Political organizing is a highly accessible way for many EAs to have a potentially high impact. Many of us are doing it already. We propose that as a community we recognize it more formally as way to do good within an EA framework
I agree that EAs should look much more broadly at ways to do good, but I feel like doing political stuff to do good is a trap, or at least is full of traps.
Why do humans have politics? Why don’t we just fire all the politicians and have a professional civil service that just does what’s good?
Because people have different goals or values, and if a powerful group ends up in control of the apparatus of the state and pushes its agenda very hard and pisses a lot of people off, it is better to have that group ousted in an election than in a civil war.
But the takeaway is that politics is the arena in which we discuss ideas where different people in our societies disagree on what counts as good, and as a result it is a somewhat toxic arena with relatively poor intellectual standards. It strongly resists good decision-making and good quality debate, and strongly encourages rhetoric. EA needs to take sides in this like I need more holes in my head.
I think it would be fruitful for EA to get involved in politics, but not by taking sides; I get the impression that the best thing EAs can do is try to find pareto improvements that help both sides, and by making issues that are political into nonpolitical issues by de-ideologizing them and finding solutions that make everyone happy and make the world a better place.
Take a leaf out of Elon Musks’s book. The right wing in the USA is engaging in some pretty crazy irrationality and science denial about global warming. Many people might see this as an opportunity to score points against the right, but global warming will not be solved by political hot air, it will be solved by making fossil fuels economically marginal or nonviable in most applications. In particular, we need to reduce car related emissions to near zero. So Musks goes and builds fast, sexy macho cars in factories in the USA which provide tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs for blue collar US workers, and emphasizes them as innovative, forward looking and pro-US. Our new right wing president is lapping it up. This is what effective altruism in politics looks like: the rhetoric (“look at these sexy, innovative US-made cars!”) is in service of the goal (eliminating gasoline cars and therefore eventually CO2 emissions), not the other way around.
And if you want to see the opposite, go look at this. People are cancelling their Tesla orders because Musk is “acting as a conduit to the rise of white nationalism and fascism in the United States”. Musk has an actual solution to a serious problem, and people on the political left want to destroy it because it doesn’t conform perfectly to their political ideology. Did these people stop to think about whether this nascent boycott makes sense from a consequentialist perspective? As in, “let’s delay the solution to a pressing global problem in order to mildly inconvenience our political enemy”?
Collaborating with existing social justice movements
I would personally like to see EA become more like Elon Musk and less like Buzzfeed. The Trump administration and movement is a bit like a screaming toddler; it’s much easier to deal with by distracting it with it’s favorite toys (“Macho! Innovative! Made in the US!”) than by trying to start an argument with it. How can we find ways to persuade the Trump administration—or any other popular right wing regime—that doing good is in its interest and conforms to its ideology? How can we sound right wing enough that the political right (who currently hold all the legislative power in the US) practically thinks they thought of our ideas themselves?
I agree with much of this. Prior to joining CEA, I worked a bit on the bipartisan issue of how to make politics more rational (1, 2, 3, 4). I still think this is a wortwhile area, though my main focus right now is on other areas.
Nice points. I would distinguish “politics as rhetorical battles” vs. “getting things done in the halls of power”. The latter could be executed in the way that special interests have done so well: by hiring full-time lobbyists who push their agendas with members of Congress, not necessarily in a public way (though enlisting public outcry when needed).
I agree that EAs should look much more broadly at ways to do good, but I feel like doing political stuff to do good is a trap, or at least is full of traps.
Why do humans have politics? Why don’t we just fire all the politicians and have a professional civil service that just does what’s good?
Because people have different goals or values, and if a powerful group ends up in control of the apparatus of the state and pushes its agenda very hard and pisses a lot of people off, it is better to have that group ousted in an election than in a civil war.
But the takeaway is that politics is the arena in which we discuss ideas where different people in our societies disagree on what counts as good, and as a result it is a somewhat toxic arena with relatively poor intellectual standards. It strongly resists good decision-making and good quality debate, and strongly encourages rhetoric. EA needs to take sides in this like I need more holes in my head.
I think it would be fruitful for EA to get involved in politics, but not by taking sides; I get the impression that the best thing EAs can do is try to find pareto improvements that help both sides, and by making issues that are political into nonpolitical issues by de-ideologizing them and finding solutions that make everyone happy and make the world a better place.
Take a leaf out of Elon Musks’s book. The right wing in the USA is engaging in some pretty crazy irrationality and science denial about global warming. Many people might see this as an opportunity to score points against the right, but global warming will not be solved by political hot air, it will be solved by making fossil fuels economically marginal or nonviable in most applications. In particular, we need to reduce car related emissions to near zero. So Musks goes and builds fast, sexy macho cars in factories in the USA which provide tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs for blue collar US workers, and emphasizes them as innovative, forward looking and pro-US. Our new right wing president is lapping it up. This is what effective altruism in politics looks like: the rhetoric (“look at these sexy, innovative US-made cars!”) is in service of the goal (eliminating gasoline cars and therefore eventually CO2 emissions), not the other way around.
And if you want to see the opposite, go look at this. People are cancelling their Tesla orders because Musk is “acting as a conduit to the rise of white nationalism and fascism in the United States”. Musk has an actual solution to a serious problem, and people on the political left want to destroy it because it doesn’t conform perfectly to their political ideology. Did these people stop to think about whether this nascent boycott makes sense from a consequentialist perspective? As in, “let’s delay the solution to a pressing global problem in order to mildly inconvenience our political enemy”?
I would personally like to see EA become more like Elon Musk and less like Buzzfeed. The Trump administration and movement is a bit like a screaming toddler; it’s much easier to deal with by distracting it with it’s favorite toys (“Macho! Innovative! Made in the US!”) than by trying to start an argument with it. How can we find ways to persuade the Trump administration—or any other popular right wing regime—that doing good is in its interest and conforms to its ideology? How can we sound right wing enough that the political right (who currently hold all the legislative power in the US) practically thinks they thought of our ideas themselves?
I agree with much of this. Prior to joining CEA, I worked a bit on the bipartisan issue of how to make politics more rational (1, 2, 3, 4). I still think this is a wortwhile area, though my main focus right now is on other areas.
Nice points. I would distinguish “politics as rhetorical battles” vs. “getting things done in the halls of power”. The latter could be executed in the way that special interests have done so well: by hiring full-time lobbyists who push their agendas with members of Congress, not necessarily in a public way (though enlisting public outcry when needed).
Ralph Nader (my political hero growing up) makes this point: