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Although ozymandias’ post is based ” partially on talking with conservative friends”
I don’t see much discussion (in the post nor the comments) of …
actual conversations with US conservatives/Republicans about EA and EA ideas … reporting what their reactions were.[2]
Has anyone done this? Is there any source material? I’m particularly interested in...
the USA (and maybe Canada),
conservative university/college students and young people in the military/academies,
students at non-elite schools,
conservative-leaning students interested in politics and government careers
talking to conservatives in groups and at organizations… maybe in meetings or focus groups.
Are there conservatives in many EA student groups? What parts of the EA message particular appeals to conservative students, and which aspects do they hate the most? Are they interested in particular cause areas, or careers, or earning-to-give?
(Note: I expect some of the work and outreach EA for Christians is doing may be relevant, but it’s not quite the same.)
I’m a conservative EA who’s discussed EA at length with other conservatives.
For context, my conservative friends and I were born and raised in the comfortable left-wing community of Brookline, Massachusetts. I went to a very non-elite state school. One of the friends in the group I discuss here goes to military school and has an eye on a longer term political career.
Things my conservative friends (and I) like about EA:
The philosophy of choosing to make important life choices in a way which rigorously adheres to one’s ethical principles.
Many religions mandate tithes (portions of one’s income to be given to the poor), so my conservative friends see earning to give as complementary towards both secular and religious morality.
EA thought tends to regard solving problems like racism, sexism, and homophobia to be far less marginally impactful than poverty, malnutrition, and disease. Conservatives tend to believe that the former social issues occupy far too large a space in the American mind.
Liberal democracy is hailed by both EAs and (in the classical sense) conservatives.
The ability of EAs to talk to people on both sides of the political aisle without making emotional arguments, accusing the other side (conservatives) of disingenuousness, or behaving uncivilly. In my personal experience, these behaviors are shockingly common from the general population towards conservatives, but I’ve never had a fellow EA act that way towards me.
At the risk of repeating myself, rationality! My anecdotal experience is that those with unpopular opinions on contentious issues have often thought deeply about the issue at hand before coming to a conclusion, whereas it’s easy to absorb and echo a popular opinion without thinking it through. For nearly all Western universities, conservative students are in the minority, and having a discussion with a left-wing peer who’s spent substantial time thinking their ideology through is a huge breath of fresh air.
Things my conservative friends dislike about EA:
They’re typically meat lovers XD
There are libertarian EAs, but the consequentialist core of much of EA thought disagrees with the idea that classical liberal principles are conclusively true. For example, one could construct a consequentialist hypothetical where restricting freedom of speech would be the right thing to do to maximize happiness, even if one believes that freedom of speech is in general an extremely important principle.
Conservatism tends to prioritize classically liberal principles and traditional institutions, which broadly tends towards a deontological ethical philosophy rather than a consequentialist one.
EA does have respect for institutions, but I think it’s fair to say that the conservative prior on the value of institutions is greater than the EA prior.
There are some liberal policies that are difficult to avoid explicitly endorsing as an EA; for example, increasing foreign aid, socializing healthcare, and increasing environmental protections. This isn’t something my conservative friends “dislike” about EA per se (as we’re well-conditioned to avoid disliking somebody just because of their political views), but it is an ideological hurdle to deal with for a conservative trying to take on an EA mindset.
There’s an undercurrent in liberal thinking where it’s assumed that conservatives are at the very least ignorant and at the most acting in bad faith. EAs are quite good at avoiding that for the most part, but it does sometimes seep in, and it’s frankly awful for discourse and doesn’t help anybody.
There aren’t any prominent conservative EAs (or at least none that I’ve heard of). As a result, EA thought tends to ignore conservative perspectives in general, even when (in my opinion as a conservative) they can be highly valuable. For example, I believe there’s a seriously compelling argument that abortion should be considered an EA issue. (I’ve written my argument here [EDIT: This link was to a very early spill of thoughts / solicitation of feedback. DM if you’d like to see the current draft, which has progressed substantially.] if anybody would like to take a look. Please do comment as I’m highly interested in feedback!)
You care deeply about human life, and I think you are fighting for others, but the particular topic you linked to, might be difficult to talk about right now.
Is there another topic you wanted to discuss, or you think other conservatives here would share an interest in?
Maybe a topic, where once discussion starts, might be illuminating or build a bridge toward “conservative” thinking?
