Some of the potential ideas, coming from a politically active university:
- Some sister organizations which can be politically focused on a cause area. One example is FAI which used to be funded by OpenPhil. - I wonder if EAs should be openly partisan instead of just hiding their political viewpoints. Of course, to prevent the EA forum from becoming a reddit threat the amount of posting should be roughly be equal among both types of political parties. -- Example: Suppose EA is made out of 80% X and 20% Y. Member of Y should post at a frequency four times higher than X, so we get roughly 50⁄50 split.
Some other things: To reduce polarization, EA could deprioritize some areas which are seen as very partisan and not as effective. A concrete example: my university is funded by factory farms and we’re proud of it. We also have worldviews that since humans are made in the image of God, humans are infinitely more valuable than animals (animals only have instrumental value). Thus saying “abandoning factory farming” would be reputational suicide, as it would be the same as destroying the foundation my university is created on.
You could imagine some kind of quota, where for any partisan political issue, you can only post about it on side X if there is any X quota remaining (which can only happen if posts are added from the perspective of side Y).
But, what would we do if (as seems likely) everything gets polarized? Animal welfare, AI, even GHD are starting to show signs of political polarization. Would everything then be subject to quota?
Agree this is a very thorny problem and I am unsure of how to deal with it. Suspect there’s some degree to which you can balance it usefully and that it’s worth paying some cost of looking partisan but ultimately it’s not really viable to coordinate everyone’s level of partisanship.
I think a big part of mitigating the costs is just trying to avoid the sense that you’re speaking on behalf of EA or AI safety when talking about partisan stuff
Some of the potential ideas, coming from a politically active university:
- Some sister organizations which can be politically focused on a cause area. One example is FAI which used to be funded by OpenPhil.
- I wonder if EAs should be openly partisan instead of just hiding their political viewpoints. Of course, to prevent the EA forum from becoming a reddit threat the amount of posting should be roughly be equal among both types of political parties.
-- Example: Suppose EA is made out of 80% X and 20% Y. Member of Y should post at a frequency four times higher than X, so we get roughly 50⁄50 split.
Some other things: To reduce polarization, EA could deprioritize some areas which are seen as very partisan and not as effective. A concrete example: my university is funded by factory farms and we’re proud of it. We also have worldviews that since humans are made in the image of God, humans are infinitely more valuable than animals (animals only have instrumental value). Thus saying “abandoning factory farming” would be reputational suicide, as it would be the same as destroying the foundation my university is created on.
You are absolutely never going to get an equal split of x and y. I’m not super deep in the community, but EA seems very politically homogeneous.
You could imagine some kind of quota, where for any partisan political issue, you can only post about it on side X if there is any X quota remaining (which can only happen if posts are added from the perspective of side Y).
But, what would we do if (as seems likely) everything gets polarized? Animal welfare, AI, even GHD are starting to show signs of political polarization. Would everything then be subject to quota?
Agree this is a very thorny problem and I am unsure of how to deal with it. Suspect there’s some degree to which you can balance it usefully and that it’s worth paying some cost of looking partisan but ultimately it’s not really viable to coordinate everyone’s level of partisanship.
I think a big part of mitigating the costs is just trying to avoid the sense that you’re speaking on behalf of EA or AI safety when talking about partisan stuff