One reason I think it would be cool to see EA become more politically active is that political organizing is a great example of a low-commitment way for lots of people to enact change together. It kind of feels ridiculous that if there is an unsolved problem with the world, the only way I can personally contribute is to completely change careers to work on solving it full time, while most people are still barely aware it exists.
I think the mechanism of “try to build broad consensus that a problem needs to get solved, then delegate collective resources towards solving it” is underrated in EA at current margins. It probably wasn’t underrated before EA had billionaire-level funding, but as EA comes to have about as much money as you can get from small numbers of private actors, and it starts to enter the mainstream, I think it’s worth taking the prospect of mass mobilization more seriously.
This doesn’t even necessarily have to look like getting a policy agenda enacted. I think of climate change as a problem that is being addressed with by mass mobilization, but in the US, this mass mobilization has mostly not come in the form of government policy (at least not national policy). It’s come from widespread understanding that it’s a problem that needs to get solved, and is worth devoting resources to, leading to lots of investment in green technology.
I think this is a great post.
One reason I think it would be cool to see EA become more politically active is that political organizing is a great example of a low-commitment way for lots of people to enact change together. It kind of feels ridiculous that if there is an unsolved problem with the world, the only way I can personally contribute is to completely change careers to work on solving it full time, while most people are still barely aware it exists.
I think the mechanism of “try to build broad consensus that a problem needs to get solved, then delegate collective resources towards solving it” is underrated in EA at current margins. It probably wasn’t underrated before EA had billionaire-level funding, but as EA comes to have about as much money as you can get from small numbers of private actors, and it starts to enter the mainstream, I think it’s worth taking the prospect of mass mobilization more seriously.
This doesn’t even necessarily have to look like getting a policy agenda enacted. I think of climate change as a problem that is being addressed with by mass mobilization, but in the US, this mass mobilization has mostly not come in the form of government policy (at least not national policy). It’s come from widespread understanding that it’s a problem that needs to get solved, and is worth devoting resources to, leading to lots of investment in green technology.