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Comment by tpmx | Hacker News Reader

> "I am 70 years old now," he says. "On reflection, kids don't think straight. I think most teenagers, youth of those days and certainly of these, make their mind up to do something and don't think of the consequences.

He was 19 when he did this. Probably an outlier in terms of taking risks, but still. There are various calls to lower the voting age below 18 around the world. I don't think this is sane.

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"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26743596.

I now agree it was a mistake. I genuinely thought it would be an interesting, eh, tangent. Sorry.

It's true that it's not always easy to predict.

Would a sample of stupid things done by 20-somethings convince you to increase the voting age? Should people be denied to vote as they get older and their brain function deteriorates? What about people in the bottom quartile of intelligence or education? What about smart and educated people who know nothing about the people and parties they're voting for?

None of these would make sense to me unless you are willing to go very radical in a bunch of different directions. Giving young people a vote at an age at which they can already work, pay taxes and be in the military makes a lot more sense to me.

Not being american I had to look it up: US kids can join the military at the age of 17 with parental conscent. That's kind of wild.

I think it’s a serious stretch to try to connect risk-taking and voting. Kids and young adults do stupid stuff because they don’t have a good grasp of their own mortality and because they want the validation of their peers. Their internal risk/reward function isn’t calibrated quite right because they overvalue the reward of attention and/or undervalue the risk of injury or death which results in thrill/attention-seeking behavior. Since the voting booth is both boring and private I think it’s entirely outside the scope of the kids-take-stupid-risks conversation.

> Their internal risk/reward function isn’t calibrated quite right

What else is voting but deciding which party has the best risk/reward? ;)

How about the ability to perform consequence-based thinking?

The point of democracy isn’t to make the best choices, it’s to have the people in power try and appease as much of the population as possible. The fact 61 year olds vote while 16 year olds don’t shifts priorities away from a huge segment of the population. Worse, it likely biases short term thinking as many voters will be dead before the consequences of various choices show up.

Some fair points, but... do we really want political campaigns aimed at, say, 8-year-olds? They're stupid enough as it is when they're allegedly aimed at adults.

Dropping the voting age from 18 to say 12 only increases the voter population by ~9%. So, it’s wouldn’t significantly change how campaigns are run. But the nuances of what changes might be really interesting.

This is lacking in most of the adult population, anyway, and yet is not a reason to disenfranchise them.

I am not necessarily for lowering the voting age, but this argument is not great. There is nothing magical about being 18 years old, and you’re not suddenly smarter than a year ago. Same for being 21, or whichever threshold you want.

Doing stupid things on impulse doesn’t and shouldn’t disqualify _every_ young adult. I read about a grandpa who gave his granddaughter the “volmacht” (no idea what the English word is) for his vote in the last election. She effectively cast the vote. Looking at my daughter of 13, I’m confident she’s world smart enough to make a more sane and well-informed decision than half of the adults I know. I agree to lowering the voting age to 16. Outliers be damned, a very smart group of people is being muzzled while an ever larger growing group (seniors) are getting more say when they, by nature of their age - no blame, have a more short-sighted and less flexible view of the world. Give the kids a vote, and maybe more adults will start to listen.

Maybe a weighted vote? Curious to hear if anyone has any good alternatives :)

I was also that kinda smart well-informed kid - I thought. :)

In retrospect, when I first voted at the age of 18 I was horribly underinformed/undereducated/naive. And at, say, 16 I would have been comparatively speaking so much more naive and susceptible to populism, be it from the left or the right.

There are layers/complexities to politics, and it takes time to understand them.

You do have a point that most adults are also horribly underinformed, but...

People are susceptible to populism regardless of age and naivety too, are you suggesting we remove the vote from them?

Is it really regardless of age?

As an extreme example: I'm pretty sure an average 5 year old is more susceptible to populism than an average 35 year old.

I just did a google image search for images of the US Capitol Riot from January this year, and it doesn't look like a particularly young crowd. Looks more middle-aged to me.

