Hi Mahendra, sounds like a great event, and glad that EA will get some attention at APSA. I have two suggested topic:
(A) Partisan polarization is a big issue in the US (and many other countries), with suggested responses ranging from (1) reducing algorithmic polarization on social media, to (2) promoting alternative voting systems (e.g. ranked-choice voting & open primaries, as advocated by the Forward Party) to break the two-party duopology, to (3) an ‘amicable divorce’ between red states and blue states, to reduce chances the current ‘soft civil war’ (at the cultural level) turns into a shooting war. (One difficulty is that this issue has large scope (and applies in many countries), but it doesn’t seem particularly tractable or neglected. On the other hand, most of the discussion around it is notably irrational, non-consequentialist, and political biased.) I’d be curious to hear what the speakers think about partisan polarization as a ‘cause area’ for EA.
(B) EA itself has some strong political biases towards a sort of vaguely Lefty, socially progressive libertarianism, and this can smuggle in a lot of implicit political biases into our analysis. Can and should EA try to consciously & deliberately cultivate a wider range of political views among its researchers and advocates—possibly even beyond the current US/UK Overton window? (For example, a lot of EA panic about a possible ‘permanent global totalitarian state’ sounds like a not-very-subtle caricature of the Chinese CCP, and that kind of rhetoric may be alienating to a lot of smart Chinese people who might otherwise be interested in EA and longtermism.)
Hi Mahendra, sounds like a great event, and glad that EA will get some attention at APSA. I have two suggested topic:
(A) Partisan polarization is a big issue in the US (and many other countries), with suggested responses ranging from (1) reducing algorithmic polarization on social media, to (2) promoting alternative voting systems (e.g. ranked-choice voting & open primaries, as advocated by the Forward Party) to break the two-party duopology, to (3) an ‘amicable divorce’ between red states and blue states, to reduce chances the current ‘soft civil war’ (at the cultural level) turns into a shooting war. (One difficulty is that this issue has large scope (and applies in many countries), but it doesn’t seem particularly tractable or neglected. On the other hand, most of the discussion around it is notably irrational, non-consequentialist, and political biased.) I’d be curious to hear what the speakers think about partisan polarization as a ‘cause area’ for EA.
(B) EA itself has some strong political biases towards a sort of vaguely Lefty, socially progressive libertarianism, and this can smuggle in a lot of implicit political biases into our analysis. Can and should EA try to consciously & deliberately cultivate a wider range of political views among its researchers and advocates—possibly even beyond the current US/UK Overton window? (For example, a lot of EA panic about a possible ‘permanent global totalitarian state’ sounds like a not-very-subtle caricature of the Chinese CCP, and that kind of rhetoric may be alienating to a lot of smart Chinese people who might otherwise be interested in EA and longtermism.)