Carrick Flynn lost the nomination, and over $10 million dollars from EA aligned individuals went to support his nomination.
So these questions may sound pointed:
There was surely a lot of expected value in having an EA aligned thinker in congress supporting pandemic preparedness, but there were a lot of bottlenecks that he would have had to go through to make a change.
He would have been one of hundreds of congresspeople. He would have had to get bills passed. He would have had to win enough votes to make it past the primary. He would have had to have his policies get churned through the bureaucratic agencies and it’s not entirely clear any bill he would’ve supported would have kept it’s same form through that process.
What can we learn from the political gambling that was done in this situation? Should we try this again? What are the long term side effects of aligning EA with any political side or making EA a political topic?
Could that $10+ million wasted on Flynn have been better used in just trying to get EA or longtermist bureaucrats in the CDC or other important decision making institutions?
We know the path that individuals take to get these positions, we know what people usually get selected to run pandemic preparedness for the government, why not spend $10 million in gaining the attention of bureaucrats or placing bureaucrats in federal agencies?
Should we consider political gambling in the name of EA a type of intervention that is meant for us to get warm fuzzies rather than do the most good?
I think seeing the attacks that he’s captured by crypto interests was useful, in that future EA political forays will know that attack is coming and be able to fend it off better. Worth $11 mil in itself, probably not, but the expected value was already pretty high (a decent probability of having someone in congress who can champion bills no one disagrees with but doesn’t want to spend time and effort on) so this information gained is helpful and might make either future campaigns more successful or alternatively dissuade future spending in this area. Definitely good to try once, we’ll see how it plays out in the long run. We didn’t know he’d lose until he lost!
Carrick Flynn lost the nomination, and over $10 million dollars from EA aligned individuals went to support his nomination.
So these questions may sound pointed:
There was surely a lot of expected value in having an EA aligned thinker in congress supporting pandemic preparedness, but there were a lot of bottlenecks that he would have had to go through to make a change.
He would have been one of hundreds of congresspeople. He would have had to get bills passed. He would have had to win enough votes to make it past the primary. He would have had to have his policies get churned through the bureaucratic agencies and it’s not entirely clear any bill he would’ve supported would have kept it’s same form through that process.
What can we learn from the political gambling that was done in this situation? Should we try this again? What are the long term side effects of aligning EA with any political side or making EA a political topic?
Could that $10+ million wasted on Flynn have been better used in just trying to get EA or longtermist bureaucrats in the CDC or other important decision making institutions?
We know the path that individuals take to get these positions, we know what people usually get selected to run pandemic preparedness for the government, why not spend $10 million in gaining the attention of bureaucrats or placing bureaucrats in federal agencies?
Should we consider political gambling in the name of EA a type of intervention that is meant for us to get warm fuzzies rather than do the most good?
I think seeing the attacks that he’s captured by crypto interests was useful, in that future EA political forays will know that attack is coming and be able to fend it off better. Worth $11 mil in itself, probably not, but the expected value was already pretty high (a decent probability of having someone in congress who can champion bills no one disagrees with but doesn’t want to spend time and effort on) so this information gained is helpful and might make either future campaigns more successful or alternatively dissuade future spending in this area. Definitely good to try once, we’ll see how it plays out in the long run. We didn’t know he’d lose until he lost!