Interesting. If this is correct it suggests that impact focused EAs working on well targeted policy campaigns can be orders of multiple magnitude better than just giving to an existing think tank or policy organisation. Which would suggest that maybe big funders and the EA community should do a lot more to help EAs set up and run small targeted policy campaign groups.
If this is correct it suggests that impact focused EAs working on well targeted policy campaigns can be orders of multiple magnitude better than just giving to an existing think tank or policy organisation. Which would suggest that maybe big funders and the EA community should do a lot more to help EAs set up and run small targeted policy campaign groups
This seems right, but I would still expect new groups to be worse than past top EA policy projects (e.g., this ballot initiative) if the selection effects are weakened.
That is, going from “past EA people who have done that have been very effective” to “if we have more EA people who do this, they will be very effective” doesn’t follow, because the first group could only act/has only acted in cases where the policy initiatives seem very promising ex-ante.
Do you know what the best research (or aggregated subjective beliefs) synthesis we have on the ‘costs of achieving policy change’...
perhaps differentiated by area
and by the economic magnitude of the policy?
My impressions was that Nuno’s
″ $2B to $20B, or 10x to 100x the amount that Open Philanthropy has already spent, would have a 1 to 10% chance of succeeding at that goal”
Seemed plausible, but I suspect that if they had said a 1-3% chance or a 10-50% chance, I might have found these equally plausible. (At least without other benchmarks).
Interesting. If this is correct it suggests that impact focused EAs working on well targeted policy campaigns can be orders of multiple magnitude better than just giving to an existing think tank or policy organisation. Which would suggest that maybe big funders and the EA community should do a lot more to help EAs set up and run small targeted policy campaign groups.
This seems right, but I would still expect new groups to be worse than past top EA policy projects (e.g., this ballot initiative) if the selection effects are weakened.
That is, going from “past EA people who have done that have been very effective” to “if we have more EA people who do this, they will be very effective” doesn’t follow, because the first group could only act/has only acted in cases where the policy initiatives seem very promising ex-ante.
@weeatquince and all:
Do you know what the best research (or aggregated subjective beliefs) synthesis we have on the ‘costs of achieving policy change’...
perhaps differentiated by area
and by the economic magnitude of the policy?
My impressions was that Nuno’s
″ $2B to $20B, or 10x to 100x the amount that Open Philanthropy has already spent, would have a 1 to 10% chance of succeeding at that goal”
Seemed plausible, but I suspect that if they had said a 1-3% chance or a 10-50% chance, I might have found these equally plausible. (At least without other benchmarks).