This is an important topic that needs more discussion, but I’m not sure that there are many cases where technocracy and popular opinion actually conflict, because there rarely is a well defined public opinion on an issue. In polls, just changing the way you ask a question is asked can flip the results entirely and the responses are likely to be driven by what they believe their social/political group believes rather than any careful consideration. Furthermore, even if a stable public opinion exists, it is no guarantee that the direction of policy won’t be decided by elite opinion/technocrats/interest groups. That would require a significant number of voters to feel strongly enough to take action (protest/change their vote) for the majority view.
Therefore, I think this discussion could benefit from concrete examples where EA activities is likely to come into a large direct conflict with public opinion in a concrete way, because I can’t think of much EA is currently doing that could lead to such issues. Many of the ways EA currently interacts with the political process (eg Clean Air Taskforce style lobbying for clean energy tax credits, or organisations opposing gain of function research) appear to me as the minutia of funding decisions and regulations that receive too little media attention for there to be a strong and stable public opinion on it. I would expect that to also be the case if EA orgs attempt to influence any other issue that is not a political hot button.
If you’d like to read more about why we might not be able to define a stable public opinion on most issues, I’d recommend the book Democracy for Realists.
I have updated away of considering technocracy vs populism to be a crucial consideration based on arguments that EAs using expertise to influence policymakers are mostly replacing other expert opinion and not public opinion.
This is an important topic that needs more discussion, but I’m not sure that there are many cases where technocracy and popular opinion actually conflict, because there rarely is a well defined public opinion on an issue. In polls, just changing the way you ask a question is asked can flip the results entirely and the responses are likely to be driven by what they believe their social/political group believes rather than any careful consideration. Furthermore, even if a stable public opinion exists, it is no guarantee that the direction of policy won’t be decided by elite opinion/technocrats/interest groups. That would require a significant number of voters to feel strongly enough to take action (protest/change their vote) for the majority view.
Therefore, I think this discussion could benefit from concrete examples where EA activities is likely to come into a large direct conflict with public opinion in a concrete way, because I can’t think of much EA is currently doing that could lead to such issues. Many of the ways EA currently interacts with the political process (eg Clean Air Taskforce style lobbying for clean energy tax credits, or organisations opposing gain of function research) appear to me as the minutia of funding decisions and regulations that receive too little media attention for there to be a strong and stable public opinion on it. I would expect that to also be the case if EA orgs attempt to influence any other issue that is not a political hot button.
If you’d like to read more about why we might not be able to define a stable public opinion on most issues, I’d recommend the book Democracy for Realists.
Thanks for your comment.
I have updated away of considering technocracy vs populism to be a crucial consideration based on arguments that EAs using expertise to influence policymakers are mostly replacing other expert opinion and not public opinion.
I think the best example of EA activity coming into conflict with public opinion would be the campaign against the decrease in the UK’s foreign aid budget.
And here’s a public poll on this question, where 66% supported the decrease.
To clarify, I’m not criticising the campaign, I’m quite strongly in favour of more technocratic decision-making and of more foreign aid.