Democracy promotion is a common interest of many causes. Itās highly unlikely we can do anything about (potentially, will ever be able to do anything about again) global poverty, factory farming, or existential risk, if all world powers become repressive autocracies squashing any sign of moral cosmopolitanism and freethought.
I donāt think this quite works as a response to Aleneās point. Many things are necessary/āvaluable preconditions for doing good. We need food, water, functioning infrastructure, preserving democracy, the internet, etc. The fact that something is a precondition for other work doesnāt by itself make it a high-priority EA cause area.
If I apply the ITN framework to āpreserving democracyā, I get something like:
Importance: Not losing democracy is very important. But losing it was arguably similarly catastrophic e.g. 10 years ago. The question is how much the probability has actually increased. Even though the probability seems larger right now, I expect it to still be relatively small ā but Iām uncertain.
Neglectedness: Very low. I agree with Aleneās core point that itās one of the least neglected causes right now.
Tractability: Iād argue somewhat low, though Iām highly uncertain. Thereās little reason to believe thereās lots of low-hanging fruit that hasnāt been picked over decades and centuries of interest in making democracies stable.
Itās also worth noting that much of the current concern is specifically about US democracy, which matters a lot (largest economy, major influence on the rest of the world, where AI is mostly going to be built), and tractability is currently plausibly higher but thatās a narrower cause than āpreserving democracyā (e.g. by reducing global democratic backsliding) full stop.
Matrice, what youāre saying about poverty and existential risk makes so much sense to me. Youāre making a really good point for both of them. The vast majority of humans who are in poverty probably would do just about anything to get out of poverty. And most humans probably would do a bunch of stuff to keep humanity around. So the more rights and power humans have, the more we will achieve our strongly held goals of escaping poverty and preserving our species. For instance, if a person has the ability to move freely to a new city, maybe she will move to a new city where she can get a job. If a person has the ability to vote, maybe she will vote for economic policies that let her afford a line of credit to start a business. So I totally agree with you that democracy promotion seems like a great way to fight poverty and existential risk.
I am extremely concerned about farmed animal welfare, though. That extreme concern makes me somewhat unique among humans, although somewhat normal among EAs. :-) EAs rock. True, studies show that vast majority of humans would rather farmed animals to have better welfare. But the vast majority of humans would presumably rate farmed animal welfare as a very a low priority compared to all their personal interests that affect them directly, like the economy. EAs are really special and unique in caring so much about farmed animal welfare that EAs would consider donating a significant amount of their time or money to farmed animal welfare work.
So, sadly, I donāt think your logic applies as well to farmed animal welfare. If people have more political rights, they wonāt necessarily use those rights to improve farmed animal welfare. In fact, as humans in our society have been gaining more and more rights, farmed animal welfare has been getting worse and worse. Factory farming didnāt even exist two hundred years ago, when life was much worse for humans and we had fewer rights. So, sadly, history has shown that improvement in human rights and wellbeing and rights doesnāt result in improvement in farmed animal wellbeing and rights.
A way to look at it is that humans are the dominant group. Giving more power to the dominant group wonāt necessarily help the subordinate group. Some members of the dominant group (especially EAs!) care a lot about the oppressed group and will use their additional rights and power to help the oppressed group. But thatās not the main thing that members of the dominant group will do with their additional rights and power. In fact, a lot of things that people do with our rights and power hurts animals. For instance, people use our political power to vote for an economy that will allow us to set up foie gras companies. Then we build factory farms, force-feed birds for foie gras, and slaughter them. People use our political power to vote for an economic system that will make it very easy to sell food products, including foie gras. And then we sell the foie gras using the cold supply chain made possible by the roads we voted for the government to build. Since, as a species, we mostly care about our own wellbeing, the more rights and power we have as a species, the more weāll tend to increase our own wellbeing. Thereās no particular reason to think that our increased rights and power will result in a different species being better off, and history has shown the opposite.
To be clear, as a human, I do, selfishly, want us humans to have lots of power, freedom, and democracy! I love Democracy. šŗšø (Thatās an American flag because Iām American, and I love America and the U.S. Constitution so much. And I want our Constitution to survive.) But I just donāt think that protecting Democracy will help animals.
Another way to look at it is: Imagine we were having this conversation back during the Middle Ages. We might dream of a brighter future where thereās a Democracy so that we can vote and own land. We might see a person slaughtering his chicken with an insufficiently sharp blade and think that in that future, when humans like us have more rights, animals will also be treated better. But we would be extremely wrong. 2026 is that brighter future for humans. There is way more Democracy in the world than there was in the Middle Ages. And farmed animal suffering is way worse now than in the Middle Ages. The typical way chickens are slaughtered in the U.S. today is now via a long, dangerous trip to slaughter (which many donāt survive), followed by a shackle-and-hoist live-hang system that is even crueler than someone using an insufficiently sharp blade. And it happens to an unprecedented number of birds (several tens of billions per year worldwide, and 9.5 billion per year in the US aloneāway more than the number of birds killed per year in the Middle Ages). So more Democracy, or preserving the current level of Democracy, wonāt protect animals.
I think the only way to protect animals is by affirmatively working to protect animals.
