Thanks for asking me to clarify. What I meant was the first, criticism that EA doesn’t engage enough in politics—or rather with societal structures which affect both individual lives and our common future. I’m fully aware that SBF was a big political donor. So this was more about the general EA community.
Think of it this way: One of the biggest feathers in EA’s cap is that EA was concerned with pandemics and pandemic preparedness way before most people. Including me, I was way off on that. So hats off for that. But during the pandemic I didn’t hear much noise from the EA community concerning patent waivers, for example—which could arguably have saved a lot of lives.
There may be good reasons to abstain from politics, of course—it’s inherently uncertain and without clear cut answers. Whereas I feel very confident saying that it was an incredibly dumb move to go all in on crypto, I know that there are possible counter arguments concerning the long-term effect of patent waivers (even though I’m not convinced by the counter arguments). But that uncertainty and underdetermancy applies just as much to future AI, no?
Interesting you say that. I was involved in an EA group that looked into campaigning for vaccine patent relief during COVID. There was the ‘One day sooner ’ campaign to allow human challenge trials (I believe this was EA aligned). There was an EA campaign against cuts to the UK’s foreign aid budget, and I can think of two similar efforts in other countries (I’m currently writing this on mobile, it’s hard to post links).
Then there’s the whole animal welfare side to EA, which is distinctly ‘political’, running campaigns for stricter animal welfare laws and suing to uphold these laws. I don’t think EA is anywhere near as apolitical as you claim it to be.
All that being said, these are all political campaigns focused on specific issues. I wouldn’t think the marginal benefit of just donating to a major political party is anywhere near as good as these examples.
What do you mean by:
“downplaying engaging in politics in order to make societal institutions better and more just”?
I can interpret it a couple of ways:
Criticism that EA doesn’t engage in politics enough
Warning about the risks of getting involved in politics
Either way, SBF was a major political donor. I’m reading he was the 2nd biggest donor for the Democrats:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2022/11/10/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-joe-biden-democratic-party-second-biggest-donor/amp/
Thanks for asking me to clarify. What I meant was the first, criticism that EA doesn’t engage enough in politics—or rather with societal structures which affect both individual lives and our common future. I’m fully aware that SBF was a big political donor. So this was more about the general EA community.
Think of it this way: One of the biggest feathers in EA’s cap is that EA was concerned with pandemics and pandemic preparedness way before most people. Including me, I was way off on that. So hats off for that. But during the pandemic I didn’t hear much noise from the EA community concerning patent waivers, for example—which could arguably have saved a lot of lives.
There may be good reasons to abstain from politics, of course—it’s inherently uncertain and without clear cut answers. Whereas I feel very confident saying that it was an incredibly dumb move to go all in on crypto, I know that there are possible counter arguments concerning the long-term effect of patent waivers (even though I’m not convinced by the counter arguments). But that uncertainty and underdetermancy applies just as much to future AI, no?
Interesting you say that. I was involved in an EA group that looked into campaigning for vaccine patent relief during COVID. There was the ‘One day sooner ’ campaign to allow human challenge trials (I believe this was EA aligned). There was an EA campaign against cuts to the UK’s foreign aid budget, and I can think of two similar efforts in other countries (I’m currently writing this on mobile, it’s hard to post links).
Then there’s the whole animal welfare side to EA, which is distinctly ‘political’, running campaigns for stricter animal welfare laws and suing to uphold these laws. I don’t think EA is anywhere near as apolitical as you claim it to be.
All that being said, these are all political campaigns focused on specific issues. I wouldn’t think the marginal benefit of just donating to a major political party is anywhere near as good as these examples.
Thanks, that’s great to hear. I definitely stand corrected on the vaccine issue then!