My knee-jerk reaction is to feel attacked by this comment, on behalf of the EA community.
I assume that one thing that might be going on is a miscommunication. Perhaps you believe that I was assuming that EAs could quickly swoop in, spent a little time on things, and be far more correct than many experience political experts and analysts.
I’m not sure if this helps, but the above really doesn’t align with what I’m thinking. More something like, “We could provide more sustained help through a variety of methods. People can be useful for many things, like direct volunteering, working in think tanks, being candidates, helping prioritization, etc. I don’t expect miracle results—I instead expect roughly the results of adding some pretty smart and hardworking people.”
I instead expect roughly the results of adding some pretty smart and hardworking people.
The usefulness of smart people is highly dependent on the willingness of the powers-that-be to listen to them. I don’t think lack of raw intelligence had much of anything to do with the recent US electoral results. The initial candidate at the top of the ticket was not fit for a second term, and was forced out too late for a viable replacement to emerge. Instead, we got someone who had never polled well. I also don’t think intelligence was the limiting factor in the Democrats’ refusal to move toward the center on issues that were costing them votes in the swing states. Intellectually understanding that it is necessary to throw some of your most loyal supporters under the bus is one thing; committing to do it is something else; and actually getting it done is harder still. One could think of intelligence as a rate-limiting catalyst up to a certain point, but dumping even more catalyst in after that point doesn’t speed the reaction much.
I think @titotal’s critique largely holds if one models EAs as a group as exceptional in intelligence but roughly at population baseline for more critical and/or rate-limiting elements for political success (e.g., charisma, people savvy). I don’t think that would be an attack—most people are in fact broadly average, and average people would be expected to fail against Altman, etc. And if intelligence were mostly neutralized by the powers-that-be not listening to it, having a few hundred FTEs (i.e., ~10% of all EA FTEs?) with a roughly normal distribution of key attributes is relatively unlikely to be impactful.
Finally, I think this is a place where EA’s tendencies toward being a monoculture hurts—for example, I think a movement that is very disproportionately educationally-privileged, white, STEM focused, and socially liberal will have a hard time understanding why (e.g.) so many Latino voters [most of whom share few of those characteristics] were going for Trump this cycle and how to stop that.
Thinking about this a bit more—
My knee-jerk reaction is to feel attacked by this comment, on behalf of the EA community.
I assume that one thing that might be going on is a miscommunication. Perhaps you believe that I was assuming that EAs could quickly swoop in, spent a little time on things, and be far more correct than many experience political experts and analysts.
I’m not sure if this helps, but the above really doesn’t align with what I’m thinking. More something like, “We could provide more sustained help through a variety of methods. People can be useful for many things, like direct volunteering, working in think tanks, being candidates, helping prioritization, etc. I don’t expect miracle results—I instead expect roughly the results of adding some pretty smart and hardworking people.”
The usefulness of smart people is highly dependent on the willingness of the powers-that-be to listen to them. I don’t think lack of raw intelligence had much of anything to do with the recent US electoral results. The initial candidate at the top of the ticket was not fit for a second term, and was forced out too late for a viable replacement to emerge. Instead, we got someone who had never polled well. I also don’t think intelligence was the limiting factor in the Democrats’ refusal to move toward the center on issues that were costing them votes in the swing states. Intellectually understanding that it is necessary to throw some of your most loyal supporters under the bus is one thing; committing to do it is something else; and actually getting it done is harder still. One could think of intelligence as a rate-limiting catalyst up to a certain point, but dumping even more catalyst in after that point doesn’t speed the reaction much.
I think @titotal’s critique largely holds if one models EAs as a group as exceptional in intelligence but roughly at population baseline for more critical and/or rate-limiting elements for political success (e.g., charisma, people savvy). I don’t think that would be an attack—most people are in fact broadly average, and average people would be expected to fail against Altman, etc. And if intelligence were mostly neutralized by the powers-that-be not listening to it, having a few hundred FTEs (i.e., ~10% of all EA FTEs?) with a roughly normal distribution of key attributes is relatively unlikely to be impactful.
Finally, I think this is a place where EA’s tendencies toward being a monoculture hurts—for example, I think a movement that is very disproportionately educationally-privileged, white, STEM focused, and socially liberal will have a hard time understanding why (e.g.) so many Latino voters [most of whom share few of those characteristics] were going for Trump this cycle and how to stop that.