Thank you for your excellent points, James! Before responding to your points in turn, I do agree that a significant part of the appeal of my proposal is to make it nicer for EAs. Whether that is worth investing in is not clear to me either—there are definitely more cost-effective ways of doing that. Now to your points:
I think I define democratic legitimacy slightly differently. Instead of viewing it as putting pressure on politicians through them knowing that everyone cares about the long term, I see it moving long-term policies within the Overton window so to speak by making it legitimate. Thus, it acts as a multiplier for EA policy work.
Wrt talent pool, I think it depends on how tractable it is to “predict” the impact of a given individual. I would guess that mass appeal works better if it is harder to a priori predict the impact of a given person / group - then it becomes more of a numbers’ game with getting as many interested people thinking about these issues. I am quite uncertain about whether this is the case, and I imagine there are many other constraints (in e.g. hiring capacity of EA orgs).
I fully agree that this is more of a “nice to have” than a huge value proposition.
I’d never heard of the 14 words but I do agree that the similarity is unfortunate. The slogan was also meant more as an illustration rather than a fully fledged proposal—luckily, it facilitates discussions like these!
Thank you for your excellent points, James! Before responding to your points in turn, I do agree that a significant part of the appeal of my proposal is to make it nicer for EAs. Whether that is worth investing in is not clear to me either—there are definitely more cost-effective ways of doing that. Now to your points:
I think I define democratic legitimacy slightly differently. Instead of viewing it as putting pressure on politicians through them knowing that everyone cares about the long term, I see it moving long-term policies within the Overton window so to speak by making it legitimate. Thus, it acts as a multiplier for EA policy work.
Wrt talent pool, I think it depends on how tractable it is to “predict” the impact of a given individual. I would guess that mass appeal works better if it is harder to a priori predict the impact of a given person / group - then it becomes more of a numbers’ game with getting as many interested people thinking about these issues. I am quite uncertain about whether this is the case, and I imagine there are many other constraints (in e.g. hiring capacity of EA orgs).
I fully agree that this is more of a “nice to have” than a huge value proposition. I’d never heard of the 14 words but I do agree that the similarity is unfortunate. The slogan was also meant more as an illustration rather than a fully fledged proposal—luckily, it facilitates discussions like these!