Have you seen an organization affiliated with effective altruism officially posting, e.g., on its own blog, statements to the effect that supporting one or another candidate is effective altruism comparable to x-risk mitigation? Robert Wiblin posted to the ‘Effective Altruism’ Facebook group a while ago what the community at large thought of 80,000 Hours making a blog post disavowing Donald Trump for his comments and policy proposals which are anti-humanitarian and anti-cosmopolitan, and thus antithetical to effective altruism, with an estimate of the expected value of opposing him through, e.g., a vote in a swing state, funding political organizations for the Democratic candidate and/or against Trump, etc.
Lots of us gave feedback, and a lot of it was negative on the proposal. Mr. Wiblin and 80,000 Hours opted not to make the blog post. Since then, I haven’t seen or heard of any EA-affiliated organization making political claims.
Individuals associated with effective altruism might make claims to that effect, but I expect it’d be assumed they’re speaking for themselves and not for the whole community, or at least that their estimate that campaigning against one or another political candidate is one of the most effective things a person can do to be their personal opinion alone. Of course, someone of higher profile might be mistaken as speaking for the movement. I remember on Facebook Will MacAskill once stated he thought, from the perspective of effective altruism, voting against the incumbents in the last UK federal election was a very high-impact action to take. Personally, I didn’t like how he associated effective altruism with partisan politics, especially in a way most of the rest of us wouldn’t be able to. Of course, we can’t stop anyone in the EA movement from making those sorts of claims.
I don’t think it will be many of us. I think calling for people to police their own speech in this regard may not work, and it will be up to the rest of us to collectively disavow political statements, if we see fit, and make clear to everyone the claimant doesn’t in fact speak on behalf of the effective altruism movement.
Have you seen an organization affiliated with effective altruism officially posting, e.g., on its own blog, statements to the effect that supporting one or another candidate is effective altruism comparable to x-risk mitigation? Robert Wiblin posted to the ‘Effective Altruism’ Facebook group a while ago what the community at large thought of 80,000 Hours making a blog post disavowing Donald Trump for his comments and policy proposals which are anti-humanitarian and anti-cosmopolitan, and thus antithetical to effective altruism, with an estimate of the expected value of opposing him through, e.g., a vote in a swing state, funding political organizations for the Democratic candidate and/or against Trump, etc.
Lots of us gave feedback, and a lot of it was negative on the proposal. Mr. Wiblin and 80,000 Hours opted not to make the blog post. Since then, I haven’t seen or heard of any EA-affiliated organization making political claims.
Individuals associated with effective altruism might make claims to that effect, but I expect it’d be assumed they’re speaking for themselves and not for the whole community, or at least that their estimate that campaigning against one or another political candidate is one of the most effective things a person can do to be their personal opinion alone. Of course, someone of higher profile might be mistaken as speaking for the movement. I remember on Facebook Will MacAskill once stated he thought, from the perspective of effective altruism, voting against the incumbents in the last UK federal election was a very high-impact action to take. Personally, I didn’t like how he associated effective altruism with partisan politics, especially in a way most of the rest of us wouldn’t be able to. Of course, we can’t stop anyone in the EA movement from making those sorts of claims.
I don’t think it will be many of us. I think calling for people to police their own speech in this regard may not work, and it will be up to the rest of us to collectively disavow political statements, if we see fit, and make clear to everyone the claimant doesn’t in fact speak on behalf of the effective altruism movement.