One thing I’ve been saying since the FTX days is that we absolutely shouldn’t be donating to politics in general (with exceptions of course but in broad strokes and definitely don’t donate to the Presidential race or a national party). The evidence that donations to political parties past a certain point do much is unclear (people only can see so many ads) and there are just much much larger problems in the world that EAs should be spending their money on, at worst you can just donate to AMF and this would do way better than most money spent on politics.
The exceptions would be that a very high integrity person was running who was a committed EA. In these cases, I think the math checks out but rarely will it for just some generic candidate.
In case people don’t know, Oath is an Democratic party affiliated org that identifies underfunded and close races where your marginal donations could really matter.
I won’t say who it was (though they can out themselves) but someone convinced me that they do a donation strategy that I approve of. They donate to both sides to be able to lobby their congressperson on AI issues. I think this makes a lot of sense.
how exactly the donating related to being able to lobby their congressperson? are you assuming the congressperson checking who donated, for small donations, before reading mails regarding policy?
Define “past a certain point”? What fraction of close races in EG the US meet this? Especially if you include eg primaries for either party with one candidate with much more sensible views than the other. Imo donations are best spent on specific interventions or specific close but neglected races, but these can be a big deal
I had chatgpt analyze this paper on US House of Representatives. It finds that doubling spending for incumbents actually has ~no effect and in general you get about 4.5% increased win probability from doubling spending. You get the biggest gains for challengers with little name recognition. It also turns out that incumbents spend about $3M on a race and challengers spend about the same as well. So we’re talking about $3M to gain 4.5% extra chance of winning a house seat.
The paper goes on to explain that increases in spending faces increasingly diminishing returns.
To answer the question bluntly. I’ll just define past a certain point as 50% more than average spending. About 5% of races are “close” based on my crude metric of a margin of victory of less than 3 points.
Also, my criticism basically don’t apply (and in fact, I think we should be spending more money on) things like ballot initiatives and specific campaigns. I’m also much happier about things like primaries than general elections. If you are donating to just a generic race, even if it’s close, I don’t think there is actually enough evidence that one party is much better than the other.
A lot of money is spent on politics already. Unless there is very very specific issues of EA concern, I don’t think it’s worth donating to. There are tremendously good donation opportunities out there and political ads or Beyonce concerts aren’t among them IMO.
One thing I’ve been saying since the FTX days is that we absolutely shouldn’t be donating to politics in general (with exceptions of course but in broad strokes and definitely don’t donate to the Presidential race or a national party). The evidence that donations to political parties past a certain point do much is unclear (people only can see so many ads) and there are just much much larger problems in the world that EAs should be spending their money on, at worst you can just donate to AMF and this would do way better than most money spent on politics.
The exceptions would be that a very high integrity person was running who was a committed EA. In these cases, I think the math checks out but rarely will it for just some generic candidate.
In case people don’t know, Oath is an Democratic party affiliated org that identifies underfunded and close races where your marginal donations could really matter.
I won’t say who it was (though they can out themselves) but someone convinced me that they do a donation strategy that I approve of. They donate to both sides to be able to lobby their congressperson on AI issues. I think this makes a lot of sense.
#changedmymind
I don’t actually try to change your mind, but...
how exactly the donating related to being able to lobby their congressperson? are you assuming the congressperson checking who donated, for small donations, before reading mails regarding policy?
Define “past a certain point”? What fraction of close races in EG the US meet this? Especially if you include eg primaries for either party with one candidate with much more sensible views than the other. Imo donations are best spent on specific interventions or specific close but neglected races, but these can be a big deal
First, sorry for the late reply. I thought I had sent it but it was still in autosave.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440241279659#bibr25-21582440241279659
I had chatgpt analyze this paper on US House of Representatives. It finds that doubling spending for incumbents actually has ~no effect and in general you get about 4.5% increased win probability from doubling spending. You get the biggest gains for challengers with little name recognition. It also turns out that incumbents spend about $3M on a race and challengers spend about the same as well. So we’re talking about $3M to gain 4.5% extra chance of winning a house seat.
The paper goes on to explain that increases in spending faces increasingly diminishing returns.
To answer the question bluntly. I’ll just define past a certain point as 50% more than average spending. About 5% of races are “close” based on my crude metric of a margin of victory of less than 3 points.
Also, my criticism basically don’t apply (and in fact, I think we should be spending more money on) things like ballot initiatives and specific campaigns. I’m also much happier about things like primaries than general elections. If you are donating to just a generic race, even if it’s close, I don’t think there is actually enough evidence that one party is much better than the other.
A lot of money is spent on politics already. Unless there is very very specific issues of EA concern, I don’t think it’s worth donating to. There are tremendously good donation opportunities out there and political ads or Beyonce concerts aren’t among them IMO.
I think we just agree. Don’t donate to politics unless you’re going to be smart about it