The paper never spoke about getting rid of experts or replacing experts with citzens. So no.
Many countries now run citizen assemblies on climate change, which I’m sure you’re aware of. They do not aim to replace the role of IPCC.
EA or the field of existential risk cannot be equated with the IPCC.
To your second point, no this does not follow at all. Democracy as a procedure is not to be equated (and thus limited) to governments that grant you a vote every so often. You will find references to the relevant literature on democratic experimentation in the last section which focusses on democracy in the paper.
It would help for clarity if I understood your stance on central bank independence. This seems to produce better outcomes but also seems undemocratic. Do you think this would be legitimate?
It still seems like, if I were Gates, donating my money to the US govt would be more democratic than eg spending it on climate advocacy? Is the vision for Open phil that they set up a citizen’s assembly that is representative of the global population and have that decide how to spend the money, by majority vote?
As in the discussion above, I think you’re being disingenuous by claiming government is “more democratic.”
And if you were Gates, I’d argue that it would be even more democratic to allow the IPCC, which is more globally representative and less dominated by special interests that the US government, to guide where you spend your money than it would to allow the US government to do so. And given how much the Gates foundation engages with international orgs and allows them to guide his giving, I think that “hand it to the US government” would plausibly be a less democratic alternative than the current approach, which seems to be to allow GAVI, the WHO, and the IPCC to suggest where the money can best be spent.
And having Open Phil convene a consensus driven international body on longtermism actually seems somewhat similar to what the CTLR futureproof report co-written by Toby Ord suggests when it says the UK should lead by, “creating and then leading a global extreme risks network,” and push for “a Treaty on the Risks to the Future of Humanity.” Perhaps you don’t think that’s a good idea, but I’m unclear why you would treat it as a reductio, except in the most straw-man form.
Hi David, I wasn’t being disingenuous. Here, you say “I think you’re being disingenuous by claiming government is “more democratic.” In your comment above you say “One way to make things more democratic is to have government handle it, but it’s clearly not the only way.” Doesn’t this grant that having the government decide is more democratic? These statements seem inconsistent.
So, to clarify before we discuss the idea, is your view that all global climate philanthropy should be donated to the IPCC?
I think there is a difference between having a citizen’s assembly decide what to do with all global philanthropic money (which as I understand it, is the implication of the article), and having a citizen’s assembly whose express goal is protecting the long-term (which is not the implication of the article). If all longtermist funding was allocated on the first mechanism, then I think it highly likely that funding for AI safety, engineered pandemics and nuclear war would fall dramatically.
The treaty in the CTLR report seems like a good idea but seems quite different to the idea of democratic control proposed in the article.
Comparing how democratic government is to different things yield different results, because democratic isn’t binary. Yes, unitary action by a single actor is less democratic than having government handle things, and no, having the US government handle things is not clearly more democratic than deferring to the IPCC. But, as I’m sure you know, the IPCC isn’t a funding body, nor does it itself fight climate change. So no, obviously climate philanthropy shouldn’t all go to them.
I think there is a difference between having a citizen’s assembly decide what to do with all global philanthropic money (which as I understand it, is the implication of the article),
No, and clearly you need to go re-read the paper. You also might want to look into the citations Zoe suggested that you read above, about what “democratic” means, since you keep interpreting in the same simplistic and usually incorrect way, as equivalent to having everyone vote about what to do.
The treaty in the CTLR report seems like a good idea but seems quite different to the idea of democratic control proposed in the article.
This goes back to the weird misunderstanding that democratic is binary, and that it always refers to control. First, global engagement and the treaty are two different things they advise the UK government. Second, I’m sure that the authors can say for themselves whether they see international deliberations and treaties as a way to more democratic input, but I’d assume that they would say that it’s absolutely a step in the direction they are pointing towards.
Hi David. We were initially discussing whether giving the money to govts would be more democratic. You suggested this was a patently mad idea but then seemed to agree with it.
Here is how the authors define democracy: “We understand democracy here in accordance with Landemore as the rule of the cognitively diverse many who are entitled to equal decision-making power and partake in a democratic procedure that includes both a deliberative element and one of preference aggregation (such as majority voting)”
You say: “You also might want to look into the citations Zoe suggested that you read above, about what “democratic” means, since you keep interpreting in the same simplistic and usually incorrect way, as equivalent to having everyone vote about what to do.”
equal political power and preference aggregation entails majority rule or lottery voting or sortition. Your own view that equal votes aren’t a necessary condition of democracy seems to be in tension with the authors of the article.
