I was surprised to read this from Peter Singer, a thoroughgoing utilitarian who I often see as a little extreme in how EA his beliefs are.
I don’t particularly agree with this conclusion:
When taking steps to reduce the risk that we will become extinct, we should focus on means that also further the interests of present and near-future people. If we are at the hinge of history, enabling people to escape poverty and get an education is as likely to move things in the right direction as almost anything else we might do
It seems extremely unlikely to me that global poverty is just as good at reducing existential risk as things that are more targeted, such as AI safety research. At least, Singer’s point requires significant elaboration on why he believes this to be the case. MichaelStJules writes more about this in his comment here.
Nevertheless, I found it valuable to see how Peter Singer views longtermism, which can provide a window into future public perceptions.
Yaroslav Elistratov writes more on Peter Singer’s thoughts on existential risk here.
Overall, I agree with Habryka’s comment that “negative evidence on the campaign would be ‘systematically filtered out’”. Although I maxed out donations to the primary campaign and phone banked a bit for the campaign, I had a number of concerns about the campaign that I never saw mentioned in EA spaces. However, I didn’t want to raise these concerns for fear that this would negatively affect Carrick’s chances of winning the election.
Now that Carrick’s campaign is over, I feel more free to write my concerns. These included:
The vast majority of media coverage was negative from the start. If voters made even a cursory Google of Carrick Flynn’s name, they would be met with plenty of negative headlines like “Carrick Flynn, Crypto-Backed Candidate in New Congressional District, Has Rarely Voted in Oregon” or “Environmental Groups Condemn Congressional Candidate Carrick Flynn’s Comments on Spotted Owls and Timber Unity”.
The vast majority of comments on Oregon subreddits were also negative.
The campaign seemed to have quite few non-EA donors or volunteers, suggesting a lack of local support.
The campaign seemed to have few volunteers until about a week ago, after Why Helping the Flynn Campaign is especially useful right now was posted.
Even putting aside the issue of crypto funding, Carrick had a notable amount of other controversies such as his comments on spotted owl conservation, the fact that only 2.5% of donations were from Oregon, and that he only voted twice in the past 20 years.
I also have some critiques of the post Why Helping the Flynn Campaign is especially useful right now but I declined to write a comment. These include:
The post claims “The race seems to be quite tight. According to this poll, Carrick is in second place among likely Democratic voters by 4% (14% of voters favor Flynn, 18% favor Salinas), with a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.” However, it declines to mention that “26 percent of the district’s voters holding an unfavorable opinion of him, compared to only 7 percent for Salinas” (The Hill).
At the time the post was written, a significant fraction of voters already had already voted. The claim “the campaign is especially impactful right now” seems misleading when it would have been better to help earlier on.
The campaign already has plenty of TV ads from the Protect the Future PAC, and there are lots of internet comments complaining about receiving mailers every other day and seeing Carrick ads all the time. (Though later I learned that PAC ads aren’t able to show Carrick speaking, and I’ve read a few internet comments complaining about how they’ve never heard Carrick speak despite seeing all those ads. So campaign donations could be valuable for ads which do show him speaking.)
Having a lot of people coming out-of-state to volunteer could further the impression among voters that Carrick doesn’t have much support from Oregonians.
If you can speak enthusiastically and knowledgeably about the campaign, you can do a better job of phone banking or door-knocking than the average person. However, the campaign already spent $847,000 for door-knockers. While volunteering for the campaign might have been high in expected value, the fact that other people could do door-knocking raises questions about whether it’s in out-of-state EAs’ comparative advantage to do so.