Can you clarify more what you mean by “political representation?” :) Do you mean EA Funds/EA is too liberal for you, or our specific grants on AI policy do not fit your political perspectives, or something else?
Nope I think the grants you are doing seem good, I don’t mean it like that.
I mean the idea of giving these semi central ea orgs/ funds money doesn’t make sense to me. EA is supposed to be a cause agnostic decentralized movement. If it was called the utilitarian fund this would probably be about 70% of the way towards me being willing to donate. When my dad asks why you guys did x and I have to respond by saying ea isn’t a monolith and then he asks me where the Chicago donation fund is and then I have to say well dad that’s not effective because (insert large moral circle utilitarian calculus) and then he asks me “oh so is ea a utilitarian movement” … maybe you see where I am going with this? It’s a bit of a meta point and perhaps now is not the right time to bring it up.
I mean political representation like if there is an organization with ea in its name then I should be able to vote for the board as a member of ea.
That makes sense. We’ve considered dropping “EA” from our name before, at least for LTFF specifically. Might still do it, I’m not as sure. Manifund might be a more natural fit for your needs, where individuals make decisions about their own donations (or sometimes delegate them to specific regranters), rather than have decisions made as a non-democratic group.
Yea I think I can feel better about giving to manifund so that’s a good shout. Functionally giving money to them still feels like I’m contributing to the larger ea political oligopoly though. I want to enrich a version of ea with real de jure democratic republic institutions
It was such a token effort though. I’m literally giving that much away myself. How about every single person at an ea org steps down and we have an election for the new boards, or they can drop the ea name? (I’m only half joking)
Tangent, but do you have a writeup somewhere of why you think democracy is a more effective form of governance for small institutions or movements? Most of the arguments for democracy I’ve seen (e.g. peaceful transfer of power) seem much less relevant here, even as analogy.
No I don’t but effective altruism should not be a small movement. I think about 1⁄3 of all people could get on board. Applied utilitarianism should be a small movement, and probably not democratic. I’ll just write up a more coherent version of my vision and make a quick take or post though. I would agree democracy is not great for a small movement though I’m not expert.
Can you clarify more what you mean by “political representation?” :) Do you mean EA Funds/EA is too liberal for you, or our specific grants on AI policy do not fit your political perspectives, or something else?
Nope I think the grants you are doing seem good, I don’t mean it like that.
I mean the idea of giving these semi central ea orgs/ funds money doesn’t make sense to me. EA is supposed to be a cause agnostic decentralized movement. If it was called the utilitarian fund this would probably be about 70% of the way towards me being willing to donate. When my dad asks why you guys did x and I have to respond by saying ea isn’t a monolith and then he asks me where the Chicago donation fund is and then I have to say well dad that’s not effective because (insert large moral circle utilitarian calculus) and then he asks me “oh so is ea a utilitarian movement” … maybe you see where I am going with this? It’s a bit of a meta point and perhaps now is not the right time to bring it up.
I mean political representation like if there is an organization with ea in its name then I should be able to vote for the board as a member of ea.
That makes sense. We’ve considered dropping “EA” from our name before, at least for LTFF specifically. Might still do it, I’m not as sure. Manifund might be a more natural fit for your needs, where individuals make decisions about their own donations (or sometimes delegate them to specific regranters), rather than have decisions made as a non-democratic group.
Yea I think I can feel better about giving to manifund so that’s a good shout. Functionally giving money to them still feels like I’m contributing to the larger ea political oligopoly though. I want to enrich a version of ea with real de jure democratic republic institutions
I think the donation election on the forum was trying to get at that earlier.
It was such a token effort though. I’m literally giving that much away myself. How about every single person at an ea org steps down and we have an election for the new boards, or they can drop the ea name? (I’m only half joking)
Tangent, but do you have a writeup somewhere of why you think democracy is a more effective form of governance for small institutions or movements? Most of the arguments for democracy I’ve seen (e.g. peaceful transfer of power) seem much less relevant here, even as analogy.
No I don’t but effective altruism should not be a small movement. I think about 1⁄3 of all people could get on board. Applied utilitarianism should be a small movement, and probably not democratic. I’ll just write up a more coherent version of my vision and make a quick take or post though. I would agree democracy is not great for a small movement though I’m not expert.