A lot of the results showing the wisdom of democratic procedures depend on certain assumptions especially about voters not being systematically biased. In the real world, this isn’t true so sometimes undemocratic procedures can do better. Independent central banks are one example, as is effective philanthropy.
For context, I have read a lot of this literature on democracy and did my doctoral thesis on the topic. I argued here that few democratic theorists actually endorse these criticisms of philanthropy.
You’re using a word differently than they explicitly say they are using the same word. I agree that it’s confusing, but will again note that consensus decision making is democratic in thes sense they use, and yet is none of the options you mention. (And again, the IPCC is a great example of a democratic deliberative body which seems to fulfill the criteria you’ve laid out, and it’s the one they cite explicitly.)
On the validity and usefulness of democracy as a method of state governance, you’ve made a very reasonable case that it would be ineffective for charity, but in the more general sense that Landemore uses it, which includes how institutions other than governments can account for democratic preferences, I’m not sure that the same argument applies.
That said, I strongly disagree with Cremer and Kemp about the usefulness of this approach on very different grounds. I think that both consensus and other democratic methods, if used for funding, rather than for governance, would make hits based giving and policy entrepreneurship impossible, not to mention being fundamentally incompatible with finding neglected causes.
I think your Open Phil example could be an interesting experiment. Do you think that if Open Phil commissions a citizen’s assembly to allocate their existential risk spending and the input is given by their researchers / program officers, it would be wildly different to what they would do themselves?
In any scenario, I think it would be quite interesting as surely if our worldviews and reasoning are strong enough to claim big unusual things (e.g. strong longtermism) we should be able to convince a random group of people that they hold? and if not, is that a problem with the people selected, our communication skills or the thinking itself? I personally don’t think it would be a problem with the people (see past successes of citizen’s assemblies)* so shouldn’t we be testing our theories to see if they make sense under different worldviews and demographic backgrounds? and if they don’t seem robust to other people, we should probably try integrate the reasons why (within reason of course).
*there’s probably some arguments to be made here that we don’t necessarily expect the allocation from this representative group, even when informed perfectly by experts, to be the optimal allocation of resources so we’re not maximising utility / doing the most good. This is probably true but I guess the balance of this with moral uncertainty is the trade-off we have to live with? Quite unsure on this though, seems fuzzy
Hi James, I do think it would be interesting to see what a true global citizen’s assembly with complete free rein would decide. I would prefer that the experiment were not done with Open Phil’s money as the opportunity cost would be very high. A citizen’s assembly with longtermist aims would also be interesting, but would be different to what is proposed in the article. Pre-setting the aims of such an assembly seems undemocratic.
I would be pretty pessimistic about convincing lots of people of something like longtermism in a citizen’s assembly—at least I think funding for things like AI, engineered viruses and nuclear war would fall a fair amount. The median global citizen is someone who is strongly religious, probably has strong nationalist and socialist beliefs (per the literature on voter preferences in rich countries, which is probably true in poorer countries), unwilling to pay high carbon taxes, homophobic etc.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t genuinely saying we should hold a citizen’s assembly to decide what we do with all of Open Phil’s money, I just thought it was an interesting thought experiment. I’m not sure I agree that the pre-setting of the aims of an assembly is undemocratic, however, as surely all citizen’s assemblies need an initial question to start from? That seems to have been the case for previous assemblies (climate, abortion, etc.).
To play devil’s advocate, I’m not sure your points about the average global citizen being homophobic, religious, socialist, etc., actually matter that much when it comes to people deciding where they should allocate funding for existential risk. I can’t see any relationship between beliefs in which existential risks are the most severe and queer people, religion or their willingness to pay carbon taxes (assuming the pot of funding they allocate is fixed and doesn’t affect their taxes).
Also, I don’t think you’ve given much convincing evidence that a citizen’s assemblies would lead to funding for key issues falling a fair amount vs decisions by OP program officers, besides your intuition. I can’t say I have much evidence myself except for the studies (1, 2, 3 to a degree) provided in the report, would suggest the exact opposite, in that a diverse group of actors performs better than an higher-ability solo actor. In addition, if we base the success of the citizen’s assembly on how well they match our current decisions (e.g. the same amount of biorisk, nuclear and AI funding), I think we’re missing the point a bit. This assumes we’ve got it all perfectly allocated currently which I think is a central challenge of the paper above, in that it’s probably allocated perfectly according to a select few people but this by no means leads to it actually being true.
I’m not sure your points about the average global citizen being homophobic, religious, socialist, etc., actually matter that much when it comes to people deciding where they should allocate funding for existential risk
I vaguely remember reading something about religious people worrying less about extinction, but I don’t remember whether that was just intuition or an actual study. They may also be predisposed to care less about certain kinds of risk, e.g. not worrying about AI as they perceive it to be impossible.
