Translating EA into Republican. There are dozens of EAs in US party politics, Vox, the Obama admin, Google, and Facebook. Hardly in the Republican party, working for WSJ, appointed for Trump, or working for Palantir. A dozen community groups in places like NYC, SF, Seattle, Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Yale. But none in Dallas, Phoenix, Miami, the US Naval Laboratory, the Westpoint Military Academy, etc—the libertarian-leaning GMU economics department being a sole possible exception.
This is despite the fact that people passing through military academies would be disproportionately more likely to work on technological dangers in the military and public service, while the ease of competitiveness is less than more liberal colleges.
I’m coming to the view that similarly to the serious effort to rework EA ideas to align with Chinese politics and culture, we need to translate EA into Republican, and that this should be a multi-year, multi-person project.
I thought this Astral Codex Ten post, explaining how the GOP could benefit from integrating some EA-aligned ideas like prediction markets into its platform, was really interesting. Karl Rove retweeted it here. I don’t know how well an anti-classism message would align with EA in its current form though, if Habryka is right that EA is currently “too prestige-seeking”.
I’ve thought about this a few times since you wrote it, and I’d like to see what others think. Would you consider making it a top-level post (with or without any additional detail)?
When someone writes a shortform post, they often intend for it to be less visible. I don’t want an automated feature that will often go against the intentions of a post’s author.
Translating EA into Republican. There are dozens of EAs in US party politics, Vox, the Obama admin, Google, and Facebook. Hardly in the Republican party, working for WSJ, appointed for Trump, or working for Palantir. A dozen community groups in places like NYC, SF, Seattle, Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Yale. But none in Dallas, Phoenix, Miami, the US Naval Laboratory, the Westpoint Military Academy, etc—the libertarian-leaning GMU economics department being a sole possible exception.
This is despite the fact that people passing through military academies would be disproportionately more likely to work on technological dangers in the military and public service, while the ease of competitiveness is less than more liberal colleges.
I’m coming to the view that similarly to the serious effort to rework EA ideas to align with Chinese politics and culture, we need to translate EA into Republican, and that this should be a multi-year, multi-person project.
I thought this Astral Codex Ten post, explaining how the GOP could benefit from integrating some EA-aligned ideas like prediction markets into its platform, was really interesting. Karl Rove retweeted it here. I don’t know how well an anti-classism message would align with EA in its current form though, if Habryka is right that EA is currently “too prestige-seeking”.
My favorite example of Slate Star Codex translating into Republican is the passage on climate change starting with “In the 1950s”: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/10/16/five-case-studies-on-politicization/
I’ve thought about this a few times since you wrote it, and I’d like to see what others think. Would you consider making it a top-level post (with or without any additional detail)?
Maybe shortform posts could graduate to being normal posts if they get some number of upvotes?
When someone writes a shortform post, they often intend for it to be less visible. I don’t want an automated feature that will often go against the intentions of a post’s author.
Do you think they intend for less visibility or to signal it’s a lower standard?
Could be one, the other, neither, or both. But my point is that an automated feature that removes Shortform status erases those differences.
Good point.
Related: American Dream Federal Action (Politico)