It’s worth recognizing that not all Christians believe in eternal damnation; and among those who do, some believe there is a limited quota to get into heaven. There is really quite a diversity of Christian dogma out there.
Ian Turner
Karma: 1,035
Is it possible that organizations are privately deliberative, using a scout mindset to identify the best approach, but then publicly confident, projecting a soldier mindset to focus action, attention, funding, volunteers, etc., on the chosen model?
Social and political action are quite different from international aid funding, in that they are naturally adversarial. In such an environment it might not be best to project your uncertainties or vulnerabilities.
Perhaps https://justfacts.votesmart.org/ is what you’re looking for?
I think this is a quite hard problem, perhaps much harder that is seems initially. Besides the fact that different voters have different opinions and priorities about policy (or character, for that matter), it is for the most part not the case that serious candidates lay out their policy prescriptions in detailed/possible ways. That’s because doing so tends to make oneself less electable. The way to get into office is to keep things vague enough that any particular voter could convince themselves that the candidate supports, or at least might be persuaded later to support, whatever the voter is looking for. And if you keep things vague then you can present an impossible platform, such as promising funding for particular programs without specifying what unpopular policies (taxes or budget cuts) would produce that funding. Furthermore electorates change their mind and a successful politician needs to be able to follow the crowd without being accused of flip-flopping. Finally, candidates also want to be able to tailor their messaging to different constituencies or donor groups.
The bottom line is that candidates and political parties (at least, serious ones) aren’t going to subject themselves to a GiveWell-like process, at least not without a really significant and legible benefit (votes or $$) available on the other end.
When it comes to local or regional elections, the problem is even harder because the issues vary from place to place and office to office, and information about candidates is not widely disseminated, often available only in the local paper or candidate forum.
Is there a reason you did not hyperlink to the article itself?
After googling, I assume it is this one: US climate philanthropies fear Trump blow from loss of tax-free status.
Interesting write up! Thanks for producing it. If effective altruism is going to do more political interventions we should also have a good evidence based understanding of what works and why.
Speaking of the why.. do we know what the mechanism is for the effectiveness of protests? I can imagine a few possibilities.
Protests raise the salience of the issue in the media, producing the appearance of popular/widespread/intense support, which affects the behavior of voters and policymakers.
Protests affect the behavior of protesters themselves, making them more involved in political action and more committed to the particular cause in question.
Protests create an opportunity to discuss issues within protester’s own social networks, which has some influence. The act of protesting here is just taking some personal cost to show commitment to the cause within ones community.
I assume the reality is far more complicated than these ideas above, and probably somewhat unknowable. But, what do we know?
This is a remarkably evenhanded treatment of an issue about which it’s hard to be fair minded. Thanks for that.
A fourth article in this genre is Maxim Lott’s “The Rational Case for Trump”.
Just so I understand you correctly, is your claim that if the EA movement had in 2016 spent resources advocating for sortition or electoral system changes, that we would not now be seeing cuts to USAID?
I’m asking because you started this thread with “These sorts of cuts highlight IMO the incorrect strategy EA has been on.” and finished with an article advocating sortition and an article advocating policies like approval voting (which EA already funds).
If you want to understand what expected behavior looks like in these sorts of situations, I would suggest you consider taking a course in journalistic ethics. The industry’s poor reputation for truth seeking is deserved; but there are standards for when and how to seek comment that would serve you well in this context.
I think it is basically erroneous to say that EA has “refused to engage in the political”.
Farm animal welfare programs are inherently political
Much of the EA safety advocacy is inherently political
Open Philanthropy specifically has had a program area since 2022 to influence global aid policy, which is obviously and directly political.
If you’re not proposing electioneering, what exactly is the program that you are suggesting could have prevented these USAID cuts? Because from where I’m sitting, I don’t really think there was anything EA could have done to prevent that, even if the whole weight of the movement were dedicated to that one thing.
Let’s imagine I have a proposal or a white paper. How and where can I submit it for evaluation?
This forum might not be a bad place to start?
Probably a reference to this study. https://thefilter.blogs.com/thefilter/2009/12/the-israeli-childcare-experiment.html
It’s odd to me that people say they “heard about EA” at EA Global. How’d they hear about EA Global, then? 🤔
Thanks for sharing this. It was interesting to read.
I wonder if you wouldn’t mind sharing the rubric for EA involvement. What constitutes a highly engaged EA?
If your idea is that in-country employees/contractors of organizations like GiveDirectly, Fistula Foundation, AMF, MC, Living Goods, etc., should be invited to EA Global — I agree, and I think these folks often have useful information to add to the conversation. Though I don’t assume everyone in these orgs is a good fit, many are and it’s worth having those voices. Some have an uncritical mindset, basically just doing what they’re told, while others are a little bit too sharp-elbowed and are just looking at what can get funders’ attention without caring how good it actually is.
On the other hand, if your idea is to (for example) invite some folks from villages where GiveDirectly is operating, I pretty strongly feel that this would be a waste of resources. We can get a much better perspective from this group by surveying (and indeed GiveWell and GiveDirectly have sponsored such surveys). If you were to just choose randomly, I think most of those chosen wouldn’t be in a good position to contribute to discussions; and if you were to choose village elites, then you end up with a systematic bias to elite interests, which has been a serious systematic problem in trying to make bottom-up charitable interventions work.
Another one you missed is that the world is getting better over time, so we should expect donation opportunities in the future to be worse.
Random thought: does the idea of explosive takeoff of intelligence assume the alignment is solvable?
If the alignment problem isn’t solvable, then an AGI, in creating ASI, would face the same dilemma as humans: The ASI wouldn’t necessarily have the same goals, would disempower the AGI, instrumental convergence, all the usual stuff.
I suppose one counter argument is that the AGI rationally shoudn’t create ASI, for these reasons, but, similar to humans, might do so anyway due to competitive/racing dynamics. Whichever AGI doesn’t creates ASI will be left behind, etc.
I think the amount of news that is helpful and healthy to consume depends a lot on what it is that you’re trying to do. So maybe good place to start is thinking about how sensitive your work is to developments, and go from there. Channel Duncan Sabien and ask, “what am I doing, and why am I doing it?”.
And if you are going to spend a lot of time with the news, read Zvi’s piece on bounded distrust and maybe also the linked piece from Scott Alexander.
Personally, I view participation in the charitable projects in my community (including donating to church or to a colleague’s pledge drive) as part of my consumption basket and totally unrelated to altruistic work. Relationships are incredibly important to one’s life satisfaction and participating in the community is a part of that.
I did not click Disagree; but I will say that I’m not sure I agree that “The people we are aiming to help should be well within the conversation”. I don’t mean to say that we should ignore their perspectives, values, or opinions, but I don’t think having them attend EA Global is a useful way to achieve that. I’ve had a lot of interesting conversation with GiveDirectly and AMF beneficiaries, but I also think that the median beneficiary would not have much to contribute at EA Global, and if you choose exceptional beneficiaries to represent the class of beneficiaries as a whole, that leads to a different set of problems.
Or better yet, just give up on cookies altogether and don’t serve a notice to anyone. Like Wikipedia.