The paper never spoke about getting rid of experts or replacing experts with citzens. So no.
Many countries now run citizen assemblies on climate change, which I’m sure you’re aware of. They do not aim to replace the role of IPCC.
EA or the field of existential risk cannot be equated with the IPCC.
To your second point, no this does not follow at all. Democracy as a procedure is not to be equated (and thus limited) to governments that grant you a vote every so often. You will find references to the relevant literature on democratic experimentation in the last section which focusses on democracy in the paper.
It would help for clarity if I understood your stance on central bank independence. This seems to produce better outcomes but also seems undemocratic. Do you think this would be legitimate?
It still seems like, if I were Gates, donating my money to the US govt would be more democratic than eg spending it on climate advocacy? Is the vision for Open phil that they set up a citizen’s assembly that is representative of the global population and have that decide how to spend the money, by majority vote?
As in the discussion above, I think you’re being disingenuous by claiming government is “more democratic.”
And if you were Gates, I’d argue that it would be even more democratic to allow the IPCC, which is more globally representative and less dominated by special interests that the US government, to guide where you spend your money than it would to allow the US government to do so. And given how much the Gates foundation engages with international orgs and allows them to guide his giving, I think that “hand it to the US government” would plausibly be a less democratic alternative than the current approach, which seems to be to allow GAVI, the WHO, and the IPCC to suggest where the money can best be spent.
And having Open Phil convene a consensus driven international body on longtermism actually seems somewhat similar to what the CTLR futureproof report co-written by Toby Ord suggests when it says the UK should lead by, “creating and then leading a global extreme risks network,” and push for “a Treaty on the Risks to the Future of Humanity.” Perhaps you don’t think that’s a good idea, but I’m unclear why you would treat it as a reductio, except in the most straw-man form.
Hi David, I wasn’t being disingenuous. Here, you say “I think you’re being disingenuous by claiming government is “more democratic.” In your comment above you say “One way to make things more democratic is to have government handle it, but it’s clearly not the only way.” Doesn’t this grant that having the government decide is more democratic? These statements seem inconsistent.
So, to clarify before we discuss the idea, is your view that all global climate philanthropy should be donated to the IPCC?
I think there is a difference between having a citizen’s assembly decide what to do with all global philanthropic money (which as I understand it, is the implication of the article), and having a citizen’s assembly whose express goal is protecting the long-term (which is not the implication of the article). If all longtermist funding was allocated on the first mechanism, then I think it highly likely that funding for AI safety, engineered pandemics and nuclear war would fall dramatically.
The treaty in the CTLR report seems like a good idea but seems quite different to the idea of democratic control proposed in the article.
Comparing how democratic government is to different things yield different results, because democratic isn’t binary. Yes, unitary action by a single actor is less democratic than having government handle things, and no, having the US government handle things is not clearly more democratic than deferring to the IPCC. But, as I’m sure you know, the IPCC isn’t a funding body, nor does it itself fight climate change. So no, obviously climate philanthropy shouldn’t all go to them.
No, and clearly you need to go re-read the paper. You also might want to look into the citations Zoe suggested that you read above, about what “democratic” means, since you keep interpreting in the same simplistic and usually incorrect way, as equivalent to having everyone vote about what to do.
This goes back to the weird misunderstanding that democratic is binary, and that it always refers to control. First, global engagement and the treaty are two different things they advise the UK government. Second, I’m sure that the authors can say for themselves whether they see international deliberations and treaties as a way to more democratic input, but I’d assume that they would say that it’s absolutely a step in the direction they are pointing towards.
Hi David. We were initially discussing whether giving the money to govts would be more democratic. You suggested this was a patently mad idea but then seemed to agree with it.
Here is how the authors define democracy: “We understand democracy here in accordance with Landemore as the rule of the cognitively diverse many who are entitled to equal decision-making power and partake in a democratic procedure that includes both a deliberative element and one of preference aggregation (such as majority voting)”
You say: “You also might want to look into the citations Zoe suggested that you read above, about what “democratic” means, since you keep interpreting in the same simplistic and usually incorrect way, as equivalent to having everyone vote about what to do.”
equal political power and preference aggregation entails majority rule or lottery voting or sortition. Your own view that equal votes aren’t a necessary condition of democracy seems to be in tension with the authors of the article.
A lot of the results showing the wisdom of democratic procedures depend on certain assumptions especially about voters not being systematically biased. In the real world, this isn’t true so sometimes undemocratic procedures can do better. Independent central banks are one example, as is effective philanthropy.
