I am changing this to a linkpost to be extra clear to any folks unfamiliar with this forum that I’m speaking for myself and not the effective altruism community as a whole.
I am changing this to a linkpost to be extra clear to any folks unfamiliar with this forum that I’m speaking for myself and not the effective altruism community as a whole.
I appreciate this post, upvoted. I agree with basically all the reasons for donating. Alex Bores is one of the few potential politicians who has shown any care at all about existential risk from AI, has great EA-minded staff around him, cares about other EA priorities (like AW), and rare for a politician, seems like he might be an overall decent person.
I want to push back on the career implications/career capital costs of making a donation like this. I think EAs are, by in large, far too paranoid about these kind of risks and stress out about analyzing them so I want to give the following points.
Nobody cares. People in practice simply don’t look up this type of stuff. They just don’t. Have you ever done checked the political donations of even your closest friends/family? If you’ve ever hired somebody, have you ever looked into them on this type of thing on a background check? Nobody is following your life that attentively other than you. Everyone else is like you, they don’t look up random people’s political donations. You can dance and donate like nobody’s watching because nobody is.
This type of donation is extremey defensible and justifiable. When asked about it, you simply say “yes, existential risk from AI is one of my top priorities and Alex was one of the few politicians taking it seriously at the time”. If he does something bad in the future you just say “yes, at the time he seemed to care about AI safety. Unfortunately I was wrong”.
People forget and change their minds. The current President, Donald Trump is not someone who most would consider to be accepting of criticism and dissent, to put it lightly. With that in mind, here are some things JD Vance has said about Trump prior to become Vice President:
“My god, what an idiot.”
“America’s Hitler” or a “cynical asshole like Nixon.”
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy. I never liked him.”
“Trump is cultural heroin.”
Other Trump appointees have said similar things. In practice, this type of stuff just doesn’t matter. The half life of the importance of donations/speech on careers is extremely short, if it even matters in the first place
Here are some more additional reasons to make this donation:
There’s a limit to who can donate and how much they can donate. Only US citizens and permanent residents can donate up to a certain amout.
As much as possible, it’d be good for there to be a political coalition for people that care about AI safety. Showing that this exists will make AI safety a more politically salient issue, somewhat like environmentalism.
I think (1) is just very false for people who might seriously consider entering government, and irresponsible advice. I’ve spoken to people who currently work in government, who concur that the Trump administration is illegally checking on people’s track record of support for Democrats. And it seems plausible to me that that kind of thing will intensify. I think that there’s quite a lot of evidence that Trump is very interested in loyalty and rooting out figures who are not loyal to him, and doing background checks, of certain kinds at least, is literally the legal responsibility of people doing hiring in various parts of government (though checking donations to political candidates is not supposed to be part of that).
I’ll also say that I am personally a person who has looked up where individuals have donated (not in a hiring context), and so am existence proof of that kind of behavior. It’s a matter of public record, and I think it is often interesting to know what political candidates different powerful figures in the spaces I care about are supporting.
If you haven’t already, you might want to take a look at this post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6o7B3Fxj55gbcmNQN/considerations-around-career-costs-of-political-donations
I feel like I might pull back on (1) by maybe 20% or so but the general ethos I still want to convey.
The part I didn’t do as good a job of conveying is that most people won’t donate out of risk aversion or keeping their options open and I think people are also far overestimating their odds of pivoting their career into a government role, especially in the next 3 years.
Even if you accept that the Trump administration wouldn’t hire anyone who has ever donated to a Democrat, this is the first time this has happened and thus you shouldn’t assume this type of thing is going to be common.
All in all, I think it’s going to be quite rare that someone shouldn’t make political donations.
How does the $3500 get returned if he doesn’t win? Is it automatic through ActBlue?
In the past, I’ve had:
One instance of the campaign emailing me to set up a bank transfer. This… seems to have happened 9 months after the candidate lost the primary, actually? Which is honestly absurdly long; I don’t know if it’s typical.
One time, I think the campaign just sent a check to the address I used when I donated? But I don’t remember for sure. My guess is that they would have tried to reach me if I didn’t cash the check, but I’m not sure. I vaguely recall that the check was sent within a few months of the candidate losing the primary, but I’m not confident.
My suggestion: set a reminder for, like, September 2026 (I’m guessing that the primary will be in June 2026). Reach out to the campaign if you haven’t gotten anything by then.
Thank you!