I think you should feel free to participate in politics as an individual, but I’m pretty uncomfortable with the EA movement developing an official ideology in an organic and ad-hoc way. It seems easy for a feedback loop to form where an ideology becomes associated with a particular group, and people who disagree with the ideology leave the group, and that strengthens the association. I know an online forum roughly as erudite as the EA forum where this happened in the opposite direction, and the majority of the participants (I believe) are voting for Trump (not because they like him but because they think the left is worse). (Notably, most users on this other forum are pseudonymous—I suspect this is a small thing which can make a big difference in the long run in terms of how a group’s political beliefs evolve.)
I’m going to go ahead and try to explain the mindset of Trump supporters as I see it a little bit, not because I want anyone voting for him (please don’t), but because I think it will be helpful for understanding considerations around getting involved in politics, and also because if you’re going to try and change the votes of his supporters it helps to know what they’re thinking.
Essentially I think the people who support Trump do so because their social media feed mostly shows examples of the media being dishonest, and the people who oppose Trump do so because their social media feed mostly shows examples of Trump being dishonest. I don’t think it is unreasonable to be distrustful of the media. See Gell-Mann Amnesia, this overview of studies which show the dismal accuracy of newspapers, or this book which explains the dismal incentives of modern news publishers and why those incentives cause them to neglect the truth. Insofar as the media is inaccurate, I would expect them to favor Democrats—a 2014 survey found 4x as many journalists identify as Democrat than Republican. I would guess that the balance has worsened since 2014 due to the feedback loop I described above.
It does seem there have been cases where the press has been clearly unfair to Trump. Let’s consider the “original” Trump scandal, the one where he supposedly said Mexicans were rapists.
When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. ... When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Here is the video of Trump saying the second bit. Note how he points to the audience as he says “They’re not sending you”—i.e. suggesting that people in his audience are “Mexico’s best people”. I have never seen any media outlet point this out—it seems like his statement has been consistently presented so as to make Trump seem as xenophobic as possible. (By the way, Trump later referenced this article about coyotes who rape migrants to support his rapist claim.)
As a voter, my time to fact check stories is limited. So once I see two or three stories which seem clearly unfair on a deeper investigation, it doesn’t seem totally unreasonable to wonder if most stories are unfair. In other words, the “corrupt establishment which is out to wreck Trump by any means possible” hypothesis becomes a hypothesis that does an OK job of explaining the data I see.
This theory of why people support Trump also explains why particular events have hurt his popularity in my view:
Being a jerk to Joe Biden in the debate
Coronavirus
Trump’s handling of BLM protests
I suspect the key issue is whether the event serves as a credible “out of band” signal of malfeasance on Trump’s part—an event which requires relatively little trust in journalists to verify, and clearly indicates malfeasance even absent journalist editorializing.
You cite the fact that most EA survey respondents seem to oppose Trump. That’s not a convincing argument in my view because of correlated errors. Young people in general oppose Trump and the EA movement skews young. Most EAs aren’t analyzing political issues carefully and trying to come to conclusions from first principles; they’re engaging in their spare time and reading what comes up in their feed. Reading people you disagree with is way less fun as a recreational activity, so people tend not to do it, and also it’s easy to get pushed in a particular direction if friends will ostracize people for disagreement.
I’ll go ahead and respond to a few more of your points individually:
In the context of United States politics, however, the extreme left has not been anywhere near as successful at capturing the Democratic Party as the far right has been at capturing its counterpart
That’s not obvious to me:
The vast majority of current House Republicans have openly condemned QAnon, with all but 17 signing onto a recent House resolution calling it a “conspiracy theory.”
I understand that disappointment with Trump is a fairly common position on the far right.
You state that the left in the US “isn’t even that extreme by international standards”. However, a big part of what concerns me about the left is their rhetoric and their epistemology. If their objective was to prevent anyone from eating pineapple on pizza, and they considered any yellow or green plant topping to be “pineapple” (regularly referring to the Republicans as the fascist white nationalist party when Senate Republicans unanimously confirmed a Black man as Air Force chief of staff), and they were dropping guillotine memes on Twitter, staying just within the rules to hint about theirplans for pineapple on pizza lovers, then I would consider that to be a problem even if I could do without pineapple on pizza. Additionally it’s instructive to observe the trend—the left has gotten a lot more extreme in recent years, and it’s possible that whatever force that caused this will continue to operate.
(Maybe this would be a good time to re-emphasize that I think Biden is the right person to vote for this year—in part because I notice that whatever process which caused the left to get more extreme seemed to operate faster during Trump’s term. However, I acknowledge that my Trump-supporting friend (a brilliant engineer who keeps his views very close to his chest) has a point when he mentions that Trump has ordered a halt to (in his view) Orwelliananti-racism training in the federal government, and there’s a chance Biden will reverse this order. This is a way in which your claim “To the extent there is problematic thinking and behavior on the left, I do not believe it is a problem that will be worsened by having Democrats in power” could be false.)
Anyway, hopefully some of that has given you a sense for why I think the current presidential election is a minefield in a way approval voting and ballot initiatives increasing aid for effective charities are not. In the modern political era, it’s not enough to just mention a bunch of things you read in your feed. You want to do random in-depth fact checks, or provide incentives for normally reticent supporters of unpopular views to explain those views, or something.
