TLDR; The EA Forum (EA as a whole?) should ready for attention/influx due to political money in about a 12 month horizon from this comment (so like 2023ish?). So maybe designing/implementing structure or norms, e.g. encouraging high quality discussion, using real names is good.
There is a news cycle going around that SBF will increase political spending for 2024.
But this doesn’t indicate what could happen to forum discussion after an extensive, large deployment of money.
It’s prudent to think about bad scenarios for the forum (e.g. large coordinated outside response, or just ~100 outside people coming in, causing weeks of chatter).
The best scenarios probably involve a forum which encourages and filters for good discussion (because the hundreds of thousands of people interested can’t all be accommodated and just relying on self selection from a smaller group of people who wander in probably results in adverse selection).
The best outcomes might include bringing in and hosting discussions with great policy expertise, getting EA candidates good exposure, and building understanding and expertise in political campaigning.
I guess a bad scenario is maybe 20-30% probable? I guess most scenarios are just sort of mediocre outcomes, with “streetlight” sort of limitations in discussion, and selecting for the loud voices with less outside options.
Very good scenarios seem unlikely without EA effort. Maybe good scenarios requires active involvement and promotion of discussion.
TLDR; The EA Forum (EA as a whole?) should ready for attention/influx due to political money in about a 12 month horizon from this comment (so like 2023ish?). So maybe designing/implementing structure or norms, e.g. encouraging high quality discussion, using real names is good.
There is a news cycle going around that SBF will increase political spending for 2024.
Examples:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/24/crypto-billionaire-says-he-could-spend-a-record-breaking-1-billion-in-2024-election.html
https://news.yahoo.com/crypto-billionaire-sam-bankman-fried-131134527.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/crypto-billionaire-says-spend-record-breaking-1-billion-2024-election-rcna30351
https://newrepublic.com/article/166584/sam-bankman-fried-crypto-kings-political-donations
https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/ftxs-bankman-fried-already-political-202539699.html
Two examples of newcomers, whose presence seems positive or productive:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/_pk
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/carol-greenough
But this doesn’t indicate what could happen to forum discussion after an extensive, large deployment of money.
It’s prudent to think about bad scenarios for the forum (e.g. large coordinated outside response, or just ~100 outside people coming in, causing weeks of chatter).
The best scenarios probably involve a forum which encourages and filters for good discussion (because the hundreds of thousands of people interested can’t all be accommodated and just relying on self selection from a smaller group of people who wander in probably results in adverse selection).
The best outcomes might include bringing in and hosting discussions with great policy expertise, getting EA candidates good exposure, and building understanding and expertise in political campaigning.
I guess a bad scenario is maybe 20-30% probable? I guess most scenarios are just sort of mediocre outcomes, with “streetlight” sort of limitations in discussion, and selecting for the loud voices with less outside options.
Very good scenarios seem unlikely without EA effort. Maybe good scenarios requires active involvement and promotion of discussion.