We tried earlier. Carrick Flynn received substantial support from EA and the result was mediocre, with criticisms of EA actually having a negative effect on his campaign, as people pointed out the connection to the “billionaires and techbros” who apparently fund EA and such.
Also, the head of RAND, Jason Matheny, is an EA, and there’s some connections between EA and the American NatSec establishment. CSET for instance was funded partly by OpenPhil. There is a tendency among a lot of EAs is to try not to be partisan and mostly support effective governance and policy kind of things.
That being said, Dustin Moskovitz, the billionaire who is the main donor behind what was previously called Open Philanthropy and is now Coefficient Giving, has donated significantly and repeatedly to Democrats. OpenPhil has historically been by far the largest funder of EA stuff, particularly since SBF fell from grace, so Dustin’s contributions can be seen tacitly as EA support for the Dems.
So, I don’t think it’s accurate to say EAs have made absolutely no effort on this front. We have, and it has stupidly backfired before and we’re in this very awkward position politically where the whole TESCREAL controversy makes the EA brand tarnished to the Left, even though past surveys have shown that most rank and file EAs are centre-left to left. It’s a frustrating situation.
So, I don’t think it’s accurate to say EAs have made absolutely no effort on this front.
Thanks for the comment. I’m aware of the situations you mentioned and did not say that EA had not previously put effort into things. In fact, my question is essentially “Has EA given up on politics (perhaps because things went poorly before)?”
Also, note that I am not exactly suggesting pushing for left-wing things. Generally remedying the situation may need to go beyond trying to get one person in elected office. In fact, I think that such a bet would be unambitious and fail to meet the moment.
My interest is in transformative reforms and the question of, “how could we do politics better?” How could decision making be improved? Politics is not just about funding some electoral candidate.
In my opinion, and I think it’s been well known for decades, that electoral democracy has woeful limitations on good decision making. This opinion is shared by numerous political scientists. Since the 1950′s, Downs Paradox has suggested that it has never been rational, in a self interested sense, to vote. The following 60 years of research has also demonstrated the woeful incompetence of voters. This latest cycle also demonstrates their incompetence, how Donald Trump was elected and his supporters being surprised by his policies—with many immigrant and gen Z voters quickly supporting, and then opposing, Trump. Anybody “in the know” understood what the Trump 2nd term was going to be about. Any surprise is a result of incompetent decision making.
The status quo of EA seems to be trying to get in on the rat race of electoral politics, to persuade these ignorant voters. Yet propaganda has never been the strength of EA. I then claim that most potential future efforts of campaigning will have mediocre results.
The typical fascist is always going to have an easier time. It’s just easy to use a tried and true tactic—scapegoat a minority (ie trans people and immigrants), blame them for all our problems, and use them as a vehicle to take power. Fascism takes advantage of our tribal instincts, whereas something like EA demands a rationality that is too expensive to transmit through mass propaganda.
Is there something better out there? In my opinion yes, and it’s called sortition. The premise is simple. Instead of demanding everyone participate in politics, you draw a random sample. With fewer participants, you can now focus resources on the sample.
Imagine you want to select a president or some other leadership role for government. You could use sortition to construct a representative electoral college. Pay these representatives to do the job. Give them months, or years, to make decisions.
So whereas the typical voter might use a couple hours to make a voting decision, a full time committee could be making decisions on the time scale of months to years. In other words, a sortition electoral college would use literally thousands of times more man-hours to make a decision compared to the ignorant voter.
This is no shower thought. Political scientists and advocates have been experimenting with sortition in the form of deliberative polls and citizens assemblies for around 3 decades starting in the 1990s. The results of these experiment in my opinion have been very promising. For example, whereas the American electorate has gone full xenophobic anti immigration, deliberative polls showed opposite results. American participants in citizen deliberation showed moderation and embrace of immigration. However most these expeiements remain in an advisory capacity with no real powers, though Citizens Assemblies for example have been implemented in Paris and Mongolia.
Moreover, there is essentially no experiments with giving sortition style assemblies real political power.
In my opinion there is enormous value in supporting experimentation to create a 21st century government capable of making informed decisions at a faster rate. The value added to superior government is likely at several additional percentage points of GDP every year. In other words, the the potential gain is is the multi trillions every year.
Alternatively we can believe that electoral democracy is already at its optimal state and that further efficiency gains would be miniscule. The election of candidates like Donald Trump in my opinion make this viewpoint unlikely.
Of all the proposals I have heard about to reform democracy, sortition is the ONLY proposal with a viable strategy towards improving democratic decision making. alternatives to democracy in my opinion are mostly terrible and have no accountability mechanism to reign in the meritocrats turned oligarchs.
Take for example the typical progressive policy that we “need more education”. Progressives have been advocating for more education for more than a century. And we are better educated than ever.
But education doesn’t defeat Down’s Paradox. Voting demands specific and up to date knowledge. Education can only teach you about the past, and hopefully use propaganda to inspire Americans to overcome their self interest in favor of a civic duty. Yet in our new world of artificial intelligence and LLM’s, it’s only going to get harder and harder to parse out truth and facts from disinformation. Our best efforts, amateur by definition, just aren’t enough anymore.
