Yeah, but unless you claim that no politician has ever been the least influenced by his constituency, there's no reason not to.
Of bloody course writing your representative is better than not writing them: It stands at least a chance (however infinitesimal) of accomplishing something. Not doing it doesn't; by definition, it can't. That's a logical syllogism. Logical syllogisms don't need experimental confirmation.
So how could and why would one not believe that doing something is, must be, better than doing nothing? That's not "healthy skepticism", it's turning it into illogical nonsense.
> Of bloody course writing your representative is better than not writing them: It stands at least a chance (however infinitesimal) of accomplishing something.
There is no guarantee that, if it accomplishes “something”, the change it induces will not have negative value. You cannot assess that the action has positive expected value without summing value across all possible outcomes weighted by probability, included negative value outcomes.
The frequent naive assumption that doing something is always better than doing nothing is how proponents of lots of counterproductive policies use real problems as leverage to get them passed.
Does alcohol produce real social harms? Was Prohibition doing something instead of nothing? Was Prohibition a net win?
Of bloody course writing your representative is better than not writing them: It stands at least a chance (however infinitesimal) of accomplishing something. Not doing it doesn't; by definition, it can't. That's a logical syllogism. Logical syllogisms don't need experimental confirmation.
So how could and why would one not believe that doing something is, must be, better than doing nothing? That's not "healthy skepticism", it's turning it into illogical nonsense.