I don’t think this quite works as a response to Alene’s point. Many things are necessary/valuable 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 doesn’t by itself make it a high-priority EA cause area.
If I apply the ITN framework to ‘preserving democracy’, 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 – but I’m uncertain.
Neglectedness: Very low. I agree with Alene’s core point that it’s one of the least neglected causes right now.
Tractability: I’d argue somewhat low, though I’m highly uncertain. There’s little reason to believe there’s lots of low-hanging fruit that hasn’t been picked over decades and centuries of interest in making democracies stable.
It’s 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 that’s a narrower cause than ‘preserving democracy’ (e.g. by reducing global democratic backsliding) full stop.
I don’t think this quite works as a response to Alene’s point. Many things are necessary/valuable 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 doesn’t by itself make it a high-priority EA cause area.
If I apply the ITN framework to ‘preserving democracy’, 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 – but I’m uncertain.
Neglectedness: Very low. I agree with Alene’s core point that it’s one of the least neglected causes right now.
Tractability: I’d argue somewhat low, though I’m highly uncertain. There’s little reason to believe there’s lots of low-hanging fruit that hasn’t been picked over decades and centuries of interest in making democracies stable.
It’s 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 that’s a narrower cause than ‘preserving democracy’ (e.g. by reducing global democratic backsliding) full stop.