Holly, thanks for posting this. You raise important and interesting questions.
I do think EA should continue to steer clear of overtly partisan-political issues, especially in highly polarized societies like the U.S. This is for a few reasons:
EAs seem to lean Left politically, according to EA surveys; but to engage with partisan politics in a morally and epistemically humble way, we’d need a real diversity of political attitudes within EA to provide checks and balances against unconscious political biases and virtue-signaling.
Partisan politics tends to involve controversies that are often not neglected, tractable, or scope-sensitive, so they’re often a poor fit for EA. Modern political parties exist not to solve real-world problems, but to raise money, get votes, amass power, support virtue-signaling, and make partisans feel good. EA exists to solve real-world problems efficiently and open-mindedly, so its principles and goals simply ‘don’t compute’ to most partisan politicians, activists, and voters.
Politics is a game for older, cynical sociopaths who understand how power works, not for idealistic young EAs who, dare I say it, are often quite naive about the nature of power and how it’s gained and wielded. (I’m in my mid-50s, and I’m only just starting to understand how American politics actually operates; I’m dubious that EAs younger than about 40 would end up being anything more than pawns in political games they don’t understand.)
Political engagement is highly addictive, rewarding, thrilling, and distracting. (Trust me on this, as someone who’s all too engaged on political Twitter.) For many EAs trying to work at the intersection of politics and EA, the political side would often end up pulling them away from their EA principles and cause areas.
Politics tends to be very nation-specific and culture-specific, whereas EA aspires to global relevance. Insofar as EAs tend to be from the US, UK, Germany, Australia, and few other ‘Western liberal democracies’, we might end up focusing too much on the kinds of political institutions and issues typical of these countries. This would lead to neglect of other countries with other political values and issues. But even worse, it might lead us to neglect geopolitically important nation-states such as China and Russia where our ‘Western liberal democracy’ models of politics just don’t apply very well. This could lead us to neglect certain ideas and interventions that could help nudge those countries in directions that will be good for humanity long-term (e.g. minimizing global catastrophic risks from Russian nukes or Chinese AI).
For all these reasons, I think EA should strive to avoid the realm of politics, and just do our own thing, in what we could think of as ‘non-political stealth mode’, flying under the radar of the usual partisan-politics system of news, activism, power, and propaganda.
I think these are great points for the movement in general and for “politics” in general, but I still think it’s more complicated in some cases.
For example, I’m just not convinced we can dismiss the EV of investing in having EA/EA-adjacent people in power, even if any given person is expected to make ~0 counterfactual difference, just in case the have to respond to a pivotal emergency—it would be convenient if we could, but I don’t think we can.
I’m doing a pretty grubby, what you call “real-world” project trying to get people to use less rat poison, but nothing I do to try to achieve that is outside of the reach of the law. My ideal solution would be to create birth control that is superior to rodenticides and even more convenient so that people will voluntary switch to that, but even if I had the perfect product in hand, marketing it would require navigating a maze of policy and special interests. Zooming out, there would much more incentive to create such a product if there were more restrictions on rodenticide use, and given their toxicity and destructive effect on the ecosystem, there are plenty of people already trying to do that. Do we ally with them? What if all we need to do is sign onto the coalition sponsoring a bill? What if we don’t 100% agree with the bill? I just think the answer to questions like that is going to be case-by-case.
I don’t like doing political stuff. It feels icky to me and I feel pretty naturally disadvantaged at political maneuvering. I would love if there were an EA reason not to have to deal with it. But unfortunately I suspect that real world wasn’t built around EA preferences :(
I think that in specific cases like this (e.g. reduce rodenticide use), where there’s no obvious partisan side to the issue, and it doesn’t come pre-polarized in the public mind, and most politicians and voters haven’t even heard of the issue or thought about it, then there’s a totally reasonable case for EA promotion of the cause at a political level.
I was mostly concerned about EA avoiding issues that are already partisan-polarized, already controversial, and already subject to pressure from vested interests with a lot of power and money.
More generally, I think it might be helpful to recruit and influence people who are already active in political life to adopt EA values and views as part of their ‘private persona’—as long as we don’t form explicit public alliances with organized political parties or partisan movements. For example, if some EA group in Washington DC wanted to do more outreach to smart young Congressional staffers (of both parties!), that could be quite helpful in terms of EA perspectives informing the behind-the-scenes thinking and priorities of Congressional Representatives.
Or if EAs want to pursue political careers as potential high-impact ways to promote EA initiatives, that could be great—as long as they avoid overly explicit ‘EA branding’ in their campaigns.
I just think we have to be very careful not to appear overtly allied with any political party. For many potential intersection of EA and politics, that might be very difficult—but for some (e.g. rodenticide use), it might be quite easy.
More generally, I think it might be helpful to recruit and influence people who are already active in political life to adopt EA values and views as part of their ‘private persona’—as long as we don’t form explicit public alliances with organized political parties or partisan movements.
