Key article from this forum:
http://effective-altruism.com/ea/is/how_valuable_is_movement_growth/
Developing positive impressions of EA is much more important than near-term growth. If we align with partisan political causes, we risk greatly limiting the eventual scope and impact of EA. Because our movement goal is inherently very different (long term size and positive impression, vs. immediate policy changes), I don’t think the organizing knowledge is transferable/useful.
Also, much of organizing around left the left is founded in a justice as the core value framework, rather than an impact as the core value framework. There are many posts/arguments in the social justice community explicitly arguing against impact (e.g. arguing against metrics for charity) because these can undermine more speculative causes and deprioritize grassroots/marginalized activists. If we align EA with these movements, we risk undermining the core quantitive and utilitarian values in EA.
Because of these risks to EA, I’m partial a firewall between EA and social justice themed organizing, meaning EA orgs do not endorse partisan political causes.
This isn’t to say EAs should never participate in politics. As you pointed out, there is a lot in international aid that is nonpartisan or very weakly partisan, and the good from doing so is likely to overcoming the risks above. If we engage in more controversial leftists political causes, EA work would be better spent in cause research, rather than direct political activism. Also, we can prioritize implementing laws that are already passed more effectively, rather than proposing new partisan legislation. This was the aim of the EA policy analytics project.
I echo the above comments that elevating organizing to an “obligation” is inappropriate given the speculative nature of impact and possible externalities.
The way we’ve been thinking about this is less “EA as a movement/community endorses cause X” and more individual EAs engaging in political work that seems valuable to them. Many EAs did phone canvassing for Hillary Clinton or attended women’s marches around Trump’s inauguration, all without there being some official EA position on US politics. I think EAs are actually remarkably good at disagreeing with each other—we already respect that we support different causes and make different career and lifestyle choices. EAs canvassing in the US election didn’t lead to fallouts within the community between Sanders, Clinton or Republican supporters.
There could be quite high value in EAs engaging people who work in social justice, precisely because of some the disagreements you mentioned. I work a lot with people who would describe themselves as committed to social justice and I find that although there are things I find irritating (like disregard for quantitative approaches) there’s also lots of common ground: wanting to alleviate suffering, willingness to make personal sacrifices for causes, convergence on particular policy issues. Working with them and constructively making a case for eg. more evidence-based approaches could be productive. Plus, I’ve definitely learned, too, from being exposed to very different ways of thinking about issues I care about.
I’m gonna half-agree with this. I agree that we shouldn’t in general as a community align with (or against) social justice causes, at least not in America.
I think there are many issues where taking a partisan view is still a good idea, though. I think we should align with the left on climate change, for example.
I think we should align with the left on climate change, for example.
re: climate change, it would be really nice if we could persuade the political right (and left) that climate change is apolitical and that it is just a generally sensible thing to tackle it, like building roads is apolitical and just generally sensible.
Technology is on our side here: electric cars are going mainsteam, wind and solar are getting better. I believe that we have now entered a regime where climate change will fix itself as humanity naturally switches over to clean energy, and the best thing that politics can do is get out of the way.
In an ideal world, it would be apolitical, but that’s not the world we live in. Actually, the same is true about building roads—investments in infrastructure is a liberal cause. Consider how Obama proposed a massive investment in infrastructure, which Republicans rejected. When Trump proposed investing in infrastructure, Democrats implied this was one of the only areas where they would go along with him, but then other Republicans were against it and pressured him to change course on this.
I think we can push issues towards being less political by reframing them and persuading others to reframe them.
Abortion, gun control, tax rate—these issues are so central to the left-right political divide that they will never be depoliticized.
Climate change is not like them IMO. I think it can be pushed away from the political left-right axis if it can be reframed so that doing something about climate change is no longer seen as supporting left-wing ideas about big government. There is an angle about efficiency, fairness & cutting red tape (carbon tax) and another angle about innovation and industry (e.g. Tesla). I think we should be pushing those very hard.
