In a previous comment, I mentioned that far-right ideas have created enormous suffering over the past few centuries. As an exercise, let’s consider “preventing harms from far-right ideology” as an EA cause. Some facts:
Betting markets say Donald Trump has a 14.2% chance of being US President in 2024, despite public knowledge of him hanging out with far-right thought leaders.
Newsweek says 40% of Americans still believe the 2020 election was stolen, despite heavy censorship of this claim on social media.
There’s been a lot of noise about Donald Trump over the past few years, and a lot of people have “Trump fatigue”. “Trump fatigue” might cause people to neglect that the US is actually in a very bad situation. It seems very reasonable to estimate a >10% chance the US is a far-right dictatorship within 5-10 years. If this happens, it will be a far-right dictatorship with an incredibly powerful military and intelligence apparatus, likely including all the tech company data that privacy advocates have been nagging us about.
Given the numbers above, “preventing people from adopting far-right ideology” (as I discussed in this comment) seems like a weak intervention for the “preventing harms from far-right ideology” cause area. The facts suggest there already are millions of Americans who’ve adopted far-right ideology, and existing measures haven’t exactly caused them to go away. Deconversion seems like a better intervention than prevention at this point.
Point being, if Tegmark really is partway down a far-right pipeline, it may be worth investing effort in deconverting him as a case study. [EDIT: This speculation now seems unwarranted given recent statements from FLI]
In a previous comment, I mentioned that far-right ideas have created enormous suffering over the past few centuries. As an exercise, let’s consider “preventing harms from far-right ideology” as an EA cause. Some facts:
Betting markets say Donald Trump has a 14.2% chance of being US President in 2024, despite public knowledge of him hanging out with far-right thought leaders.
Newsweek says 40% of Americans still believe the 2020 election was stolen, despite heavy censorship of this claim on social media.
There’s been a lot of noise about Donald Trump over the past few years, and a lot of people have “Trump fatigue”. “Trump fatigue” might cause people to neglect that the US is actually in a very bad situation. It seems very reasonable to estimate a >10% chance the US is a far-right dictatorship within 5-10 years. If this happens, it will be a far-right dictatorship with an incredibly powerful military and intelligence apparatus, likely including all the tech company data that privacy advocates have been nagging us about.
Given the numbers above, “preventing people from adopting far-right ideology” (as I discussed in this comment) seems like a weak intervention for the “preventing harms from far-right ideology” cause area. The facts suggest there already are millions of Americans who’ve adopted far-right ideology, and existing measures haven’t exactly caused them to go away. Deconversion seems like a better intervention than prevention at this point.
Point being, if Tegmark really is partway down a far-right pipeline, it may be worth investing effort in deconverting him as a case study.[EDIT: This speculation now seems unwarranted given recent statements from FLI]