Yes, I think this. I don’t see much point to having people elected or doing political interventions in the name of EA. But many object that even getting people who happen to be EAs into politics is too corrupting because, for example, they fundraise among EAs and their friends get partisan when supporting them.
For example, if some EA group in Washington DC wanted to do more outreach to smart young Congressional staffers (of both parties!)
Many consider this dangerously close to spinning the message to try to appeal to politicians.
Completely agree about not getting into encumbering alliances at the movement level.
I completely agree with this. As a (Americans read: neo) Liberal that thinks the Green movement does far more harm than good, some of the political campaigning I’ve seen EAs do really puts me off and makes me question the entire movement. SBF’s lobbying of politicians in the US is another example of egregious misuse of funds.
Until those checks and balances are in place, we should be focusing on directing funds to the most impactful causes. That should be the beginning and end of EA in my opinion. Politics is almost never the best ROI approach to anything, using EA’s own methodology to calculate impact. There will of course be exceptions, but I find it hard to believe any amount of money will be better spent trying to influence a government as opposed to buying malaria nets.
We also need to avoid thinking and framing our actions as a group identity. It’s to be expected that people come to different and opposing conclusions even within a movement with clear stated principles. As such, political action shouldn’t be done in the name of the group as a whole.
We also need to avoid thinking and framing our actions as a group identity. It’s to be expected that people come to different and opposing conclusions even within a movement with clear stated principles. As such, political action shouldn’t be done in the name of the group as a whole.
FWIW, I was always uneasy with SBF’s massive donations to (mostly) Democratic politicians, and with his determination to defeat Trump at any cost, by any means necessary. It just didn’t make sense in terms of EA reasoning, values, and priorities. It should have been a big red flag.
But I think the lack of political diversity in EA, and many EAs’ tacit agreement with SBF’s partisan political views, led too many EAs to think it was no big deal that SBF was mixing EA and politics in unprincipled and somewhat bizarre ways.
In the future, I think we should have stronger skepticism about anybody who tries to link EA to partisan political activism.
FWIW, I was always uneasy with SBF’s massive donations to (mostly) Democratic politicians, and with his determination to defeat Trump at any cost, by any means necessary. It just didn’t make sense in terms of EA reasoning, values, and priorities. It should have been a big red flag.
I thought it was not super consistent with EA but easily explained by Sam’s parents’ careers and values. I often expressed worry about how it would affect our epistemics for EAs to become politicians bankrolled by Sam or for the community as a whole to feel pressure not undermine political moves that they would have to make to succeed, but I gave him personally a pass for wanting to spend some of his seemingly unlimited funds on political stuff because I assumed he had strong beliefs about politics as a lever for good from his upbringing.
Holly, thanks for posting this. You raise important and interesting questions.
I do think EA should continue to steer clear of overtly partisan-political issues, especially in highly polarized societies like the U.S. This is for a few reasons:
EAs seem to lean Left politically, according to EA surveys; but to engage with partisan politics in a morally and epistemically humble way, we’d need a real diversity of political attitudes within EA to provide checks and balances against unconscious political biases and virtue-signaling.
Partisan politics tends to involve controversies that are often not neglected, tractable, or scope-sensitive, so they’re often a poor fit for EA. Modern political parties exist not to solve real-world problems, but to raise money, get votes, amass power, support virtue-signaling, and make partisans feel good. EA exists to solve real-world problems efficiently and open-mindedly, so its principles and goals simply ‘don’t compute’ to most partisan politicians, activists, and voters.
Politics is a game for older, cynical sociopaths who understand how power works, not for idealistic young EAs who, dare I say it, are often quite naive about the nature of power and how it’s gained and wielded. (I’m in my mid-50s, and I’m only just starting to understand how American politics actually operates; I’m dubious that EAs younger than about 40 would end up being anything more than pawns in political games they don’t understand.)
Political engagement is highly addictive, rewarding, thrilling, and distracting. (Trust me on this, as someone who’s all too engaged on political Twitter.) For many EAs trying to work at the intersection of politics and EA, the political side would often end up pulling them away from their EA principles and cause areas.
Politics tends to be very nation-specific and culture-specific, whereas EA aspires to global relevance. Insofar as EAs tend to be from the US, UK, Germany, Australia, and few other ‘Western liberal democracies’, we might end up focusing too much on the kinds of political institutions and issues typical of these countries. This would lead to neglect of other countries with other political values and issues. But even worse, it might lead us to neglect geopolitically important nation-states such as China and Russia where our ‘Western liberal democracy’ models of politics just don’t apply very well. This could lead us to neglect certain ideas and interventions that could help nudge those countries in directions that will be good for humanity long-term (e.g. minimizing global catastrophic risks from Russian nukes or Chinese AI).
