A consideration is that getting a principled EA elected seems really different than most models of political lobbying.
There is specific value in getting a trusted EA person into national office. This value requires EA talent that is capable, trustworthy. This seems rare.
So this “theory of change” or vision is different than what this post says.
This is a rationalization of the spending in the recent campaign that hasn’t been emphasized in recent discussions (another reason is the “flow through effects” of the spending and involvement).
This comment is piling on and just stating what is visible in hindsight.
It is hard, but the resources or money spent could have been used in more sophisticated or impactful ways to interest voters, instead of ad spending:
Imagine if the candidate helped fund a (near-EA) program in the district. For example, supporting a new education center or local healthcare initiative with $250k or $1M in seed funding. The end result might be leaders from the community coming out in favor of the EA candidate.
This donation done well, would get “face time” with the community and show understanding of constituent needs.
Maybe this could play to the strengths of EAs (understanding and focusing on impact in a well considered way) and help counter narratives of being an outsider focused on esoteric policy.
The following is a backhanded, unfair, insult to write in the immediate days after, but to be show one critique[1]: it reads like the associated account manager (the Google ads sales person whose bonus or promotion depends on volume) got carried away, or someone looked at conventional spending levers and “turned up the knob” to very high levels, out of band[2].
Maybe much more sophisticated spending requires great skill. To calibrate, maybe the ability to execute this is worth 7 figures by itself.
“The following is a backhanded, unfair, insult to write in the immediate days after, but to be show one critique[1]: it reads like the associated account manager (the Google ads sales person whose bonus or promotion depends on volume) got carried away, or someone looked at conventional spending levers and “turned up the knob” to very high levels, out of band[2].”
That sounds about right to me about what happened—I mean, I think it was definitely worth trying (with the only main downside being that the particular way SBF tried possibly crowded out other more effective ways of trying, but mistakes are how you learn), but yeah—it is if nothing else well known that you can’t use money to brute force election results.
I do think that approach of trying to get good local branding is a good idea, though OTOH, we also don’t want it to turn into donating lots of money to comparatively low value local projects—if for no other reason that that would dilute the brand.
Wildly LARPing political comments here:
A consideration is that getting a principled EA elected seems really different than most models of political lobbying.
There is specific value in getting a trusted EA person into national office. This value requires EA talent that is capable, trustworthy. This seems rare.
So this “theory of change” or vision is different than what this post says.
This is a rationalization of the spending in the recent campaign that hasn’t been emphasized in recent discussions (another reason is the “flow through effects” of the spending and involvement).
This comment is piling on and just stating what is visible in hindsight.
It is hard, but the resources or money spent could have been used in more sophisticated or impactful ways to interest voters, instead of ad spending:
Imagine if the candidate helped fund a (near-EA) program in the district. For example, supporting a new education center or local healthcare initiative with $250k or $1M in seed funding. The end result might be leaders from the community coming out in favor of the EA candidate.
This donation done well, would get “face time” with the community and show understanding of constituent needs.
Maybe this could play to the strengths of EAs (understanding and focusing on impact in a well considered way) and help counter narratives of being an outsider focused on esoteric policy.
The following is a backhanded, unfair, insult to write in the immediate days after, but to be show one critique[1]: it reads like the associated account manager (the Google ads sales person whose bonus or promotion depends on volume) got carried away, or someone looked at conventional spending levers and “turned up the knob” to very high levels, out of band[2].
Maybe much more sophisticated spending requires great skill. To calibrate, maybe the ability to execute this is worth 7 figures by itself.
Please don’t ban me.
Google (YouTube) and FB probably owe EAs a large amount of money for exploring the dynamics of saturation spending on user behavior.
“The following is a backhanded, unfair, insult to write in the immediate days after, but to be show one critique[1]: it reads like the associated account manager (the Google ads sales person whose bonus or promotion depends on volume) got carried away, or someone looked at conventional spending levers and “turned up the knob” to very high levels, out of band[2].”
That sounds about right to me about what happened—I mean, I think it was definitely worth trying (with the only main downside being that the particular way SBF tried possibly crowded out other more effective ways of trying, but mistakes are how you learn), but yeah—it is if nothing else well known that you can’t use money to brute force election results.
I do think that approach of trying to get good local branding is a good idea, though OTOH, we also don’t want it to turn into donating lots of money to comparatively low value local projects—if for no other reason that that would dilute the brand.
The content of this comment seems reasonable to me. How is it “LARPing”?