I am not sure if the UN itself wants to hear public voices or more seeks that national institutions hear these voices and ‘offer them UN products.’
Yes, perhaps similarly to EA, I see the UN’s main contribution as goal setting and discourse and cooperation platform. UN’s SDGs include animal welfare only to a limited extent (14 and 15 are not so focused on?) and long-term future is excluded. Considering counterfactual impact, the contribution can be positive or negative to various extent (probably international governance can look much better but also worse).
But this is the issue: UN seeks to coordinate itself, respond to crises, and express to indend to leave no one behind. The Secretary General always calls meetings when a crisis occurs. This is highly suboptimal to actually work with everyone to develop systems that prevent crises and various actors’ interests and relevant specializations so that all can benefit from meaningful exchange—there must be the capacity for such, for example reducing report-writing work (unless different skills are needed in which case EA could fund ‘upskilling in more interesting work’ or natural language report writing by AI).
You say that “the UN has to become smarter.” Of course, talent development and funding go hand in hand yet the latter does not automatically lead to the former. In addition, talent development may not be really needed if that leads to just scaling up the institution. Descaling and promoting various measures and implementing accountability-based almost directive efficiencies could solve issues. For example, if there is some digital tool that assists governments cooperate on human development issues (that also tackle animal and sentient AI welfare and are responsive to changes and self-institutionalize in a virtuous cycle) highly promoted so that even countries who would otherwise hesitate to de facto engage on these issues just join and ‘steel production type’ showcasing is really frowned upon then the system becomes talent constrained.
Yes this seems like sound cost-effectiveness rationalization based on an expert insight. You must go back to the original definition of EA, which leaves room for personal projects unless you seek to redefine it “project … to find out how to do the most good” (also EA deals with the issue of acceptable narratives which it should not). The project is that there are various people finding out and at the end it all works out due to persons’ comparative advantages—some gain attention by conducting an analysis of one crisis and others write on crisis support cost-effectiveness comparison. If all are on board, of course, a top set of choices is always taken.
I have been wondering about these comment opportunities for governments too. I was thinking that perhaps 1) commenters should be enthusiastically approved by at least 5 community members and 2) they do not state affiliation with organizations from the broader EA network unless that is absolutely necessary (or they are confident about positive reception). Also, they should have solutions and ideally also teams (I am not sure if the CSER/FHI report does not reflect prominent narratives while omitting the important impactful ones—here it should not be understood that one needs to first ‘catch’ the UN and only gradually offer it better and better impact opportunities). What do you think should be the criteria for someone (persons of various ‘identities’ - such as students, persons working in different roles, of different nationalities, …) to comment for themselves at the UN? And for EA-related organizations? Should maybe large grantmakers offer applications first?
Yes, so what are the ways to assist the UN to be more efficient in achieving its development intentions (including and in particular One Health and far future considerations)?
So cool. I would also like to add the encouragement of attending virtual UN events, such as the WIPO Conversation on Intellectual Property (IP) and Frontier Technologies: Fifth Session which I am currently attending.
I am not sure if the UN itself wants to hear public voices or more seeks that national institutions hear these voices and ‘offer them UN products.’
Yes, perhaps similarly to EA, I see the UN’s main contribution as goal setting and discourse and cooperation platform. UN’s SDGs include animal welfare only to a limited extent (14 and 15 are not so focused on?) and long-term future is excluded. Considering counterfactual impact, the contribution can be positive or negative to various extent (probably international governance can look much better but also worse).
But this is the issue: UN seeks to coordinate itself, respond to crises, and express to indend to leave no one behind. The Secretary General always calls meetings when a crisis occurs. This is highly suboptimal to actually work with everyone to develop systems that prevent crises and various actors’ interests and relevant specializations so that all can benefit from meaningful exchange—there must be the capacity for such, for example reducing report-writing work (unless different skills are needed in which case EA could fund ‘upskilling in more interesting work’ or natural language report writing by AI).
You say that “the UN has to become smarter.” Of course, talent development and funding go hand in hand yet the latter does not automatically lead to the former. In addition, talent development may not be really needed if that leads to just scaling up the institution. Descaling and promoting various measures and implementing accountability-based almost directive efficiencies could solve issues. For example, if there is some digital tool that assists governments cooperate on human development issues (that also tackle animal and sentient AI welfare and are responsive to changes and self-institutionalize in a virtuous cycle) highly promoted so that even countries who would otherwise hesitate to de facto engage on these issues just join and ‘steel production type’ showcasing is really frowned upon then the system becomes talent constrained.
Yes this seems like sound cost-effectiveness rationalization based on an expert insight. You must go back to the original definition of EA, which leaves room for personal projects unless you seek to redefine it “project … to find out how to do the most good” (also EA deals with the issue of acceptable narratives which it should not). The project is that there are various people finding out and at the end it all works out due to persons’ comparative advantages—some gain attention by conducting an analysis of one crisis and others write on crisis support cost-effectiveness comparison. If all are on board, of course, a top set of choices is always taken.
I have been wondering about these comment opportunities for governments too. I was thinking that perhaps 1) commenters should be enthusiastically approved by at least 5 community members and 2) they do not state affiliation with organizations from the broader EA network unless that is absolutely necessary (or they are confident about positive reception). Also, they should have solutions and ideally also teams (I am not sure if the CSER/FHI report does not reflect prominent narratives while omitting the important impactful ones—here it should not be understood that one needs to first ‘catch’ the UN and only gradually offer it better and better impact opportunities). What do you think should be the criteria for someone (persons of various ‘identities’ - such as students, persons working in different roles, of different nationalities, …) to comment for themselves at the UN? And for EA-related organizations? Should maybe large grantmakers offer applications first?
Yes, so what are the ways to assist the UN to be more efficient in achieving its development intentions (including and in particular One Health and far future considerations)?