Thanks for posting this comment, I thought it gave really useful perspective.
“I don’t think we’ve had really any policy successes with regards to the Long Term Future”
This strikes me as an odd statement. If you’re talking about the LTF fund, or EA long-termism, it doesn’t seem like much policy work has been funded.
If you’re talking more broadly, wouldn’t policy wins like decreasing the amount of lead being emitted into the atmosphere (which has negative effects on IQ and health generally) be a big policy win for the long term future?
This strikes me as an odd statement. If you’re talking about the LTF fund, or EA long-termism, it doesn’t seem like much policy work has been funded.
Huh, why do you think that? CSET was Open Phil’s largest grant to date, and I know of at least another $20MM+ in policy projects that have been funded.
Sadly, I think a lot of policy grants are announced less publicly, because publicity is usually harmful for policy projects or positions (which I think is at least some evidence of them being at least somewhat adversarial/non-cooperative, which is one of the reasons why I have a somewhat higher prior against policy projects). Approximately all policy applications to the LTFF end up requesting that we do not publish a public writeup on them, so we often refer them to private funders if we think they are a good idea.
“I don’t think we’ve had really any policy successes with regards to the Long Term Future”
Bias view incoming …. :
I think LTFF’s only (public) historical grant for policy advocacy, to the APPG for Future Generations, has led to better policy in the UK, in particular on risk management. For discussions on this see impact reports here and here, independent reviews here and here, and criticism here.
Additionally I think CLTR has been doing impactful long-term focused policy work in the UK.
If you’re talking more broadly, wouldn’t policy wins like decreasing the amount of lead being emitted into the atmosphere (which has negative effects on IQ and health generally) be a big policy win for the long term future?
Yeah, I think this is definitely a candidate for a great intervention, though I think importantly it wasn’t the result of someone entering the policy space with a longtermist mindset.
If someone had a concrete policy they wanted to push for (or a plan for discovering policies) of that magnitude, then I would likely be excited about funding it, though I would still be somewhat worried how likely it would be to differentially accelerate development of dangerous technologies vs. increase humanities ability to navigate rapid technological change (since most risk to the future is anthropogenic, I am generally skeptical of interventions that just speed up technological progress across the board), but my sense is abating lead poisoning looks better than most other things on this dimension.
Thanks for posting this comment, I thought it gave really useful perspective.
This strikes me as an odd statement. If you’re talking about the LTF fund, or EA long-termism, it doesn’t seem like much policy work has been funded.
If you’re talking more broadly, wouldn’t policy wins like decreasing the amount of lead being emitted into the atmosphere (which has negative effects on IQ and health generally) be a big policy win for the long term future?
I think this is false, e.g. a reasonable subset of Open Phil’s Transformative AI risks grantmaking is on policy.
Huh, why do you think that? CSET was Open Phil’s largest grant to date, and I know of at least another $20MM+ in policy projects that have been funded.
Sadly, I think a lot of policy grants are announced less publicly, because publicity is usually harmful for policy projects or positions (which I think is at least some evidence of them being at least somewhat adversarial/non-cooperative, which is one of the reasons why I have a somewhat higher prior against policy projects). Approximately all policy applications to the LTFF end up requesting that we do not publish a public writeup on them, so we often refer them to private funders if we think they are a good idea.
I guess I was just wrong, I hadn’t looked into it much!
Bias view incoming …. :
I think LTFF’s only (public) historical grant for policy advocacy, to the APPG for Future Generations, has led to better policy in the UK, in particular on risk management. For discussions on this see impact reports here and here, independent reviews here and here, and criticism here.
Additionally I think CLTR has been doing impactful long-term focused policy work in the UK.
Yeah, I think this is definitely a candidate for a great intervention, though I think importantly it wasn’t the result of someone entering the policy space with a longtermist mindset.
If someone had a concrete policy they wanted to push for (or a plan for discovering policies) of that magnitude, then I would likely be excited about funding it, though I would still be somewhat worried how likely it would be to differentially accelerate development of dangerous technologies vs. increase humanities ability to navigate rapid technological change (since most risk to the future is anthropogenic, I am generally skeptical of interventions that just speed up technological progress across the board), but my sense is abating lead poisoning looks better than most other things on this dimension.
An offshoot of lead emission in the atmosphere might be the work being done at LEEP (Lead Exposure Elimination Project) https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ktN29JneoQCYktqih/seven-more-learnings-from-leep