We tried earlier. Carrick Flynn received substantial support from EA and the result was mediocre, with criticisms of EA actually having a negative effect on his campaign, as people pointed out the connection to the “billionaires and techbros” who apparently fund EA and such.
Also, the head of RAND, Jason Matheny, is an EA, and there’s some connections between EA and the American NatSec establishment. CSET for instance was funded partly by OpenPhil. There is a tendency among a lot of EAs is to try not to be partisan and mostly support effective governance and policy kind of things.
That being said, Dustin Moskovitz, the billionaire who is the main donor behind what was previously called Open Philanthropy and is now Coefficient Giving, has donated significantly and repeatedly to Democrats. OpenPhil has historically been by far the largest funder of EA stuff, particularly since SBF fell from grace, so Dustin’s contributions can be seen tacitly as EA support for the Dems.
So, I don’t think it’s accurate to say EAs have made absolutely no effort on this front. We have, and it has stupidly backfired before and we’re in this very awkward position politically where the whole TESCREAL controversy makes the EA brand tarnished to the Left, even though past surveys have shown that most rank and file EAs are centre-left to left. It’s a frustrating situation.
Thanks for the comment. I’m aware of the situations you mentioned and did not say that EA had not previously put effort into things. In fact, my question is essentially “Has EA given up on politics (perhaps because things went poorly before)?”
Also, note that I am not exactly suggesting pushing for left-wing things. Generally remedying the situation may need to go beyond trying to get one person in elected office. In fact, I think that such a bet would be unambitious and fail to meet the moment.
My interest is in transformative reforms and the question of, “how could we do politics better?” How could decision making be improved? Politics is not just about funding some electoral candidate.
In my opinion, and I think it’s been well known for decades, that electoral democracy has woeful limitations on good decision making. This opinion is shared by numerous political scientists. Since the 1950′s, Downs Paradox has suggested that it has never been rational, in a self interested sense, to vote. The following 60 years of research has also demonstrated the woeful incompetence of voters. This latest cycle also demonstrates their incompetence, how Donald Trump was elected and his supporters being surprised by his policies—with many immigrant and gen Z voters quickly supporting, and then opposing, Trump. Anybody “in the know” understood what the Trump 2nd term was going to be about. Any surprise is a result of incompetent decision making.
The status quo of EA seems to be trying to get in on the rat race of electoral politics, to persuade these ignorant voters. Yet propaganda has never been the strength of EA. I then claim that most potential future efforts of campaigning will have mediocre results.
The typical fascist is always going to have an easier time. It’s just easy to use a tried and true tactic—scapegoat a minority (ie trans people and immigrants), blame them for all our problems, and use them as a vehicle to take power. Fascism takes advantage of our tribal instincts, whereas something like EA demands a rationality that is too expensive to transmit through mass propaganda.
Is there something better out there? In my opinion yes, and it’s called sortition. The premise is simple. Instead of demanding everyone participate in politics, you draw a random sample. With fewer participants, you can now focus resources on the sample.
Imagine you want to select a president or some other leadership role for government. You could use sortition to construct a representative electoral college. Pay these representatives to do the job. Give them months, or years, to make decisions.
So whereas the typical voter might use a couple hours to make a voting decision, a full time committee could be making decisions on the time scale of months to years. In other words, a sortition electoral college would use literally thousands of times more man-hours to make a decision compared to the ignorant voter.
This is no shower thought. Political scientists and advocates have been experimenting with sortition in the form of deliberative polls and citizens assemblies for around 3 decades starting in the 1990s. The results of these experiment in my opinion have been very promising. For example, whereas the American electorate has gone full xenophobic anti immigration, deliberative polls showed opposite results. American participants in citizen deliberation showed moderation and embrace of immigration. However most these expeiements remain in an advisory capacity with no real powers, though Citizens Assemblies for example have been implemented in Paris and Mongolia.
Moreover, there is essentially no experiments with giving sortition style assemblies real political power.
In my opinion there is enormous value in supporting experimentation to create a 21st century government capable of making informed decisions at a faster rate. The value added to superior government is likely at several additional percentage points of GDP every year. In other words, the the potential gain is is the multi trillions every year.
Alternatively we can believe that electoral democracy is already at its optimal state and that further efficiency gains would be miniscule. The election of candidates like Donald Trump in my opinion make this viewpoint unlikely.
Of all the proposals I have heard about to reform democracy, sortition is the ONLY proposal with a viable strategy towards improving democratic decision making. alternatives to democracy in my opinion are mostly terrible and have no accountability mechanism to reign in the meritocrats turned oligarchs.
Take for example the typical progressive policy that we “need more education”. Progressives have been advocating for more education for more than a century. And we are better educated than ever.
But education doesn’t defeat Down’s Paradox. Voting demands specific and up to date knowledge. Education can only teach you about the past, and hopefully use propaganda to inspire Americans to overcome their self interest in favor of a civic duty. Yet in our new world of artificial intelligence and LLM’s, it’s only going to get harder and harder to parse out truth and facts from disinformation. Our best efforts, amateur by definition, just aren’t enough anymore.