In one key way this post very solidly completely misses the point.
The post makes a number of very good points about systemic change. But bases all of the points on financial cost-effective estimates. It is embedded in the language throughout, discussing: options that “outperformed GiveWell style charities”, the “cost … per marginal vote”, lessons for “large-scale spending” or for a “small donor”, etc.
I think a way the EA community has neglected systemic change in exactly in this manner. Money is not the only thing that can be leveraged in the world to make change (and in some cases money is not a thing people can give). I think this some part of what people are pointing to when they criticise EA.
To be constructive I think we should rethink cause priotisation, but not from a financial point of view. Eg: - If you have political power how best to spend it? - If you have a public voice how best to use it? - If you can organise activism what should it focus on?
(PS. Happy to support with money or time people doing this kind of research)
I think we could get noticeably different results. I think things like financial stability (hard to donate to but very important) might show up as more of a priority in the EA space if we start looking at things this way.
I think the EA community currently has a limited amount to say to anyone with power. For example: • I met the civil servant with oversight of UK’s £8bn international development spending who seemed interested in EA but did not feel it was relevant to them – I think they were correct, I had nothing to say they didn’t already know. • Another case is an EA I know who does not have a huge amount to donate but lots of experience in political organising and activism, I doubt the EA community provides them much useful direction.
It is not that the EA community does none of this, just that we are slow. It feels like it took 80000 Hours a while to start recommending policy/politics as a career path and it is still unclear what people should do once in positions of power. (HIPE.org.uk if doing some research on this for Government careers)
-- Overall a very interesting post. Thank you for posting.
I note you mention a “relative gap in long-termist and high-risk global poverty work”. I think this is interesting. I would love it if anyone has the time to do some back of the envelope evaluations of international development governance reform organisations (like Transparency International)
Shulman’s not speaking only in terms of donations. You must recognize this since you quote “cost … per marginal vote”. It seems like you’re taking issue with some of the basic economic concepts like efficiency and marginalism. This is something that other critics have done. However I have not seen any good defense of that point of view.
I think the EA community currently has a limited amount to say to anyone with power.
I think the EA community currently has a limited amount to say to anyone with power.
I think it would be useful for governments to have response plans for agricultural catastrophes such as nuclear and volcanic winter, and also for electricity/industry disrupting catastrophes including solar storms and high-altitude electromagnetic pulses (HEMPs). Governments could also fund research related resilience including alternative foods and backup communications systems.
As an EA with political organizing experience I think EA has plenty to say to your friend. Money is useful as a unit of analysis because it’s quantifiable and fungible, but the same analytical framework can easily apply to donations of time, with the caveats that 1) Donating time will vary a lot more in its value depending on the specific service one performs and it becomes a lot more important to pick the right volunteer activity in addition to the right cause, 2) there will be some causes or organizations where it is not possible to donate time effectively, so the highest-value intervention might be different.
Being politically experienced, I would think your friend already has an idea of the highest-value services they would perform for a candidate or organization, although in some cases the highest-value candidates/organizations may have no need for those specific skills, so there could be a tradeoff between doing a more useful activity for a less impactful candidate/org vs. a less useful activity for a higher-impact candidate/org. But if you have a sense of the marginal values of different activities that should be easy to quantify, and then you can assess how high-impact the candidate/org is. For the latter as applied to the Presidential race, see the Candidate Scoring system at https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AMwfqLPOC5Rim5E&cid=E49A0797F8708ADD&id=E49A0797F8708ADD%217949&parId=E49A0797F8708ADD%217946&o=OneUp. For a better example of the former analysis than most political people seem to have done, I recommend Graber and Green’s Get Out The Vote, with 2 caveats: 1) it focuses only on turnout, and persuasion may be different; 2) the effects that seem to be the strongest are under-studied because political scientists seem to have a fetish for grassroot-y stuff over mass media. https://www.amazon.com/Get-Out-Vote-Increase-Turnout/dp/0815732686. If your friend needs help with the quantitative analysis of these tradeoffs I’m happy to help.
Has there been any good research regarding the effectiveness of different activism techniques? This feels like an important question when discussing EA and systemic change. Scotts post on political lobbying comes to mind, it makes me suspect that for most corporations and large organisations there are more effective ways to wield their influence than through lobbying efforts, but perhaps for organisations that have less in the way of deeply partisan appeal (like the NRA), and on the whole less power to throw around (I would suspect that large companies have better ways to wield influence than through direct lobbying, i.e building plants/factories in a particular congressmans district in return for public support), lobbying might be quite effective, especially if they have a talent pool to draw on as wide as EA does.
In one key way this post very solidly completely misses the point.
