho to amputate.