I think you should feel free to participate in politics as an individual, but I’m pretty uncomfortable with the EA movement developing an official ideology in an organic and ad-hoc way. It seems easy for a feedback loop to form where an ideology becomes associated with a particular group, and people who disagree with the ideology leave the group, and that strengthens the association. I know an online forum roughly as erudite as the EA forum where this happened in the opposite direction, and the majority of the participants (I believe) are voting for Trump (not because they like him but because they think the left is worse). (Notably, most users on this other forum are pseudonymous—I suspect this is a small thing which can make a big difference in the long run in terms of how a group’s political beliefs evolve.)
I’m going to go ahead and try to explain the mindset of Trump supporters as I see it a little bit, not because I want anyone voting for him (please don’t), but because I think it will be helpful for understanding considerations around getting involved in politics, and also because if you’re going to try and change the votes of his supporters it helps to know what they’re thinking.
Essentially I think the people who support Trump do so because their social media feed mostly shows examples of the media being dishonest, and the people who oppose Trump do so because their social media feed mostly shows examples of Trump being dishonest. I don’t think it is unreasonable to be distrustful of the media. See Gell-Mann Amnesia, this overview of studies which show the dismal accuracy of newspapers, or this book which explains the dismal incentives of modern news publishers and why those incentives cause them to neglect the truth. Insofar as the media is inaccurate, I would expect them to favor Democrats—a 2014 survey found 4x as many journalists identify as Democrat than Republican. I would guess that the balance has worsened since 2014 due to the feedback loop I described above.
It does seem there have been cases where the press has been clearly unfair to Trump. Let’s consider the “original” Trump scandal, the one where he supposedly said Mexicans were rapists.
Here is the video of Trump saying the second bit. Note how he points to the audience as he says “They’re not sending you”—i.e. suggesting that people in his audience are “Mexico’s best people”. I have never seen any media outlet point this out—it seems like his statement has been consistently presented so as to make Trump seem as xenophobic as possible. (By the way, Trump later referenced this article about coyotes who rape migrants to support his rapist claim.)
As a voter, my time to fact check stories is limited. So once I see two or three stories which seem clearly unfair on a deeper investigation, it doesn’t seem totally unreasonable to wonder if most stories are unfair. In other words, the “corrupt establishment which is out to wreck Trump by any means possible” hypothesis becomes a hypothesis that does an OK job of explaining the data I see.
This theory of why people support Trump also explains why particular events have hurt his popularity in my view:
Being a jerk to Joe Biden in the debate
Coronavirus
Trump’s handling of BLM protests
I suspect the key issue is whether the event serves as a credible “out of band” signal of malfeasance on Trump’s part—an event which requires relatively little trust in journalists to verify, and clearly indicates malfeasance even absent journalist editorializing.
You cite the fact that most EA survey respondents seem to oppose Trump. That’s not a convincing argument in my view because of correlated errors. Young people in general oppose Trump and the EA movement skews young. Most EAs aren’t analyzing political issues carefully and trying to come to conclusions from first principles; they’re engaging in their spare time and reading what comes up in their feed. Reading people you disagree with is way less fun as a recreational activity, so people tend not to do it, and also it’s easy to get pushed in a particular direction if friends will ostracize people for disagreement.
I’ll go ahead and respond to a few more of your points individually:
That’s not obvious to me:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/15/qanon-trump-maga-movement-429739
Have the vast majority of House Democrats condemned antifa?
I understand that disappointment with Trump is a fairly common position on the far right.
You state that the left in the US “isn’t even that extreme by international standards”. However, a big part of what concerns me about the left is their rhetoric and their epistemology. If their objective was to prevent anyone from eating pineapple on pizza, and they considered any yellow or green plant topping to be “pineapple” (regularly referring to the Republicans as the fascist white nationalist party when Senate Republicans unanimously confirmed a Black man as Air Force chief of staff), and they were dropping guillotine memes on Twitter, staying just within the rules to hint about their plans for pineapple on pizza lovers, then I would consider that to be a problem even if I could do without pineapple on pizza. Additionally it’s instructive to observe the trend—the left has gotten a lot more extreme in recent years, and it’s possible that whatever force that caused this will continue to operate.
(Maybe this would be a good time to re-emphasize that I think Biden is the right person to vote for this year—in part because I notice that whatever process which caused the left to get more extreme seemed to operate faster during Trump’s term. However, I acknowledge that my Trump-supporting friend (a brilliant engineer who keeps his views very close to his chest) has a point when he mentions that Trump has ordered a halt to (in his view) Orwellian anti-racism training in the federal government, and there’s a chance Biden will reverse this order. This is a way in which your claim “To the extent there is problematic thinking and behavior on the left, I do not believe it is a problem that will be worsened by having Democrats in power” could be false.)
Anyway, hopefully some of that has given you a sense for why I think the current presidential election is a minefield in a way approval voting and ballot initiatives increasing aid for effective charities are not. In the modern political era, it’s not enough to just mention a bunch of things you read in your feed. You want to do random in-depth fact checks, or provide incentives for normally reticent supporters of unpopular views to explain those views, or something.