For all these reasons, I think EA should strive to avoid the realm of politics, and just do our own thing, in what we could think of as ‘non-political stealth mode’, flying under the radar of the usual partisan-politics system of news, activism, power, and propaganda.
I think these are great points for the movement in general and for “politics” in general, but I still think it’s more complicated in some cases.
For example, I’m just not convinced we can dismiss the EV of investing in having EA/EA-adjacent people in power, even if any given person is expected to make ~0 counterfactual difference, just in case the have to respond to a pivotal emergency—it would be convenient if we could, but I don’t think we can.
I’m doing a pretty grubby, what you call “real-world” project trying to get people to use less rat poison, but nothing I do to try to achieve that is outside of the reach of the law. My ideal solution would be to create birth control that is superior to rodenticides and even more convenient so that people will voluntary switch to that, but even if I had the perfect product in hand, marketing it would require navigating a maze of policy and special interests. Zooming out, there would much more incentive to create such a product if there were more restrictions on rodenticide use, and given their toxicity and destructive effect on the ecosystem, there are plenty of people already trying to do that. Do we ally with them? What if all we need to do is sign onto the coalition sponsoring a bill? What if we don’t 100% agree with the bill? I just think the answer to questions like that is going to be case-by-case.
I don’t like doing political stuff. It feels icky to me and I feel pretty naturally disadvantaged at political maneuvering. I would love if there were an EA reason not to have to deal with it. But unfortunately I suspect that real world wasn’t built around EA preferences :(
Hi Holly,
I think that in specific cases like this (e.g. reduce rodenticide use), where there’s no obvious partisan side to the issue, and it doesn’t come pre-polarized in the public mind, and most politicians and voters haven’t even heard of the issue or thought about it, then there’s a totally reasonable case for EA promotion of the cause at a political level.
I was mostly concerned about EA avoiding issues that are already partisan-polarized, already controversial, and already subject to pressure from vested interests with a lot of power and money.
More generally, I think it might be helpful to recruit and influence people who are already active in political life to adopt EA values and views as part of their ‘private persona’—as long as we don’t form explicit public alliances with organized political parties or partisan movements. For example, if some EA group in Washington DC wanted to do more outreach to smart young Congressional staffers (of both parties!), that could be quite helpful in terms of EA perspectives informing the behind-the-scenes thinking and priorities of Congressional Representatives.
Or if EAs want to pursue political careers as potential high-impact ways to promote EA initiatives, that could be great—as long as they avoid overly explicit ‘EA branding’ in their campaigns.
I just think we have to be very careful not to appear overtly allied with any political party. For many potential intersection of EA and politics, that might be very difficult—but for some (e.g. rodenticide use), it might be quite easy.
Yes, I think this. I don’t see much point to having people elected or doing political interventions in the name of EA. But many object that even getting people who happen to be EAs into politics is too corrupting because, for example, they fundraise among EAs and their friends get partisan when supporting them.
Many consider this dangerously close to spinning the message to try to appeal to politicians.
Completely agree about not getting into encumbering alliances at the movement level.
I completely agree with this. As a (Americans read: neo) Liberal that thinks the Green movement does far more harm than good, some of the political campaigning I’ve seen EAs do really puts me off and makes me question the entire movement. SBF’s lobbying of politicians in the US is another example of egregious misuse of funds.
Until those checks and balances are in place, we should be focusing on directing funds to the most impactful causes. That should be the beginning and end of EA in my opinion. Politics is almost never the best ROI approach to anything, using EA’s own methodology to calculate impact. There will of course be exceptions, but I find it hard to believe any amount of money will be better spent trying to influence a government as opposed to buying malaria nets.
We also need to avoid thinking and framing our actions as a group identity. It’s to be expected that people come to different and opposing conclusions even within a movement with clear stated principles. As such, political action shouldn’t be done in the name of the group as a whole.
YES
Duarte—I agree with your additional points here.
FWIW, I was always uneasy with SBF’s massive donations to (mostly) Democratic politicians, and with his determination to defeat Trump at any cost, by any means necessary. It just didn’t make sense in terms of EA reasoning, values, and priorities. It should have been a big red flag.
But I think the lack of political diversity in EA, and many EAs’ tacit agreement with SBF’s partisan political views, led too many EAs to think it was no big deal that SBF was mixing EA and politics in unprincipled and somewhat bizarre ways.
In the future, I think we should have stronger skepticism about anybody who tries to link EA to partisan political activism.
I thought it was not super consistent with EA but easily explained by Sam’s parents’ careers and values. I often expressed worry about how it would affect our epistemics for EAs to become politicians bankrolled by Sam or for the community as a whole to feel pressure not undermine political moves that they would have to make to succeed, but I gave him personally a pass for wanting to spend some of his seemingly unlimited funds on political stuff because I assumed he had strong beliefs about politics as a lever for good from his upbringing.
Can’t disagree, only 32, still don’t fully understand how american politics works.