I would agree that the ITN framework, and perhaps the more quantitative analysis generally dominant within EA, is not so well suited to political questions. Great for assessing the value of a marginal dollar, or helping a person decide where to devote technical skills / a career, but not so much which protest to attend or even which representative to vote for.
I personally believe that many, if not most, of the world’s most pressing problems are political problems, at least in part. For that reason I consider engagement in political movements and democratic processes to be incredibly important and meaningful and I would really encourage you to do so, if it works for you. I think all the ideas you mentioned are very sensible. I also completely agree that for the vast majority of people, there isn’t a huge, or maybe any, resourcing trade off (although this particular issue does carry its own unique political costs).
That said: while I’ve always struggled with the lack of political engagement in EA, I can also understand it. Precisely because it doesn’t fit into a clean ITN or quantitative framework, I’m not sure the community/philosophy itself is well placed to respond to political matters, as a community/philosophy. EA fills an important niche, and it isn’t that, perhaps. People come with radically different priors, evidence is less clear cut in highly complex situations, and it’s hard to establish dispassionate stances.
So as a person who cares about the world: I would say absolutely you should engage in civil society, democratic processes, and politics generally, on this issue and others. I would encourage everyone to do so, even those who have different political ideologies to me. But I would not expect this community to converge on what that should look like.
I personally believe that many, if not most, of the world’s most pressing problems are political problems, at least in part.
I agree! But if this is true, doesn’t it seem very problematic if a movement that means to do the most good does not have tools for assessing political problems? I think you may be right that we are not great at that at the moment, but it seems… unambitious to just accept that?
I also think that many people in EA do work with political questions, and my guess would be that some do it very well—but that most of those do it in a full-time capacity that is something different from “citizen politics”. Could it be than rather than EA being poorly suited to assessing political issues, EA does not (yet) have great tools for assessing part-time activism, which would be a much more narrow claim?
Great discussion! I think perhaps there is some subtle conflict between EA’s goal of a “radically better world” and marginal cost effectiveness. For marginal cost effectiveness, I think EA does a good job and the ITN framework is helpful. However, if we want, as CEA states, to contribute to solve ”...a range of pressing global problems — like global poverty, factory farming, and existential risk”, I think we need to get much more politically involved. I actually think this has happened in EA already and I have sensed a big shift with the focus on AI where the focus on politics have become almost dominating. In short: I do not think you can incrementally get to a radically better world by only chipping away at the margin. That is not how I understand that many important changes came about in the past, whether democracies, women’s voting rights, civil rights, etc. I do see radical changes having come about in e.g. medical science via incremental improvements, but if we removed all improvements historically that came about through less incremental changes, I think we would live in a significantly worse world.
I would agree that the ITN framework, and perhaps the more quantitative analysis generally dominant within EA, is not so well suited to political questions. Great for assessing the value of a marginal dollar, or helping a person decide where to devote technical skills / a career, but not so much which protest to attend or even which representative to vote for.
I personally believe that many, if not most, of the world’s most pressing problems are political problems, at least in part. For that reason I consider engagement in political movements and democratic processes to be incredibly important and meaningful and I would really encourage you to do so, if it works for you. I think all the ideas you mentioned are very sensible. I also completely agree that for the vast majority of people, there isn’t a huge, or maybe any, resourcing trade off (although this particular issue does carry its own unique political costs).
That said: while I’ve always struggled with the lack of political engagement in EA, I can also understand it. Precisely because it doesn’t fit into a clean ITN or quantitative framework, I’m not sure the community/philosophy itself is well placed to respond to political matters, as a community/philosophy. EA fills an important niche, and it isn’t that, perhaps. People come with radically different priors, evidence is less clear cut in highly complex situations, and it’s hard to establish dispassionate stances.
So as a person who cares about the world: I would say absolutely you should engage in civil society, democratic processes, and politics generally, on this issue and others. I would encourage everyone to do so, even those who have different political ideologies to me. But I would not expect this community to converge on what that should look like.
Interesting perspective!
I agree! But if this is true, doesn’t it seem very problematic if a movement that means to do the most good does not have tools for assessing political problems? I think you may be right that we are not great at that at the moment, but it seems… unambitious to just accept that?
I also think that many people in EA do work with political questions, and my guess would be that some do it very well—but that most of those do it in a full-time capacity that is something different from “citizen politics”. Could it be than rather than EA being poorly suited to assessing political issues, EA does not (yet) have great tools for assessing part-time activism, which would be a much more narrow claim?
Great discussion! I think perhaps there is some subtle conflict between EA’s goal of a “radically better world” and marginal cost effectiveness. For marginal cost effectiveness, I think EA does a good job and the ITN framework is helpful. However, if we want, as CEA states, to contribute to solve ”...a range of pressing global problems — like global poverty, factory farming, and existential risk”, I think we need to get much more politically involved. I actually think this has happened in EA already and I have sensed a big shift with the focus on AI where the focus on politics have become almost dominating. In short: I do not think you can incrementally get to a radically better world by only chipping away at the margin. That is not how I understand that many important changes came about in the past, whether democracies, women’s voting rights, civil rights, etc. I do see radical changes having come about in e.g. medical science via incremental improvements, but if we removed all improvements historically that came about through less incremental changes, I think we would live in a significantly worse world.