I can see the value of voter registration as an activity for engaging group members, as it provides a very tangible impact.
On the other hand it is a radical departure from EA principles which focus on measurability instead of things that just sound good. Voter registration has a strong intuitive appeal—as does many other ideas such as the idea of empowering aid recipients—but when the rubber hits the road—what is the actual impact? This is something that is way too difficult to predict and far too dependent on subjective views on controversial topics. Particularly, the idea that X is valuable because everyone in mainstream society things it is valuable is greatly concerning from an EA perspective.
As soon as EA chapters start engaging in voter registration, we would have greatly undermined the purpose of EA. This purpose is not, as might be supposed, ensuring that all altruists focus on measurable cause areas, but uniting and growing the community of people focusing on measurable cause areas. When groups start focusing on non-measurable cause areas, this hampers achieving this objective. I mean, one non-measurable cause area by itself would have negligent impact, but the worry is that each such cause area makes it more likely that Effective Altruism losses its focus.
Measurability doesn’t sound quite adequate to describe what this proposal is missing.
FHI and MIRI have major problems with measurability, yet have somewhat plausible claims to fit EA principles.
Voter registration has similar problems with estimating how it affects goals such as lives saved, but seems to be missing an analysis of why the expected number of lives saved is positive or negative.
Thanks for the comment. I added the following paragraph to clarify the value:
Several people have attempted to estimate the value of a marginal vote: Peter Norvig estimates it at around $1 million; Edlin, Gelman and Kaplan estimate it at around $30,000-$400,000 based on different scenarios. (The latter set of authors have a more theoretical paper as well.) If you take these figures at anything approaching face value, this is by far the most effective meet up with ever done.
I vote regularly, by mail, after spending a few hours reading up on the issues, but you shouldn’t take those numbers at face value though, e.g. those dollars are far from comparable to dollars spent on effective charity. I would say they are orders of magnitude off from the decision-relevant calculation.
I can see the value of voter registration as an activity for engaging group members, as it provides a very tangible impact.
On the other hand it is a radical departure from EA principles which focus on measurability instead of things that just sound good. Voter registration has a strong intuitive appeal—as does many other ideas such as the idea of empowering aid recipients—but when the rubber hits the road—what is the actual impact? This is something that is way too difficult to predict and far too dependent on subjective views on controversial topics. Particularly, the idea that X is valuable because everyone in mainstream society things it is valuable is greatly concerning from an EA perspective.
As soon as EA chapters start engaging in voter registration, we would have greatly undermined the purpose of EA. This purpose is not, as might be supposed, ensuring that all altruists focus on measurable cause areas, but uniting and growing the community of people focusing on measurable cause areas. When groups start focusing on non-measurable cause areas, this hampers achieving this objective. I mean, one non-measurable cause area by itself would have negligent impact, but the worry is that each such cause area makes it more likely that Effective Altruism losses its focus.
Measurability doesn’t sound quite adequate to describe what this proposal is missing.
FHI and MIRI have major problems with measurability, yet have somewhat plausible claims to fit EA principles.
Voter registration has similar problems with estimating how it affects goals such as lives saved, but seems to be missing an analysis of why the expected number of lives saved is positive or negative.
Thanks for the comment. I added the following paragraph to clarify the value:
I vote regularly, by mail, after spending a few hours reading up on the issues, but you shouldn’t take those numbers at face value though, e.g. those dollars are far from comparable to dollars spent on effective charity. I would say they are orders of magnitude off from the decision-relevant calculation.
Yeah. Do you know of better estimates?