@Yelnats T.J., thanks for writing this. Also grateful to my friend John who pointed me to your post (I’m new on this forum). This topic is near and dear to me: I believe that unity is key to achieving humanity’s full potential and avoiding dystopian and annihilative outcomes.
Your work here sparks a few thoughts.
America’s broader fatalism about polarization—the heart of this problem—is unfortunate. There are promising routes to bridging divides, especially through technology. If social media has (accidentally) contributed as much to polarization as it has, imagine the potential effectiveness of technology explicitly aimed at constructive unity. Social psychology offers a wealth of evidence on what creates an “us” identity (Van Bavel and Packer’s The Power of Us is a great overview as of ca. 2020). There is scope to implement these ideas at scale, especially with the help of LLMs/NLP and other AI. (A thorough discussion is beyond the scope of this comment, but to anyone with whom this idea resonates, please DM me; I’d love to discuss.)
Destabilization is not a U.S.-only problem. Although polarization seems most pernicious in the U.S., other liberal democracies have been growing increasingly divided (see, e.g., 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer) due to similar factors, including echo chambers (largely due to social media), more time spent online, and surging migration (see, e.g., Monk’s The Great Experiment, 2022).
The potential long-term implications of U.S. destabilization are hard to understate. Emphasizing negative implications for EA funding may actually minimize the problem. Beyond the U.S., the stakes are much higher. A failure of U.S. democracy could pave the way for Chinese global hegemony, leading to significant global retrenchment of philosophically liberal notions of equality and individual liberty. It might even usher in a global totalitarian surveillance state, one that is AI-empowered, and potentially permanent/locked-in. Conversely, suppose the U.S., among other liberal democracies, actually gets its acts together and functions effectively. Then the rest of the world might see this “shining city on a hill” of America and become more open to its liberal values. That includes China which, following Xi’s “scientific socialism”, is fundamentally guided by empirical evidence.
International division is also underrated. You hypothesize that destabilization within the U.S. could increase risks from “great power conflict, AI, bio-risk, and climate disruption.” While I agree, this increase in risks strikes me as overshadowed by any persistent disunity among nations. That is, pursuing unity within the U.S. is mostly about preserving liberty; pursuing international unity is mostly about preventing annihilation. In an AI arms race, for instance, that throws caution to the wind to maintain the upper hand over foreign adversaries, it would seem to make little difference whether the U.S. is democratic or authoritarian (Suleyman’s The Coming Wave, 2023, argues this well). From a long-term and more abstract perspective, increasingly powerful and accessible technologies present both bigger upsides and more dangerous ways to harm or destroy one another. The proximate existential risks to humanity (e.g., as outlined in Ord’s The Precipice, 2020) may largely boil down to one ultimate meta-risk of disunity. Over a long enough time horizon, J. Robert Oppenheimer’s categorical imperative strikes me as a mathematical certainty: “The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish”.
Disunity within the U.S. and internationally, being driven by the same us-vs.-them tribalism, have potential solutions that are not fundamentally different. Moreover, I’m hopeful that AI could make communicating with those who speak other languages more seamless.
Back to the U.S., I echo the point about leftist/partisan tone made by @David_Althaus, @Jason, @Geoffrey Miller, and @Marcus_Ogren. Hard as it may be to avoid suggesting that the other side is the bigger problem, even if it were hypothetically true, I don’t see it as productive. On the contrary, if the ultimate problem is polarization/disunity, then the solution involves talking and compromising with people who have different values; it might be counterproductive if those people feel blamed. If an enemy must be made of specific views/values, I think “extremism” (including in one’s own party) fits the bill. Relatedly, I’d avoid discussing institutional reforms that are theoretically wonderful but impractical given their extreme partisan implications, e.g., abolishing the electoral college. Such ideas could be mentioned in the footnotes.
@Yelnats T.J., thanks for writing this. Also grateful to my friend John who pointed me to your post (I’m new on this forum). This topic is near and dear to me: I believe that unity is key to achieving humanity’s full potential and avoiding dystopian and annihilative outcomes.
Your work here sparks a few thoughts.
America’s broader fatalism about polarization—the heart of this problem—is unfortunate. There are promising routes to bridging divides, especially through technology. If social media has (accidentally) contributed as much to polarization as it has, imagine the potential effectiveness of technology explicitly aimed at constructive unity. Social psychology offers a wealth of evidence on what creates an “us” identity (Van Bavel and Packer’s The Power of Us is a great overview as of ca. 2020). There is scope to implement these ideas at scale, especially with the help of LLMs/NLP and other AI. (A thorough discussion is beyond the scope of this comment, but to anyone with whom this idea resonates, please DM me; I’d love to discuss.)
Destabilization is not a U.S.-only problem. Although polarization seems most pernicious in the U.S., other liberal democracies have been growing increasingly divided (see, e.g., 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer) due to similar factors, including echo chambers (largely due to social media), more time spent online, and surging migration (see, e.g., Monk’s The Great Experiment, 2022).
The potential long-term implications of U.S. destabilization are hard to understate. Emphasizing negative implications for EA funding may actually minimize the problem. Beyond the U.S., the stakes are much higher. A failure of U.S. democracy could pave the way for Chinese global hegemony, leading to significant global retrenchment of philosophically liberal notions of equality and individual liberty. It might even usher in a global totalitarian surveillance state, one that is AI-empowered, and potentially permanent/locked-in. Conversely, suppose the U.S., among other liberal democracies, actually gets its acts together and functions effectively. Then the rest of the world might see this “shining city on a hill” of America and become more open to its liberal values. That includes China which, following Xi’s “scientific socialism”, is fundamentally guided by empirical evidence.
International division is also underrated. You hypothesize that destabilization within the U.S. could increase risks from “great power conflict, AI, bio-risk, and climate disruption.” While I agree, this increase in risks strikes me as overshadowed by any persistent disunity among nations. That is, pursuing unity within the U.S. is mostly about preserving liberty; pursuing international unity is mostly about preventing annihilation. In an AI arms race, for instance, that throws caution to the wind to maintain the upper hand over foreign adversaries, it would seem to make little difference whether the U.S. is democratic or authoritarian (Suleyman’s The Coming Wave, 2023, argues this well). From a long-term and more abstract perspective, increasingly powerful and accessible technologies present both bigger upsides and more dangerous ways to harm or destroy one another. The proximate existential risks to humanity (e.g., as outlined in Ord’s The Precipice, 2020) may largely boil down to one ultimate meta-risk of disunity. Over a long enough time horizon, J. Robert Oppenheimer’s categorical imperative strikes me as a mathematical certainty: “The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish”.
Disunity within the U.S. and internationally, being driven by the same us-vs.-them tribalism, have potential solutions that are not fundamentally different. Moreover, I’m hopeful that AI could make communicating with those who speak other languages more seamless.
Back to the U.S., I echo the point about leftist/partisan tone made by @David_Althaus, @Jason, @Geoffrey Miller, and @Marcus_Ogren. Hard as it may be to avoid suggesting that the other side is the bigger problem, even if it were hypothetically true, I don’t see it as productive. On the contrary, if the ultimate problem is polarization/disunity, then the solution involves talking and compromising with people who have different values; it might be counterproductive if those people feel blamed. If an enemy must be made of specific views/values, I think “extremism” (including in one’s own party) fits the bill. Relatedly, I’d avoid discussing institutional reforms that are theoretically wonderful but impractical given their extreme partisan implications, e.g., abolishing the electoral college. Such ideas could be mentioned in the footnotes.