The voting public is already quite uninformed as it is. I think it’s more important from an EA perspective that the candidate that will do the most amount of good wins.
The fact that there voting public is already quite poorly informed does not tell us about the marginal impact from registering more voters.
There are two possible implied claims in that statement. Firstly, that voters are already so uneducated that it is unlikely that the other voters could be even less informed. Secondly, that voters are so uneducated, that it is unlikely being further uneducated could make someone’s decisions even worse. Both are questionable claims, but even if true, they miss the point that a certain percentage of voters are educated and a certain percentage aren’t. If the new voters are more likely to be uniformed, we increase the percentage of uninformed voters, which is bad, even if they aren’t less informed than those voters who are already uninformed or if they won’t make decisions that are any worse than the other uninformed voters.
Yes, I accept that all things being equal, registering voters that are less educated about policy than the average voter is bad. But all things are not equal. I assume most or all of the participants were trying to register demographics that are likely to vote for Clinton, not a random sample of uneducated people.
There are arguments both for and against political neutrality, but it is worth considering the following points.
1) We would be sacrificing this principle because of one particular candidate.
2) If it is important to take action, it would impact political neutrality much less if individual EAs took action instead of official groups
3) Taking an action in order to support a candidate, is a much greater breach of political neutrality than just opposing a few particular positions.
The voting public is already quite uninformed as it is. I think it’s more important from an EA perspective that the candidate that will do the most amount of good wins.
The fact that there voting public is already quite poorly informed does not tell us about the marginal impact from registering more voters.
There are two possible implied claims in that statement. Firstly, that voters are already so uneducated that it is unlikely that the other voters could be even less informed. Secondly, that voters are so uneducated, that it is unlikely being further uneducated could make someone’s decisions even worse. Both are questionable claims, but even if true, they miss the point that a certain percentage of voters are educated and a certain percentage aren’t. If the new voters are more likely to be uniformed, we increase the percentage of uninformed voters, which is bad, even if they aren’t less informed than those voters who are already uninformed or if they won’t make decisions that are any worse than the other uninformed voters.
Yes, I accept that all things being equal, registering voters that are less educated about policy than the average voter is bad. But all things are not equal. I assume most or all of the participants were trying to register demographics that are likely to vote for Clinton, not a random sample of uneducated people.
There are arguments both for and against political neutrality, but it is worth considering the following points.
1) We would be sacrificing this principle because of one particular candidate. 2) If it is important to take action, it would impact political neutrality much less if individual EAs took action instead of official groups 3) Taking an action in order to support a candidate, is a much greater breach of political neutrality than just opposing a few particular positions.