I essentially agree with the basic point of this post—and think it was a great post!
I have some what feel like nitpicks about the specific story that you told that and I’m sort of confused about how much they matter. My guess is that this actually is a counterargument to the point being made in the post and imply that trapped priors are less of a problem than the example used in the post would imply.
I think that the broadly libertarian view and Scandinavian-style social democracy views are much more similar than this post gives them credit for. In particular, they agree on the crucial importance of liberal democracy that prevents elites (in the 19th-century traditional agricultural elites) from using the state to engage in rent-seeking. I remember reading a list of demands of the German Social Democratic party in the 1870s (before it had moderated) that read a list of liberal democratic demands—secret ballot, free speech, expansion of the power of democratically elected Reichstag etc. These two strands of modern liberal thought also agreed on a liberal epistemology that should be used to try to systematically improve society from a broadly utilitarian perspective—the London School of Economics was founded by 4 Fabian Society members to further this aim!
I think this cashes out in the Effective Samaritans and the Libertarian side of EA (although the Libertains side of EA is pretty unusually libertarian) pursuing pretty similar projects when trying to use non-randomista means for development. For instance, my guess is that both would support increasing state capacity in low-income countries to improve the basic nightwatchman functions of the state, reducing corruption, protecting liberties and the integrity of elections, and removing regulation that that represent elite rent-seeking. Of course they’ll be some differences in emphasis—the Effective Samarations might have a particular theory of change around using unions to coordinate labour to push for political change—but these seem relatively minor compared to the core things both agree are important. Byran Caplan and Robin Hanson are genuinely unusually libertarian even amongst broadly free-market economists, but typically both utilitarian-motivated libertarians and social democrats would be interested in building at least a basic welfare state in low-income countries.
I think we actually in practice see this convergence between liberal social democrats and broadly utilitarian libertarians in the broadly unified policy agendas of Ezra Klien’s abundance agenda and lots of EA-Rationalist adjacent Libertarians like a focus on making it easier to build houses in highly productive cities, reducing barrier to immigration to rich countries, increased public funding of R&D and improving state capacity, particularly around extremely ambitious projects like operation warp speed.
FWIW I don’t think these are nitpicks—I think they point to a totally different takeaway than Mathias suggests in his (excellent) post. If there are political reforms that the various (smart, altruistically-motivated, bias-aware) camps can agree on, it seems like they should work on those instead of retreating to totally uncontroversial RCT-based interventions. Especially since the set of interventions that can be tested in RCTs doesn’t include the interventions that either group thinks are most impactful.
More to the point: it seems like both the camps Mathias describes, the EA libertarians and the Effective Samaritans, would agree that their potential influence over how political economy develops over time has much higher stakes (from a cosmopolitan moral perspective) than their potential influence over the sorts of interventions that are amenable to RCTs. It seems far from obvious that they should do the lower-stakes thing, instead of trying to find some truth-tracking approach to work on the higher-stakes thing. (E.g. only pursue the reforms that both camps want; or cooperate to build institutions/contexts that let both camps compete in the marketplace of ideas in a way that both sides expect to be truth-tracking, or just compete in the existing marketplace of ideas and hope the result is truth-tracking, etc.)
Similarly, it seems like AI accelerationists and AI decelerationists would both agree that their potential influence over how AI plays out has much higher stakes (from a cosmopolitan moral perspective) than their potential influence over the sorts of interventions that are amenable to RCTs. So it’s far from obvious that it would be better for them to do the lower-stakes thing instead of trying to find some truth-tracking approach to do the higher-stakes thing.
TBC I think Mathias’ post is excellent. I myself work partly on GHW causes, for mostly the reasons he gestures at here. Still, I wanted to spell out the opposing case as I see it.
I’m grappling with this exact issue. I think AI is the most important technology humanity will event, but I’m skeptical of the EV of much work on the technology. Still it seems that it should be the only reasonable thing to spend all my time thinking about, but even then I’m not sure I’d arrive at anything useful.
And the opportunity cost is saving hundreds of lives. I don’t think there is any other question that has cost me as much sleep as this one.
Yeah I think this is a good take and a better article would take this on board. There are a number of things that these groups could agree on and maybe we should attempt to do so.
To add to your suggestions, we could forecast what we expected to happen in various countries and see if the EA or ES group performed better.
If EA and ES both existed, I expect the main focus areas to be very different (e.g. political change is not a main focus area in EA, but would be in ES), but (if harmfull tribalism can be avoided) the movements don’t have to be opposed to each other.
I’m not sure why ES would be against charter cities. Are charter cities bad for unions?
Scandinavia didn’t become wealthy and equitable through marginal charity. Societal transformation comes from uprooting oppressive power structures.
I expect a serious intellectual movement, that aims to uplift the world to Scandinavian standards, to actually learn about Scandinavian society, and what makes it work.
“Real socialism hasn’t been tried either!” the Effective Samaritan quips back. “Every attempt has always been co-opted by ruling elites who used it for their own ends. The closest we’ve gotten is Scandinavia which now has the world’s highest standards of living, even if not entirely socialist it’s gotta count for something!”
I’m guessing that “socialism” hear means something like Marxism? Since this is the type of socialism that “has not been really tried” according to some, and also the typ of socialism that usually end up with dictatorship.