The post makes a number of very good points about systemic change. But bases all of the points on financial cost-effective estimates. It is embedded in the language throughout, discussing: options that “outperformed GiveWell style charities”, the “cost … per marginal vote”, lessons for “large-scale spending” or for a “small donor”, etc.
I think a way the EA community has neglected systemic change in exactly in this manner. Money is not the only thing that can be leveraged in the world to make change (and in some cases money is not a thing people can give).
I think this some part of what people are pointing to when they criticise EA.
To be constructive I think we should rethink cause priotisation, but not from a financial point of view. Eg:
- If you have political power how best to spend it?
- If you have a public voice how best to use it?
- If you can organise activism what should it focus on?
(PS. Happy to support with money or time people doing this kind of research)
I think we could get noticeably different results. I think things like financial stability (hard to donate to but very important) might show up as more of a priority in the EA space if we start looking at things this way.
I think the EA community currently has a limited amount to say to anyone with power. For example:
• I met the civil servant with oversight of UK’s £8bn international development spending who seemed interested in EA but did not feel it was relevant to them – I think they were correct, I had nothing to say they didn’t already know.
• Another case is an EA I know who does not have a huge amount to donate but lots of experience in political organising and activism, I doubt the EA community provides them much useful direction.
It is not that the EA community does none of this, just that we are slow. It feels like it took 80000 Hours a while to start recommending policy/politics as a career path and it is still unclear what people should do once in positions of power. (HIPE.org.uk if doing some research on this for Government careers)
--
Overall a very interesting post. Thank you for posting.
I note you mention a “relative gap in long-termist and high-risk global poverty work”. I think this is interesting. I would love it if anyone has the time to do some back of the envelope evaluations of international development governance reform organisations (like Transparency International)
Shulman’s not speaking only in terms of donations. You must recognize this since you quote “cost … per marginal vote”. It seems like you’re taking issue with some of the basic economic concepts like efficiency and marginalism. This is something that other critics have done. However I have not seen any good defense of that point of view.
Please let this myth die. For yet another example, I have 200 pages judging policies & politicians: https://1drv.ms/b/s!At2KcPiXB5rkyABaEsATaMrRDxwj?e=VvVnl2
I think it would be useful for governments to have response plans for agricultural catastrophes such as nuclear and volcanic winter, and also for electricity/industry disrupting catastrophes including solar storms and high-altitude electromagnetic pulses (HEMPs). Governments could also fund research related resilience including alternative foods and backup communications systems.
As an EA with political organizing experience I think EA has plenty to say to your friend. Money is useful as a unit of analysis because it’s quantifiable and fungible, but the same analytical framework can easily apply to donations of time, with the caveats that 1) Donating time will vary a lot more in its value depending on the specific service one performs and it becomes a lot more important to pick the right volunteer activity in addition to the right cause, 2) there will be some causes or organizations where it is not possible to donate time effectively, so the highest-value intervention might be different.
Being politically experienced, I would think your friend already has an idea of the highest-value services they would perform for a candidate or organization, although in some cases the highest-value candidates/organizations may have no need for those specific skills, so there could be a tradeoff between doing a more useful activity for a less impactful candidate/org vs. a less useful activity for a higher-impact candidate/org. But if you have a sense of the marginal values of different activities that should be easy to quantify, and then you can assess how high-impact the candidate/org is. For the latter as applied to the Presidential race, see the Candidate Scoring system at https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AMwfqLPOC5Rim5E&cid=E49A0797F8708ADD&id=E49A0797F8708ADD%217949&parId=E49A0797F8708ADD%217946&o=OneUp. For a better example of the former analysis than most political people seem to have done, I recommend Graber and Green’s Get Out The Vote, with 2 caveats: 1) it focuses only on turnout, and persuasion may be different; 2) the effects that seem to be the strongest are under-studied because political scientists seem to have a fetish for grassroot-y stuff over mass media. https://www.amazon.com/Get-Out-Vote-Increase-Turnout/dp/0815732686. If your friend needs help with the quantitative analysis of these tradeoffs I’m happy to help.
I donated the legal max to Cory Booker and am now donating what I can afford to the DNC, in case you’re wondering where I personally come out on this.
More broadly, CSER has these recommendations for governments for global catastrophic risks.
Has there been any good research regarding the effectiveness of different activism techniques? This feels like an important question when discussing EA and systemic change. Scotts post on political lobbying comes to mind, it makes me suspect that for most corporations and large organisations there are more effective ways to wield their influence than through lobbying efforts, but perhaps for organisations that have less in the way of deeply partisan appeal (like the NRA), and on the whole less power to throw around (I would suspect that large companies have better ways to wield influence than through direct lobbying, i.e building plants/factories in a particular congressmans district in return for public support), lobbying might be quite effective, especially if they have a talent pool to draw on as wide as EA does.