Advocacy organization for unduly unpopular technologies
Public opinion on key technologies.
Some technologies have enormous benefits, but they are not deployed very much because they are unpopular. Nuclear energy could be a powerful tool for enhancing access to clean energy and combating climate change, but it faces public opposition in Western countries. Similarly, GMOs could help solve the puzzle of feeding the global population with fewer resources, but public opinion is largely against them. Cellular agriculture may soon face similar challenges. Public opinion on these technologies must urgently be shifted. We’d like to see NGOs that create the necessary support via institutions and the media, without falling into the trap of partisan warfare with traditional environmentalists.
Probably want to avoid unifying all of these under one “we advocate for things that most people hate” advocacy group! Although that would be pretty hilarious. But funding lots of little different groups in some of these key areas is great, such as trying to make it easier to build clean energy projects of all kinds as I mention here.
Right, it sounds absurd and maybe hilarious, but it’s actually what I had in mind. The advantage is internal coherence. The idea is basically to let “ecomodernism” go mainstream, having a Greenpeace-like org that has ideas more similar to the Breakthrough Institute. It’s far from clear that this can work, but it’s worth a try, in my view. About your suggestion: I love it and voted for it.
Maybe so… like an economics version of the ACLU that builds a reputation of sticking up for things that are good even though they’re unpopular. Might work especially well if oriented around the legal system (where ACLU operates and where groups like Greenpeace and the ever-controversial NRA have had lots of success), rather than purely advocacy? Having a unified brand might help convince people that our side has a point. For instance, a group that litigates to fight against nimbyism by complaining about the overuse of environmental laws or zoning regulations… the nimbys would naturally see themselves as the heroes of the story and assume that lawyers on the pro-construction side were probably villains funded by big greedy developers. Seeing that their opposition was a semi-respected ACLU-like brand that fought for a variety of causes might help change people’s minds on an issue.
(On the other hand, I feel like the legal system is fundamentally friendlier terrain for stopping projects than encouraging them, so the legal angle might not work well for GMOs and power plants. But maybe there are areas like trying to ban Gain-of-Function research where this could be a helpful strategy.)
We’d still probably want the brand of this group to be pretty far disconnected from EA—groups like Greenpeace, the NRA, etc naturally attract a lot of controversy and demonization.
Since Lifecycle Analysis show that it most likely is the best option, I fully agree on the nuclear Part. I also agree on the GMO part, since huge Meta Analysis show no adverse effects on the environment (compared as yield/area & Biodiversity/dollar & Yield/dollar labor/ yield), in comparison with other agriculture.
I have no Assessment on Cellular Agriculture, but I do think, that it is fair to support such schemes ( at least until we have solid data regarding this, and then decide again).
Note: Wanted to share an example. I think that while nuclear fission reactors are unpopular and this unpopularity is sticky, it is possible that efforts to preemptively decouple the reputation of nuclear fusion reactors with those of nuclear fission reactors can succeed (and that nuclear fusion’s hypothetical positive reputation can be sticky over time). But it is also possible that the unpopularity of nuclear fission will stick to nuclear fusion.
Which of these two possibilities occurs, and how proactive action can change this, is mysterious at the moment. This is because our causal/theoretical understanding of the science of human behavior is incomplete. (see my submission, “Causal microfoundations for behavioral science”) Preemptive action regarding historically unprecendented settings like emergent technologies—for which much of the relevant data may not yet exist—can be substantially informed by externally valid predictions of people’s situation-specific behavior in such settings.
Interesting thought. FWIW, I think it’s more realistic that we can turn around public opinion on fission first, reap more of the benefits of fission, and then have a better public public landscape for fusion, then that we accept the unpopularity of fission as a given but will have somehow popular fusion. But I may well be wrong.
Advocacy organization for unduly unpopular technologies
Public opinion on key technologies.
Some technologies have enormous benefits, but they are not deployed very much because they are unpopular. Nuclear energy could be a powerful tool for enhancing access to clean energy and combating climate change, but it faces public opposition in Western countries. Similarly, GMOs could help solve the puzzle of feeding the global population with fewer resources, but public opinion is largely against them. Cellular agriculture may soon face similar challenges. Public opinion on these technologies must urgently be shifted. We’d like to see NGOs that create the necessary support via institutions and the media, without falling into the trap of partisan warfare with traditional environmentalists.
Probably want to avoid unifying all of these under one “we advocate for things that most people hate” advocacy group! Although that would be pretty hilarious. But funding lots of little different groups in some of these key areas is great, such as trying to make it easier to build clean energy projects of all kinds as I mention here.
Right, it sounds absurd and maybe hilarious, but it’s actually what I had in mind. The advantage is internal coherence. The idea is basically to let “ecomodernism” go mainstream, having a Greenpeace-like org that has ideas more similar to the Breakthrough Institute. It’s far from clear that this can work, but it’s worth a try, in my view. About your suggestion: I love it and voted for it.
Maybe so… like an economics version of the ACLU that builds a reputation of sticking up for things that are good even though they’re unpopular. Might work especially well if oriented around the legal system (where ACLU operates and where groups like Greenpeace and the ever-controversial NRA have had lots of success), rather than purely advocacy? Having a unified brand might help convince people that our side has a point. For instance, a group that litigates to fight against nimbyism by complaining about the overuse of environmental laws or zoning regulations… the nimbys would naturally see themselves as the heroes of the story and assume that lawyers on the pro-construction side were probably villains funded by big greedy developers. Seeing that their opposition was a semi-respected ACLU-like brand that fought for a variety of causes might help change people’s minds on an issue. (On the other hand, I feel like the legal system is fundamentally friendlier terrain for stopping projects than encouraging them, so the legal angle might not work well for GMOs and power plants. But maybe there are areas like trying to ban Gain-of-Function research where this could be a helpful strategy.)
We’d still probably want the brand of this group to be pretty far disconnected from EA—groups like Greenpeace, the NRA, etc naturally attract a lot of controversy and demonization.
Since Lifecycle Analysis show that it most likely is the best option, I fully agree on the nuclear Part.
I also agree on the GMO part, since huge Meta Analysis show no adverse effects on the environment (compared as yield/area & Biodiversity/dollar & Yield/dollar labor/ yield), in comparison with other agriculture.
I have no Assessment on Cellular Agriculture, but I do think, that it is fair to support such schemes ( at least until we have solid data regarding this, and then decide again).
Note: Wanted to share an example. I think that while nuclear fission reactors are unpopular and this unpopularity is sticky, it is possible that efforts to preemptively decouple the reputation of nuclear fusion reactors with those of nuclear fission reactors can succeed (and that nuclear fusion’s hypothetical positive reputation can be sticky over time). But it is also possible that the unpopularity of nuclear fission will stick to nuclear fusion.
Which of these two possibilities occurs, and how proactive action can change this, is mysterious at the moment. This is because our causal/theoretical understanding of the science of human behavior is incomplete. (see my submission, “Causal microfoundations for behavioral science”) Preemptive action regarding historically unprecendented settings like emergent technologies—for which much of the relevant data may not yet exist—can be substantially informed by externally valid predictions of people’s situation-specific behavior in such settings.
Interesting thought. FWIW, I think it’s more realistic that we can turn around public opinion on fission first, reap more of the benefits of fission, and then have a better public public landscape for fusion, then that we accept the unpopularity of fission as a given but will have somehow popular fusion. But I may well be wrong.