The values and views of other candidates the EA candidate is displacing should be a significant consideration in whether to support the campaign
This seems like a very surprising claim to me fwiw. Like it sounds reasonable and rational on the face of it, but if I think about it for even 15 seconds, it breaks down under (my current and potentially very flawed) understanding of the world.
I expected this critique when I wrote that claim. I think I understand why someone would see the other candidate as being insignificant. Let me know if I’m presuming the wrong reasons here:
It seemed that the Flynn campaign message was all about pandemic preparedness. At least that’s how it was marketed in EA spaces. And it’s mostly true that there isn’t anybody in congress championing pandemic preparedness. If you are a single-issue voter on pandemic preparedness or AGI, I can see how the opposing candidate doesn’t matter to you; your candidate will do more for the cause than any other candidate, regardless of party, who likely doesn’t care or have an opinion on it. It’s more of a binary. If you care more about existential risks much more than anything else, this reasoning make sense.
But if you care about other causes like animal welfare, local or global poverty, climate change, democracy health, etc., chances are the other candidate does have views on it. If they are a progressive democratic candidate like Andrea Salinas, EA-aligned poverty alleviation, climate change action, and voting reform are significant parts of their platform. Also, one of the key issues in the U.S. presently is whether we are going to retain a semblance of a democracy or if elections are going to be decided by super PACs and gerrymandered state legislators. There is a significant party divide on support for EA-aligned voting reform and bans on alternative voting methods. If you care about being able to influence elections through public appeals, maintaining a functioning democracy matters even if you are a single-issue voter. There is a clear partisan divide. Given an equal chance of winning, would you rather the EA candidate run opposed to someone like Andrea Salinas or Madison Cawthorn?
It’s very much not obvious to me that EAs should generally prefer progressive democratic candidates in general, or Salinas in particular.
Speaking personally, I am generally not excited about Democratic progressives gaining more power in the party relative to centrists, and I’m pretty confident I’m not alone here in that[1].
I also think it’s false to claim that Salinas’s platform as linked gives much reason to think she will be a force for good on global poverty, animal welfare, or meaningful voting reform. (I’d obviously change my mind on this if there are other Salinas quotes that pertain more directly to these issues.)
There are also various parts of her platform that make me think there’s a decent chance that her time in office will turn out to be bad for the world by my lights (not just relative to Carrick). I obviously don’t expect everyone here to agree with me on that, and I’m certainly not confident about it, but I also don’t want broad claims that progressives are better by EA values to stand uncontested, because I personally don’t think that’s true.
To be clear, I think this is very contestable within an EA framework, and am not trying to claim that my political preferences here are necessarily implied by EA.
I think your paraphrase is roughly right. But this is not exactly how I’d frame it. Instead, I’d frame it as:
I think improving the long-term future significantly is quite hard. So you need either a pretty targeted theory of change, or the type of mindset that has an implicitly very strong ToC that lets you spot great opportunities along the implicit ToC and execute on it.
Some people do manage to accidentally improve the long-term future significantly (e.g. there’s an argument for Petrov’s grandmother), but this is very much not the default, and we should not rely on them being successful at this, especially ex ante.
Thanks for clarifying. I agree with you that if the main reason you are supporting a candidate is their potential impact on long-term future oriented policy then the opposing candidate doesn’t matter much beyond a simple estimate of their electoral chances vs. your candidate.
I guess I’m also not convinced if you care about typical neartermist EA causes that the math checks out. Like, I don’t think typical progressive democrats are very good at e.g. increasing foreign aid or phasing out factory farming, though at least this seems more plausible. *
I did look briefly at Salinas’ platform and I didn’t see anything about (e.g.) increasing global health spending.
(EDIT: I do think the “functioning democracy” angle may be a reasonably strong contender for the type of crucial consideration that could flip my conclusion, though I’m currently at <10% here. I think it’s great that you brought this up).
* Obviously there are more exceptions for specific Democrat candidates on non-LT issues, e.g. I was (and am) a Cory Booker shill.
I don’t understand why you keep presenting this as a long-term vs near-term issue. I would have been thrilled to support a candidate who advocated for comprehensive and unprecedented welfare reform for farmed animals, or for massive increases in well-targeted global health spending. Support for such issues is so rare in American politics, and could be so disproportionately impactful, that it makes perfect sense to focus exclusively on the exceptional candidate who decides to make them a top priority.
I don’t understand why you keep presenting this as a long-term vs near-term issue.
