Good question. Policy is an important area that the EA movement will need to address.
I will add another reason which may have limited policy engagement: policy is hard! Finding policies that would definitely be good and wouldn’t face significant opposition requires substantial work. It is also possible to be overconfident about policy ideas: most of our ideas have looked better at a first glance than on closer inspection. This means we shouldn’t be too hasty to fix on policies we choose to push.
It’s possible to do this work, and GPP is experimenting with fleshing out policies at the moment, but it’s not necessarily easy.
Another option is to lobby for “obvious” policies, like increasing foreign aid. But this is hardly a neglected area.
I know for a fact that there are intelligent and thoughtful people who argue that foreign aid spending has not been effective, and in some cases has actually been harmful. And there are other people who are convinced that we need to increase it. So, so much for ‘obvious’. : )
If it’s difficult but tractable, then liasing with existing policymakers is good, as is getting practice in lobbying and policymaking.
I also feel like science and tech lobbying is a bit neglected, and could be popular with the public and with great scientists, while giving us an opportunity to talk to relevant policymakers about risk-mitigating interventions.
Yes, although engaging with existing policymakers too soon is a good way to lose credibility. There is definitely more room to talk to friendly policy experts though!
I’m not sure that doing lobbying ‘just for practice’ is a good idea. It would be fairly easy to accidentally lobby for something bad, and equally the reputational consequences of lobbying can be complicated if you don’t know an area.
What do you mean by science/tech lobbying? Lobbying for what?
Genetal science stuff like research funding, improved research infrastructure, better research regulation, better patent law, better education, all the while promoting public understanding of science. All of this could be a good platform to build on even if some of these areas are somewhat crowded, reducing immediate impact.
I think it’s not so much that it’s crowded as that it’s often unclear what the actual thing you’d lobby for is: is more research funding better research funding? Maybe. What exactly would better patent law be? Better education? These are all things where it is easy to come to views, and even to be quite confident about them, but where the realities are often much more complicated than they seem.
I don’t mean that in a nihilistic way—I’m currently working on building a much more informed view of safe biological research funding in order to lobby for a specific policy—it’s just that there’s quite a lot of work to be done to be sure something is good before you advocate for it.
Good question. Policy is an important area that the EA movement will need to address.
I will add another reason which may have limited policy engagement: policy is hard! Finding policies that would definitely be good and wouldn’t face significant opposition requires substantial work. It is also possible to be overconfident about policy ideas: most of our ideas have looked better at a first glance than on closer inspection. This means we shouldn’t be too hasty to fix on policies we choose to push.
It’s possible to do this work, and GPP is experimenting with fleshing out policies at the moment, but it’s not necessarily easy.
Another option is to lobby for “obvious” policies, like increasing foreign aid. But this is hardly a neglected area.
I know for a fact that there are intelligent and thoughtful people who argue that foreign aid spending has not been effective, and in some cases has actually been harmful. And there are other people who are convinced that we need to increase it. So, so much for ‘obvious’. : )
If it’s difficult but tractable, then liasing with existing policymakers is good, as is getting practice in lobbying and policymaking.
I also feel like science and tech lobbying is a bit neglected, and could be popular with the public and with great scientists, while giving us an opportunity to talk to relevant policymakers about risk-mitigating interventions.
Yes, although engaging with existing policymakers too soon is a good way to lose credibility. There is definitely more room to talk to friendly policy experts though!
I’m not sure that doing lobbying ‘just for practice’ is a good idea. It would be fairly easy to accidentally lobby for something bad, and equally the reputational consequences of lobbying can be complicated if you don’t know an area.
What do you mean by science/tech lobbying? Lobbying for what?
Genetal science stuff like research funding, improved research infrastructure, better research regulation, better patent law, better education, all the while promoting public understanding of science. All of this could be a good platform to build on even if some of these areas are somewhat crowded, reducing immediate impact.
I think it’s not so much that it’s crowded as that it’s often unclear what the actual thing you’d lobby for is: is more research funding better research funding? Maybe. What exactly would better patent law be? Better education? These are all things where it is easy to come to views, and even to be quite confident about them, but where the realities are often much more complicated than they seem.
I don’t mean that in a nihilistic way—I’m currently working on building a much more informed view of safe biological research funding in order to lobby for a specific policy—it’s just that there’s quite a lot of work to be done to be sure something is good before you advocate for it.