Key article from this forum: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/is/how_valuable_is_movement_growth/ Developing positive impressions of EA is much more important than near-term growth. If we align with partisan political causes, we risk greatly limiting the eventual scope and impact of EA. Because our movement goal is inherently very different (long term size and positive impression, vs. immediate policy changes), I don’t think the organizing knowledge is transferable/useful. Also, much of organizing around left the left is founded in a justice as the core value framework, rather than an impact as the core value framework. There are many posts/arguments in the social justice community explicitly arguing against impact (e.g. arguing against metrics for charity) because these can undermine more speculative causes and deprioritize grassroots/marginalized activists. If we align EA with these movements, we risk undermining the core quantitive and utilitarian values in EA. Because of these risks to EA, I’m partial a firewall between EA and social justice themed organizing, meaning EA orgs do not endorse partisan political causes. This isn’t to say EAs should never participate in politics. As you pointed out, there is a lot in international aid that is nonpartisan or very weakly partisan, and the good from doing so is likely to overcoming the risks above.
If we engage in more controversial leftists political causes, EA work would be better spent in cause research, rather than direct political activism. Also, we can prioritize implementing laws that are already passed more effectively, rather than proposing new partisan legislation. This was the aim of the EA policy analytics project. I echo the above comments that elevating organizing to an “obligation” is inappropriate given the speculative nature of impact and possible externalities.
The way we’ve been thinking about this is less “EA as a movement/community endorses cause X” and more individual EAs engaging in political work that seems valuable to them. Many EAs did phone canvassing for Hillary Clinton or attended women’s marches around Trump’s inauguration, all without there being some official EA position on US politics. I think EAs are actually remarkably good at disagreeing with each other—we already respect that we support different causes and make different career and lifestyle choices. EAs canvassing in the US election didn’t lead to fallouts within the community between Sanders, Clinton or Republican supporters.
There could be quite high value in EAs engaging people who work in social justice, precisely because of some the disagreements you mentioned. I work a lot with people who would describe themselves as committed to social justice and I find that although there are things I find irritating (like disregard for quantitative approaches) there’s also lots of common ground: wanting to alleviate suffering, willingness to make personal sacrifices for causes, convergence on particular policy issues. Working with them and constructively making a case for eg. more evidence-based approaches could be productive. Plus, I’ve definitely learned, too, from being exposed to very different ways of thinking about issues I care about.
I’m gonna half-agree with this. I agree that we shouldn’t in general as a community align with (or against) social justice causes, at least not in America.
I think there are many issues where taking a partisan view is still a good idea, though. I think we should align with the left on climate change, for example.
re: climate change, it would be really nice if we could persuade the political right (and left) that climate change is apolitical and that it is just a generally sensible thing to tackle it, like building roads is apolitical and just generally sensible.
Technology is on our side here: electric cars are going mainsteam, wind and solar are getting better. I believe that we have now entered a regime where climate change will fix itself as humanity naturally switches over to clean energy, and the best thing that politics can do is get out of the way.
In an ideal world, it would be apolitical, but that’s not the world we live in. Actually, the same is true about building roads—investments in infrastructure is a liberal cause. Consider how Obama proposed a massive investment in infrastructure, which Republicans rejected. When Trump proposed investing in infrastructure, Democrats implied this was one of the only areas where they would go along with him, but then other Republicans were against it and pressured him to change course on this.
I think we can push issues towards being less political by reframing them and persuading others to reframe them.
Abortion, gun control, tax rate—these issues are so central to the left-right political divide that they will never be depoliticized.
Climate change is not like them IMO. I think it can be pushed away from the political left-right axis if it can be reframed so that doing something about climate change is no longer seen as supporting left-wing ideas about big government. There is an angle about efficiency, fairness & cutting red tape (carbon tax) and another angle about innovation and industry (e.g. Tesla). I think we should be pushing those very hard.