Democracy promotion is a common interest of many causes. Itās highly unlikely we can do anything about (potentially, will ever be able to do anything about again) global poverty, factory farming, or existential risk, if all world powers become repressive autocracies squashing any sign of moral cosmopolitanism and freethought.
I donāt think this quite works as a response to Aleneās point. Many things are necessary/āvaluable preconditions for doing good. We need food, water, functioning infrastructure, preserving democracy, the internet, etc. The fact that something is a precondition for other work doesnāt by itself make it a high-priority EA cause area.
If I apply the ITN framework to āpreserving democracyā, I get something like:
Importance: Not losing democracy is very important. But losing it was arguably similarly catastrophic e.g. 10 years ago. The question is how much the probability has actually increased. Even though the probability seems larger right now, I expect it to still be relatively small ā but Iām uncertain.
Neglectedness: Very low. I agree with Aleneās core point that itās one of the least neglected causes right now.
Tractability: Iād argue somewhat low, though Iām highly uncertain. Thereās little reason to believe thereās lots of low-hanging fruit that hasnāt been picked over decades and centuries of interest in making democracies stable.
Itās also worth noting that much of the current concern is specifically about US democracy, which matters a lot (largest economy, major influence on the rest of the world, where AI is mostly going to be built), and tractability is currently plausibly higher but thatās a narrower cause than āpreserving democracyā (e.g. by reducing global democratic backsliding) full stop.
Thank you for your comments, Matrice and @Tobias HƤberli!
Matrice, what youāre saying about poverty and existential risk makes so much sense to me. Youāre making a really good point for both of them. The vast majority of humans who are in poverty probably would do just about anything to get out of poverty. And most humans probably would do a bunch of stuff to keep humanity around. So the more rights and power humans have, the more we will achieve our strongly held goals of escaping poverty and preserving our species. For instance, if a person has the ability to move freely to a new city, maybe she will move to a new city where she can get a job. If a person has the ability to vote, maybe she will vote for economic policies that let her afford a line of credit to start a business. So I totally agree with you that democracy promotion seems like a great way to fight poverty and existential risk.
I am extremely concerned about farmed animal welfare, though. That extreme concern makes me somewhat unique among humans, although somewhat normal among EAs. :-) EAs rock. True, studies show that vast majority of humans would rather farmed animals to have better welfare. But the vast majority of humans would presumably rate farmed animal welfare as a very a low priority compared to all their personal interests that affect them directly, like the economy. EAs are really special and unique in caring so much about farmed animal welfare that EAs would consider donating a significant amount of their time or money to farmed animal welfare work.
So, sadly, I donāt think your logic applies as well to farmed animal welfare. If people have more political rights, they wonāt necessarily use those rights to improve farmed animal welfare. In fact, as humans in our society have been gaining more and more rights, farmed animal welfare has been getting worse and worse. Factory farming didnāt even exist two hundred years ago, when life was much worse for humans and we had fewer rights. So, sadly, history has shown that improvement in human rights and wellbeing and rights doesnāt result in improvement in farmed animal wellbeing and rights.
A way to look at it is that humans are the dominant group. Giving more power to the dominant group wonāt necessarily help the subordinate group. Some members of the dominant group (especially EAs!) care a lot about the oppressed group and will use their additional rights and power to help the oppressed group. But thatās not the main thing that members of the dominant group will do with their additional rights and power. In fact, a lot of things that people do with our rights and power hurts animals. For instance, people use our political power to vote for an economy that will allow us to set up foie gras companies. Then we build factory farms, force-feed birds for foie gras, and slaughter them. People use our political power to vote for an economic system that will make it very easy to sell food products, including foie gras. And then we sell the foie gras using the cold supply chain made possible by the roads we voted for the government to build. Since, as a species, we mostly care about our own wellbeing, the more rights and power we have as a species, the more weāll tend to increase our own wellbeing. Thereās no particular reason to think that our increased rights and power will result in a different species being better off, and history has shown the opposite.
To be clear, as a human, I do, selfishly, want us humans to have lots of power, freedom, and democracy! I love Democracy. šŗšø (Thatās an American flag because Iām American, and I love America and the U.S. Constitution so much. And I want our Constitution to survive.) But I just donāt think that protecting Democracy will help animals.
Another way to look at it is: Imagine we were having this conversation back during the Middle Ages. We might dream of a brighter future where thereās a Democracy so that we can vote and own land. We might see a person slaughtering his chicken with an insufficiently sharp blade and think that in that future, when humans like us have more rights, animals will also be treated better. But we would be extremely wrong. 2026 is that brighter future for humans. There is way more Democracy in the world than there was in the Middle Ages. And farmed animal suffering is way worse now than in the Middle Ages. The typical way chickens are slaughtered in the U.S. today is now via a long, dangerous trip to slaughter (which many donāt survive), followed by a shackle-and-hoist live-hang system that is even crueler than someone using an insufficiently sharp blade. And it happens to an unprecedented number of birds (several tens of billions per year worldwide, and 9.5 billion per year in the US aloneāway more than the number of birds killed per year in the Middle Ages). So more Democracy, or preserving the current level of Democracy, wonāt protect animals.
I think the only way to protect animals is by affirmatively working to protect animals.