I probably framed my first reply to Matthew in a way that was unhelpfully focused only on LT stuff, which I’d guess partially led to the presentation in his response.
This seems like a very surprising claim to me fwiw. Like it sounds reasonable and rational on the face of it, but if I think about it for even 15 seconds, it breaks down under (my current and potentially very flawed) understanding of the world.
Can you elaborate?
I expected this critique when I wrote that claim. I think I understand why someone would see the other candidate as being insignificant. Let me know if I’m presuming the wrong reasons here:
It seemed that the Flynn campaign message was all about pandemic preparedness. At least that’s how it was marketed in EA spaces. And it’s mostly true that there isn’t anybody in congress championing pandemic preparedness. If you are a single-issue voter on pandemic preparedness or AGI, I can see how the opposing candidate doesn’t matter to you; your candidate will do more for the cause than any other candidate, regardless of party, who likely doesn’t care or have an opinion on it. It’s more of a binary. If you care more about existential risks much more than anything else, this reasoning make sense.
But if you care about other causes like animal welfare, local or global poverty, climate change, democracy health, etc., chances are the other candidate does have views on it. If they are a progressive democratic candidate like Andrea Salinas, EA-aligned poverty alleviation, climate change action, and voting reform are significant parts of their platform. Also, one of the key issues in the U.S. presently is whether we are going to retain a semblance of a democracy or if elections are going to be decided by super PACs and gerrymandered state legislators. There is a significant party divide on support for EA-aligned voting reform and bans on alternative voting methods. If you care about being able to influence elections through public appeals, maintaining a functioning democracy matters even if you are a single-issue voter. There is a clear partisan divide. Given an equal chance of winning, would you rather the EA candidate run opposed to someone like Andrea Salinas or Madison Cawthorn?
It’s very much not obvious to me that EAs should generally prefer progressive democratic candidates in general, or Salinas in particular.
Speaking personally, I am generally not excited about Democratic progressives gaining more power in the party relative to centrists, and I’m pretty confident I’m not alone here in that[1].
I also think it’s false to claim that Salinas’s platform as linked gives much reason to think she will be a force for good on global poverty, animal welfare, or meaningful voting reform. (I’d obviously change my mind on this if there are other Salinas quotes that pertain more directly to these issues.)
There are also various parts of her platform that make me think there’s a decent chance that her time in office will turn out to be bad for the world by my lights (not just relative to Carrick). I obviously don’t expect everyone here to agree with me on that, and I’m certainly not confident about it, but I also don’t want broad claims that progressives are better by EA values to stand uncontested, because I personally don’t think that’s true.
To be clear, I think this is very contestable within an EA framework, and am not trying to claim that my political preferences here are necessarily implied by EA.
I think your paraphrase is roughly right. But this is not exactly how I’d frame it. Instead, I’d frame it as:
I think improving the long-term future significantly is quite hard. So you need either a pretty targeted theory of change, or the type of mindset that has an implicitly very strong ToC that lets you spot great opportunities along the implicit ToC and execute on it.
Some people do manage to accidentally improve the long-term future significantly (e.g. there’s an argument for Petrov’s grandmother), but this is very much not the default, and we should not rely on them being successful at this, especially ex ante.
Thanks for clarifying. I agree with you that if the main reason you are supporting a candidate is their potential impact on long-term future oriented policy then the opposing candidate doesn’t matter much beyond a simple estimate of their electoral chances vs. your candidate.
I guess I’m also not convinced if you care about typical neartermist EA causes that the math checks out. Like, I don’t think typical progressive democrats are very good at e.g. increasing foreign aid or phasing out factory farming, though at least this seems more plausible. *
I did look briefly at Salinas’ platform and I didn’t see anything about (e.g.) increasing global health spending.
(EDIT: I do think the “functioning democracy” angle may be a reasonably strong contender for the type of crucial consideration that could flip my conclusion, though I’m currently at <10% here. I think it’s great that you brought this up).
* Obviously there are more exceptions for specific Democrat candidates on non-LT issues, e.g. I was (and am) a Cory Booker shill.
I don’t understand why you keep presenting this as a long-term vs near-term issue. I would have been thrilled to support a candidate who advocated for comprehensive and unprecedented welfare reform for farmed animals, or for massive increases in well-targeted global health spending. Support for such issues is so rare in American politics, and could be so disproportionately impactful, that it makes perfect sense to focus exclusively on the exceptional candidate who decides to make them a top priority.
I probably framed my first reply to Matthew in a way that was unhelpfully focused only on LT stuff, which I’d guess partially led to the presentation in his response.