For context, I have read a lot of this literature on democracy and did my doctoral thesis on the topic. I argued here that few democratic theorists actually endorse these criticisms of philanthropy.
You’re using a word differently than they explicitly say they are using the same word. I agree that it’s confusing, but will again note that consensus decision making is democratic in thes sense they use, and yet is none of the options you mention. (And again, the IPCC is a great example of a democratic deliberative body which seems to fulfill the criteria you’ve laid out, and it’s the one they cite explicitly.)
On the validity and usefulness of democracy as a method of state governance, you’ve made a very reasonable case that it would be ineffective for charity, but in the more general sense that Landemore uses it, which includes how institutions other than governments can account for democratic preferences, I’m not sure that the same argument applies.
That said, I strongly disagree with Cremer and Kemp about the usefulness of this approach on very different grounds. I think that both consensus and other democratic methods, if used for funding, rather than for governance, would make hits based giving and policy entrepreneurship impossible, not to mention being fundamentally incompatible with finding neglected causes.
I really appreciate your effort defending a paper containing parts you strongly disagree with from (what you consider) bad arguments!
I think your Open Phil example could be an interesting experiment. Do you think that if Open Phil commissions a citizen’s assembly to allocate their existential risk spending and the input is given by their researchers / program officers, it would be wildly different to what they would do themselves?
In any scenario, I think it would be quite interesting as surely if our worldviews and reasoning are strong enough to claim big unusual things (e.g. strong longtermism) we should be able to convince a random group of people that they hold? and if not, is that a problem with the people selected, our communication skills or the thinking itself? I personally don’t think it would be a problem with the people (see past successes of citizen’s assemblies)* so shouldn’t we be testing our theories to see if they make sense under different worldviews and demographic backgrounds? and if they don’t seem robust to other people, we should probably try integrate the reasons why (within reason of course).
*there’s probably some arguments to be made here that we don’t necessarily expect the allocation from this representative group, even when informed perfectly by experts, to be the optimal allocation of resources so we’re not maximising utility / doing the most good. This is probably true but I guess the balance of this with moral uncertainty is the trade-off we have to live with? Quite unsure on this though, seems fuzzy
Hi James, I do think it would be interesting to see what a true global citizen’s assembly with complete free rein would decide. I would prefer that the experiment were not done with Open Phil’s money as the opportunity cost would be very high. A citizen’s assembly with longtermist aims would also be interesting, but would be different to what is proposed in the article. Pre-setting the aims of such an assembly seems undemocratic.
I would be pretty pessimistic about convincing lots of people of something like longtermism in a citizen’s assembly—at least I think funding for things like AI, engineered viruses and nuclear war would fall a fair amount. The median global citizen is someone who is strongly religious, probably has strong nationalist and socialist beliefs (per the literature on voter preferences in rich countries, which is probably true in poorer countries), unwilling to pay high carbon taxes, homophobic etc.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t genuinely saying we should hold a citizen’s assembly to decide what we do with all of Open Phil’s money, I just thought it was an interesting thought experiment. I’m not sure I agree that the pre-setting of the aims of an assembly is undemocratic, however, as surely all citizen’s assemblies need an initial question to start from? That seems to have been the case for previous assemblies (climate, abortion, etc.).
To play devil’s advocate, I’m not sure your points about the average global citizen being homophobic, religious, socialist, etc., actually matter that much when it comes to people deciding where they should allocate funding for existential risk. I can’t see any relationship between beliefs in which existential risks are the most severe and queer people, religion or their willingness to pay carbon taxes (assuming the pot of funding they allocate is fixed and doesn’t affect their taxes).
Also, I don’t think you’ve given much convincing evidence that a citizen’s assemblies would lead to funding for key issues falling a fair amount vs decisions by OP program officers, besides your intuition. I can’t say I have much evidence myself except for the studies (1, 2, 3 to a degree) provided in the report, would suggest the exact opposite, in that a diverse group of actors performs better than an higher-ability solo actor. In addition, if we base the success of the citizen’s assembly on how well they match our current decisions (e.g. the same amount of biorisk, nuclear and AI funding), I think we’re missing the point a bit. This assumes we’ve got it all perfectly allocated currently which I think is a central challenge of the paper above, in that it’s probably allocated perfectly according to a select few people but this by no means leads to it actually being true.
I vaguely remember reading something about religious people worrying less about extinction, but I don’t remember whether that was just intuition or an actual study. They may also be predisposed to care less about certain kinds of risk, e.g. not worrying about AI as they perceive it to be impossible.
(these are pretty minor points though)