The problem is that EA in its current form is a perverted version of the central Idea/question. We are largely a utilitarian group and it’s deeply unfair imo that we are using the EA name. I do think EA should be democratic or quasi democratic but I think that requires taking a step back and re-envisioning. Anyway here is my half baked idea.
I think “EA” should be an umbrella term for a bunch of different sub orgs. The requirements for your sub org to be a part of “EA” should be
(1) You believe that evidence and logic need to be a part of making decisions (2) You want to make things better/be altruistic. (3) (optional) some commitment to not breaking laws/non violence.
A sub org needs to have 2 things (1) Moral framework (2) Political Framework
e.g. Monarchical dog lovers, Democratic republic utilitarians, technocratic christians, etc.
Now each sub org will compose of members. Their onboarding process can be largely unique but perhaps there should be some things all members must vow, like a commitment to evidence based reasoning or open mindedness or altruism or something. To stay a member of an EA suborg, you must contribute 1% of yourself every year. This can be some combination of 1% of your money, time, or effort ( donate .5% of your income and volunteer .5% of your time would work).
Suborgs get to vote for the president every x years. The amount of votes a sub org gets is the product of
(1) time volunteered (2) money donated by its members (3) number of members
This ensures well roundedness in votes and so you can’t just pump votes with populism or a single billionare. (i’ll get around to how we stop the christians from getting all the votes). How the sub group allocates their votes is of course up to their political system. Maybe one person chooses, maybe the members vote, maybe it is a smart contract.
The president can appoint judges or accounts or whatever to some term, these people are in charge of auditing orgs financing and claims of bad behavior. Also they appoint the people who run EAG and perhaps also the heads of all the local groups.
Then there is a house of arts and a house of probabilistic facts.
The members of the house of arts is voted for by strict democracy, every member of the EA coalition gets one vote (or maybe artists get 3-5, idk). This is a 2 year residency in a house with like 10-20 people who make art about the movment.
The house of probabilistic facts is a group of technocratically appointed people (i.e. everyone gets 1 vote, college ed get 2, phd 3, stem 5, prof 10). This will be a group of 5-10, they will vote on important facts about the world by submitting their probabilities for the chance of said facts, and either the arithemetic or geometric mean of their guessing will go into a book called the fact book. The can call upon the house of justice to levy voting fines on groups whose facts are “sufficiently far” from their estimate.
i.e. if they avg that there is a 1% chance of the christian god being real and christians say or are deemed by the house of justice to assign a 100% chance of this, there will be some function that takes the absolute difference f(abs diff) and spits out a number (0,1) that is multiplied to the groups upcoming vote share. This function should be relatively loose such that moderate or major disagreements don’t result in almost any punishment. It should be tuned so that only blatant disregard of facts or belief in magic revokes voting power. The whole point of this is both to be on the record as a shared group about science but also to be inclusive to religious and other groups if they want to be involved while still acknowledging our priorities.
I think the majority of people on this forum would join some form of utilitarian sup group. Which sect of it exactly they would want to throw their weight behind (suffering focused, average, etc.), which political forms will people want to throw their weight behind, and how much fracturing would occur are interesting open questions. But I think that in itself would make this whole ordeal much less of a clusterfuck to those trying to understand what EA exactly is.
The problem is that EA in its current form is a perverted version of the central Idea/question. We are largely a utilitarian group and it’s deeply unfair imo that we are using the EA name. I do think EA should be democratic or quasi democratic but I think that requires taking a step back and re-envisioning. Anyway here is my half baked idea.
I think “EA” should be an umbrella term for a bunch of different sub orgs. The requirements for your sub org to be a part of “EA” should be
(1) You believe that evidence and logic need to be a part of making decisions
(2) You want to make things better/be altruistic.
(3) (optional) some commitment to not breaking laws/non violence.
A sub org needs to have 2 things
(1) Moral framework
(2) Political Framework
e.g. Monarchical dog lovers, Democratic republic utilitarians, technocratic christians, etc.
Now each sub org will compose of members. Their onboarding process can be largely unique but perhaps there should be some things all members must vow, like a commitment to evidence based reasoning or open mindedness or altruism or something. To stay a member of an EA suborg, you must contribute 1% of yourself every year. This can be some combination of 1% of your money, time, or effort ( donate .5% of your income and volunteer .5% of your time would work).
Suborgs get to vote for the president every x years. The amount of votes a sub org gets is the product of
(1) time volunteered
(2) money donated by its members
(3) number of members
This ensures well roundedness in votes and so you can’t just pump votes with populism or a single billionare. (i’ll get around to how we stop the christians from getting all the votes). How the sub group allocates their votes is of course up to their political system. Maybe one person chooses, maybe the members vote, maybe it is a smart contract.
The president can appoint judges or accounts or whatever to some term, these people are in charge of auditing orgs financing and claims of bad behavior. Also they appoint the people who run EAG and perhaps also the heads of all the local groups.
Then there is a house of arts and a house of probabilistic facts.
The members of the house of arts is voted for by strict democracy, every member of the EA coalition gets one vote (or maybe artists get 3-5, idk). This is a 2 year residency in a house with like 10-20 people who make art about the movment.
The house of probabilistic facts is a group of technocratically appointed people (i.e. everyone gets 1 vote, college ed get 2, phd 3, stem 5, prof 10). This will be a group of 5-10, they will vote on important facts about the world by submitting their probabilities for the chance of said facts, and either the arithemetic or geometric mean of their guessing will go into a book called the fact book. The can call upon the house of justice to levy voting fines on groups whose facts are “sufficiently far” from their estimate.
i.e. if they avg that there is a 1% chance of the christian god being real and christians say or are deemed by the house of justice to assign a 100% chance of this, there will be some function that takes the absolute difference f(abs diff) and spits out a number (0,1) that is multiplied to the groups upcoming vote share. This function should be relatively loose such that moderate or major disagreements don’t result in almost any punishment. It should be tuned so that only blatant disregard of facts or belief in magic revokes voting power. The whole point of this is both to be on the record as a shared group about science but also to be inclusive to religious and other groups if they want to be involved while still acknowledging our priorities.
I think the majority of people on this forum would join some form of utilitarian sup group. Which sect of it exactly they would want to throw their weight behind (suffering focused, average, etc.), which political forms will people want to throw their weight behind, and how much fracturing would occur are interesting open questions. But I think that in itself would make this whole ordeal much less of a clusterfuck to those trying to understand what EA exactly is.