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Ask HN: Brexit – Should I vote in or out?

by vain on 6/17/16, 12:42 PM with 8 comments

There are just days to go to the referendum that decides whether the U.K. stays in the European Union.

I am trying to cast an informed ballot, and get more confused with every article I read, every debate I watch.

I can not find an objective way of deciding this. How would you decide? Please suggest ways in which I might perhaps quantify this?

  • by Millennium on 6/17/16, 12:50 PM

    Too much about the UK's status in the EU is subjective and opinion-based for us, or anyone else, to give you an objective answer. I'm afraid that this is an answer that's going to have to come from you.

    I can only recommend the following. No one on the Remain side is going to understate the benefits of remaining in the EU, and no one on the Brexit side is going to understate the costs. They may overstate these things, but for whatever reason, overstatement is generally easier to detect. So listen to the Remain folks about the benefits, listen to the Brexit folks about the costs, dismiss the BS from both sides as appropriate, and then decide for yourself: are the benefits worth the costs? If you believe they are, vote Remain. If you believe they are not, vote Brexit.

    This is not a perfect process, but the perfect process does not exist. Do the best you can with what you have, and that will have to be enough.

  • by rahelzer on 6/17/16, 12:47 PM

    The best way to quantify something like this is a "wisdom of the crowds" method: basically let everybody vote and then aggregate the results.

    For this to work, however, each of the people voting have to come to independent decisions. The crowd can be as dumb as the dumbest person in the crowd if the crowd falls victim to groupthink.

    What I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't let anybody tell you how to vote. Just vote for what you want to happen. Make the decision based as much as possible in complete absence of being influenced by anybody else.

    If everybody does that, chances are the result will be the right result.

  • by pknight on 6/17/16, 1:12 PM

    Is the world better off when countries band together to in an imperfect, yet democratic framework, or is it better when every country seeks to be independent and abide mostly by their own short-term interests?

    If the answer is the second, is this a good time to do it, will it confidently result in better outcomes?

    I'm an EU citizen in the UK so I'm biased, I don't get a vote in this democratic exercise, despite being half English with grandparents who served in WWII, directly in the defense of Britain.

  • by mikebos on 6/17/16, 12:50 PM

    As far as I can tell there is a lot of future predictions with basically no real evidence both for an exit and a remain. The main thing is you have some control over your local government and you have (almost) zero control over whatever the EU does. I think the question ins't what would happen but how far do you trust your career politicians in the UK and the rest of the EU.

    Have fun with the choice, wouldn't know which one I would choose.

  • by herbst on 6/17/16, 1:06 PM

    Swiss here. I think you guys will have a hard time to copy our economical model and the EU will surely not be as nice to you as they are to us.

    But anyway, is Brexit now really realistic? Can it happen? I would be so proud about you guys!

  • by zaro on 6/17/16, 3:43 PM

    Politics and objective decisions:) these two work together only in delusions I think..

    So just vote emotionally as everybody else ;)