Sure! Conservatives and libertarians in the United States hail the separation of powers between the federal and state governments. The framers explicitly designed this separation of powers to stymie tyrannical actors:
The framers’ intentions were for the vast majority of actual governance to take place at the state level, with the federal government’s enumerated powers used primarily for foreign relations:
I think this separation of powers is an extremely valuable idea. Federalism lends the United States a Byzantine fault tolerance with redundancy in the form of individual states. Novel policies can be experimented with on the state level, pros and cons can be assessed, and either other states will be convinced by the marketplace of ideas to adopt the policy or the policy will be rolled back. Even in the worst case where some states succumb to tyranny, the United States will endure.
As the centuries have passed, power has become increasingly concentrated in the federal government, and our politics have become nationalized to the point that virtually every contentious issue today concerns the actions of the federal government.
Progressives (and many EAs) have been frustrated about how the filibuster has prevented Democrats in the federal government from delivering on their ambitious promises during the 2020 election cycle and how conservative the Supreme Court is. The existence of the filibuster, which admittedly was very much unintended by the framers, has the useful role of decreasing the effective power of the federal government. The Supreme Court’s power has expanded drastically outside of its original confines to the point that it can be stacked (or has been stacked, depending upon your point of view) to create tyrannical outcomes. I think EAs (and progressives writ large) could do with a greater appreciation of federalism and ways the concept of separation of powers could be extended to our altruistic goals.
This was extremely informative and gave balanced and thoughtful perspectives, thanks!
Also, I don’t mean to ignore it, but there’s a big issue related to the document you linked and too hard to talk about (the bigness is not about the normal politics or recent SC actions; also no one asked, but I personally 1000% support abortion rights in the lefty/coastal liberal sense).
You’re very welcome!
Strong upvote. I would guess that another commonality between EAs and conservatives is not tending to resent the rich and their philanthropy, as many on the left do.
I’m curious if you have any friends who identify as “far right” or “alt-right”—do their views on EA substantially differ?
I have friends who’d identify as “deeply conservative” who I’d include in my above answer, but I’d opine that “deeply conservative” is a significantly different characterization from “far right” in modern American politics. For example, conservative values support upholding the integrity of institutions, not insurrection and/or attempts to overturn democratic elections. Unfortunately I can’t give you an informed answer on “far right” or “alt-right” types.
>There aren’t any prominent conservative EAs (or at least none that I’ve heard of).
I feel like Tyler Cowen is reasonably libertarian/right of centre. I don’t know if he would call himself an EA, but he has an account on the forum, under his full name. I feel like he’s pretty well know, at least in these circles..
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I can see “Republican” becoming its own cluster in the last couple of decades, but what cleanly distinguishes small-c conservative from libertarian? Eg, I definitely would not call Cowen a Republican, but I get the sense he might be somewhat conservative in how he thinks about development, economics and institutions.
My impression of the George Mason academics is that they lean conservative.
Another conservative message I have seen among EAs is a general anti-tax sentiment. This has included practical advice on promotion of donor-advised funds, a personal asset that serves to reduce taxes. The argument seems to be that an EA can better direct what would have been taxes to a high impact charity than the government would be able to spend it.
Don’t know if you want to include “podcast conversations” in your set here, but if you do:
Russ Roberts is fairly conservative, also seemed quite thoughtful and to have good epistemology, when I was listening to econtalk regularly (which hasn’t been in a few years). He had a conversation with Bostrom, about AGI, which I thought went terribly (no good, bad bad bad). He also had a conversation with MacAskill, which I don’t remember as well, but I have the general sense that it also didn’t go super well. Maybe worth a re-listen. He’s probably talked with some other major figures, if you go digging in the archives—there have been a lot of development economists, some of whom are probably important to EA research.
Another Russ Roberts—EA overlap was his interview with Peter Singer. I first heard him discussing it with another guest who said “Wow, that Peter Singer interview was crazy, you must have really been biting your tongue” and Russ agreed he’d been holding back. Then I went back and listened to the Singer interview and . . . couldn’t figure out what the crazy part was supposed to be. So apparently I can’t pass an intellectual Turing test as Mike Munger or Russ Roberts.
He also talked to Rob Wiblin. https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/russ-roberts-effective-altruism-empirical-research-utilitarianism/