How do you know? It is the most important question we can ask, even of ourselves. Our senses are equipped to deliver more information to the brain than we are able to consciously process. From birth, our brains learn how to filter certain things out, to avoid wasting resources where doing so would be redundant or unnecessary. Also, being able to accurately identify something is paramount to our survival. As a result, being mindful of how we know something is even more important than the item we claim to know. Since flawed methodology will likely result in a flawed conclusion. At the very least, it will provide for us the opportunity to hone our ability to arrive at conclusions in the future.
We live in a world full of competing claims and interests. Unfortunately, this world has also been plagued by human subjugation for millenia. Resulting in those who would try to subjugate others having access to sophisticated methods by which to usurp one's own rationality. Often at a time in our lives when we lack the intellectual fortitude to properly defend ourselves from those who have easy access to us exploiting that vulnerability for their own gain. Combined with the ways in which information can travel so much more quickly, it is imperative that he have the right tools to sift through it all to arrive at the truth.
Enter the concept of the null hypothesis. Perhaps just a fancy way of saying the way in which to disprove something. For example, assume somebody put forth the claim that all squirrels are green. Here, the null hypothesis would simply be finding a squirrel that was not green. Why is this important? Anybody who puts forth an objective claim is at the same time claiming that truth is preferred to falsehood. Were their claim to be disproven, they would revise their claim to more accurately describe the real world. That is unless their conclusion were dogmatic, derived from bias, or part of some irrational need for the claim to be true. This can be observed in two ways; When a person will provide no null hypothesis to their theory or when a person will make no effort to address the null hypothesis of your counter-theory.
Humans enter this world clamoring for an understanding of their environment. Constantly striving to be more self-reliant in every aspect of their being as this is tantamount to survival itself. We are not born seeking people to make our decisions for us or take away our agency; Our ability to provide for our own survival. Through this, we can observe that in the debate as to whether or not political voting is valid, that not voting is the origin and voting is the deviation. In a rational world, this would mean that the burden of proof lies upon those who are pro-voting. As extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Tragically, we live in a world where voting has been the norm for so long.
In recent times, some of the more vocal, otherwise rational thinkers have put vast amounts of resources into trying to convince people that political voting is valid; That the State and the violation of property rights it is born from is acceptable under certain circumstances or as long as it is used in a way that they like. Clearly this is not a principled conclusion. As established in the beginning, this flawed methodology reveals that we should discard the conclusion. Yet many will not. In my last article, I even pointed out the ways in which the sheer amount of propaganda that is put into the pro-voting movement among those who otherwise accept property rights should give anyone pause.
One thing I've noticed recently though--which is the motivation for writing now a third article on the topic--is the ways in which people who are pro-voting will not address the null hypotheses offered by people who understand that participating in the process is antithetical to self-ownership and property rights. To wit, they will not even offer null hypotheses of their own! While not a proof, this is strong evidence that chances are their position lacks merit. Therefore, I wanted to put forth a number of null hypotheses as a challenge to anybody that thinks that political voting under any circumstances is productive in any way. While this list is offered in the context of the United State presidential election, many of these ideas can be applied in other contexts.
1) You don't own me. In order to prove voting is valid, one must prove that person A could ever have a greater claim to person B than person B does. If they cannot, they reveal that they couldn't vote even if they wanted to, since voting indicates an attempt to transfer ownership of the populace to a particular ruler.
2) Your vote contributes to the outcome. This is actually a three part null hypothesis.
A) Politicians have time and again tried to change the rules as to who is allowed to vote, how, and why.
B) With technology at an all time high, voting fraud and the ability to identify it is more prevalent than ever before.
C) The electoral college choose presidents of the United States (POTUS). These bodies are not beholden to the people are are not representative of the popular vote.
3) Any given politician will do what they say, everything they say, and only what they say. There is no apparatus in place to make this so and no consequences for not making it so. 100% of POTUS have deviated from both their campaign promises and the US Constitution.
4) What any given politician does is exactly what everybody they purport to rule over wants. Otherwise, voters are condoning mob rule; Pretending to suspend the property rights of their neighbors for no reason other than they were outnumbered. An unprincipled conclusion.
5) POTUS has the power to do anything they say they will. In the US, the government was established in a three prong check and balance system. It is true that there came a point where both parties and all three branches learned that they all benefited from the entire process being perpetuated and as a result, the lines between these entities have been blurred. Still, it is foolish to think any one person could have the power to do anything a presidential candidate claims they will.
Please share these challenges and report back if you can even find one person willing to address any of them or offer a null hypothesis to voting. I have yet to find a single one. My experience has been people deflecting, personalizing, talking about the ways in which a particular candidate or time in history permits us to jettison logic, reason, or evidence. Again, an unprincipled conclusion. If ever there were proof that statism is just another religion...
In the future, advanced civilization will look back on political voting the way we look back on human sacrifice. The difference being that we have both the reason and the technology to understand that political voting accomplishes nothing. Worse, it is anti-accomplishment as it squanders untold resources that could instead be used to make real steps towards human freedom, simply by making the case that humans cannot exist in different, opposing moral categories. Instead of voting, which only signals that the sham makes sense and is righteous.