The 5 year old crowd kinda lacks the means of transportation to pull these kinda of things of. That doesn’t mean they are wiser than the capitol rioters, just that they have a harder time to do things by themselves. Middle-aged people have both the means to go to events and also the capital to do so.

So yeah 5 year olds might make poor decisions, but so do adults and we don't let that prevent them from voting.

> Looking at my daughter of 13, I’m confident she’s world smart enough to make a more sane and well-informed decision than half of the adults I know.

Without commenting on the objective intelligence of your child, I think this observation speaks more to either the set of adults you know, or the set of adults in your society in general.

I would feel safer if we focused on resolving the situation where most adults around you were more sane / informed / rational / smarter than a generic 13yo.

Well said :) And valid point.

I'm saying this somewhat in jest, but this would give disproportionate political influence to families with larger quantities of children. And don't sit here and tell me with a straight face that children will make up their minds independently of influence from their parents. Cough religion cough.

Allowing children to cast votes will also get them engaged at a young age to vote later on when they're older

Giving children responsibility is how you get responsible adults

Only for a few of them. I think the vast majority will vote based on what’s hip, and the most recent memes.

Isn't that the same for the vast majority of adults? I mean sure, maybe replace memes by most recent manipulative news articles, but I don't think it's that different.

I remember my class in high school doing a fake voting session, and sure we made jokes, but most people took it relatively serious.

That's how the vast majority votes already.

Didn't you pay attention to Donald Trump's presidency?

Also their parents can give them guidance on long-term thinking as a balance against politicians promising 'free' things.

(checks their parents' recorded voting habits)

... Can they?

> I don't think this is sane.

I don't agree. My 8 year old has a better understanding of many issues than a lot of adults I've met. And he's got a huge stake in the future. Given that a single, solitary vote is worth next to nothing, I think it totally makes sense to give that right to kids.

Yes, maybe I could coerce him. But my son would probably just tell me to pound sand and then vote how he wanted.

I can't tell if this is a joke or not

Child logic: we should help this person in need.

Adult Genius Thought Leader Logic: if you help this person, you'll just make them dependent!

As I've got older, and learnt more about the world, I genuinely think I've become less moral.

I used to care about the big issues. Now I rationalise leaving the lights on and the tap running, and make effort not to stand up for what's right when it feels like it would weaken my social status.

As a teen I liked republicans for some reason. Then I rallied around team blue for a while, now in my mid 30s I am calling for a violent global revolution against the billionaires, before they get a chance to establish mars/moon colonies.

I'm doing it Benjamin Button style I guess.

Do you think there is any relationship to the old saw about how young liberals evolve into old conservatives?

For what it's worth, I notice the same thing in me as I get older. I don't think it will turn me into an actual conservative, mind you, because there's way too much other baggage that goes along with that. I figure I'm just becoming more misanthropic the more I learn about my fellow humans.

None of this is true.

Well if you say so.

If you have a lower limit then there should be an upper limit.

There is a lower limit; typically 18. I was talking about calls to lower that limit.

I am aware of the lower limit. The existence of which means we should also have an upper limit.

I'm curious what your reasoning is for having that opinion.

Average 80year old voting today won't be alive for the duration of the current government. They had their chance at politics and if 62 years of their voting got us here then I think we can safely say we aren't losing anything by removing the vote from them.

People who won't be around to see the consequences of their actions should have less political power than those who will.

Would you include terminally ill young people in that?

If our government were populated almost exclusively by terminally ill young people, then maybe. That seems farfetched compared to the gerontocracy we have now.

My guess is that there would be some pretty crazy confounding factors that would either invalidate my original answer, or render it irrelevant.

Think of it as an incentive for older folks to also vote.

They don't really need an incentive; old people do vote.

I said 'older', meaning everyone that is worried about young and foolish people influencing the outcomes of elections, not 'old people'.

I mean people under 18 have to pay taxes. Seems unfair to deny their voice in how their money is spent.

You've found evidence that people over 18 can be incredibly stupid, and you are using that as evidence that people under 18 shouldn't vote?

Joke's on you. I'm in my thirties and still as much of an idiot. Think of my idiot vote as canceling out your carefully thought out one.

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