I’m not a historian, and I have not fact checked the above video in any way. But if fits with other things I’ve heard, and my own experience of Swedish v.s. US attitudes.
I essentially agree with the basic point of this post—and think it was a great post!
I have some what feel like nitpicks about the specific story that you told that and I’m sort of confused about how much they matter. My guess is that this actually is a counterargument to the point being made in the post and imply that trapped priors are less of a problem than the example used in the post would imply.
I think that the broadly libertarian view and Scandinavian-style social democracy views are much more similar than this post gives them credit for. In particular, they agree on the crucial importance of liberal democracy that prevents elites (in the 19th-century traditional agricultural elites) from using the state to engage in rent-seeking. I remember reading a list of demands of the German Social Democratic party in the 1870s (before it had moderated) that read a list of liberal democratic demands—secret ballot, free speech, expansion of the power of democratically elected Reichstag etc. These two strands of modern liberal thought also agreed on a liberal epistemology that should be used to try to systematically improve society from a broadly utilitarian perspective—the London School of Economics was founded by 4 Fabian Society members to further this aim!
I think this cashes out in the Effective Samaritans and the Libertarian side of EA (although the Libertains side of EA is pretty unusually libertarian) pursuing pretty similar projects when trying to use non-randomista means for development. For instance, my guess is that both would support increasing state capacity in low-income countries to improve the basic nightwatchman functions of the state, reducing corruption, protecting liberties and the integrity of elections, and removing regulation that that represent elite rent-seeking. Of course they’ll be some differences in emphasis—the Effective Samarations might have a particular theory of change around using unions to coordinate labour to push for political change—but these seem relatively minor compared to the core things both agree are important. Byran Caplan and Robin Hanson are genuinely unusually libertarian even amongst broadly free-market economists, but typically both utilitarian-motivated libertarians and social democrats would be interested in building at least a basic welfare state in low-income countries.
I think we actually in practice see this convergence between liberal social democrats and broadly utilitarian libertarians in the broadly unified policy agendas of Ezra Klien’s abundance agenda and lots of EA-Rationalist adjacent Libertarians like a focus on making it easier to build houses in highly productive cities, reducing barrier to immigration to rich countries, increased public funding of R&D and improving state capacity, particularly around extremely ambitious projects like operation warp speed.
FWIW I don’t think these are nitpicks—I think they point to a totally different takeaway than Mathias suggests in his (excellent) post. If there are political reforms that the various (smart, altruistically-motivated, bias-aware) camps can agree on, it seems like they should work on those instead of retreating to totally uncontroversial RCT-based interventions. Especially since the set of interventions that can be tested in RCTs doesn’t include the interventions that either group thinks are most impactful.
More to the point: it seems like both the camps Mathias describes, the EA libertarians and the Effective Samaritans, would agree that their potential influence over how political economy develops over time has much higher stakes (from a cosmopolitan moral perspective) than their potential influence over the sorts of interventions that are amenable to RCTs. It seems far from obvious that they should do the lower-stakes thing, instead of trying to find some truth-tracking approach to work on the higher-stakes thing. (E.g. only pursue the reforms that both camps want; or cooperate to build institutions/contexts that let both camps compete in the marketplace of ideas in a way that both sides expect to be truth-tracking, or just compete in the existing marketplace of ideas and hope the result is truth-tracking, etc.)
Similarly, it seems like AI accelerationists and AI decelerationists would both agree that their potential influence over how AI plays out has much higher stakes (from a cosmopolitan moral perspective) than their potential influence over the sorts of interventions that are amenable to RCTs. So it’s far from obvious that it would be better for them to do the lower-stakes thing instead of trying to find some truth-tracking approach to do the higher-stakes thing.
TBC I think Mathias’ post is excellent. I myself work partly on GHW causes, for mostly the reasons he gestures at here. Still, I wanted to spell out the opposing case as I see it.
I’m grappling with this exact issue. I think AI is the most important technology humanity will event, but I’m skeptical of the EV of much work on the technology. Still it seems that it should be the only reasonable thing to spend all my time thinking about, but even then I’m not sure I’d arrive at anything useful.
And the opportunity cost is saving hundreds of lives. I don’t think there is any other question that has cost me as much sleep as this one.
Yeah I think this is a good take and a better article would take this on board. There are a number of things that these groups could agree on and maybe we should attempt to do so.
To add to your suggestions, we could forecast what we expected to happen in various countries and see if the EA or ES group performed better.
I agree with this comment.
If EA and ES both existed, I expect the main focus areas to be very different (e.g. political change is not a main focus area in EA, but would be in ES), but (if harmfull tribalism can be avoided) the movements don’t have to be opposed to each other.
I’m not sure why ES would be against charter cities. Are charter cities bad for unions?
I expect a serious intellectual movement, that aims to uplift the world to Scandinavian standards, to actually learn about Scandinavian society, and what makes it work.
I’m guessing that “socialism” hear means something like Marxism? Since this is the type of socialism that “has not been really tried” according to some, and also the typ of socialism that usually end up with dictatorship.
Scandinavian socialism did not come from Marxism.
Source: How Denmark invented Social Democracy (youtube.com)
I’m not a historian, and I have not fact checked the above video in any way. But if fits with other things I’ve heard, and my own experience of Swedish v.s. US attitudes.