I think this is the same consultation flagged by James here, right? If so, might be worth flagging that.
Sanjay
Karma: 4,676
I really appreciate having these flagged on the forum, so thank you, I think it’s a valuable public service
Glad to see you raising this. I raised a related question here (has a slightly more US-centric angle to it). In that post I do suggest some interventions, but there’s not a lot of careful research behind it.
I’ve upvoted this comment and disagree-voted it. I was initially prone to be dubious of the suggestion. I think lots of us are motivated by important outcomes like children not dying, and linking aid to national self-interest seemed problematic, because children not dying (or other good outcomes) are not the same as national self-interest. Optimising for one is likely to lead to different aid interventions than optimising for the other.
However I’ve warmed somewhat to the suggestion.
Nick rightly pointed out that politics risks toggling the supply up and down. (or rather down!) A clearer link to self-interest does indeed help.
For those of a GiveWellian mindset, part of the reason for believing that some interventions are more effective than others is a “sceptical prior”—ie a default assumption that interventions don’t work in the absence of evidence to the contrary. Aid which has a hard-nosed link to self-interest (eg better enabling markets for donor country exports) might be more likely to have the evidence needed.
On balance, I still think I disagree with the suggestion, mostly because a hardnosed link to self-interest probably won’t be compelling for those who are politically opposed to aid. But I appreciate the prompt to give this some thought.
I think this is definitely an interesting question, and I can see how it has some strategic value for organisations doing scenario planning for the future.
As far as I’m aware (based on conversations with people closer to US government than me) there was an element of “pandemic fatigue” in US government. The government was painfully aware that they had spent a huge amount on COVID already. Proposals to spend even more on an “Apollo programme” or other efforts to ensure we don’t have this problem again didn’t seem appealing, because some many other priorities had been put on hold and were vying for attention.
I don’t remember hearing much about polarisation being an important driver.
Good question, I’m sorry nobody has replied yet. I don’t feel like I’m much of an expert on this, so others may be better positioned than me.
My sense is that yes, this may well be impactful, especially if it is clearly communicated. This is a meaningful move, and one that the party will feel—all parties need financing.
To maximise effectiveness, you likely need to inform the right people. By all means, do tell your MP (assuming your MP is a Labour MP). Saying that you’re willing to leave the Labour party makes you less likely to vote for them in future, and they will care about this. In fact, if it’s true that it would make you less likely to vote for them in future, do tell them this explicitly, as that’s probably what your MP cares about.
Cancelling your Labour membership matters to the people responsible for the finances of the party. I believe those people are probably the Treasurer and General Secretary of the party. I don’t know how you would reach out to them, but if there were some way of communicating this to the right people, you could increase your impact.
Good point here:
Another lever to consider, rather than ‘punish government for cutting aid’, is ‘telling the government that effectiveness matters to me when they decide what to cut’. Don’t know how to compare those.
If I’d given more thought to the draft letter, I might have said more on this.
I’m conscious that Jenny Chapman (who is taking over from Anneliese Dodds as Development minister) doesn’t seem to have much background in development.
If someone wrote an email which conveyed acceptance of the reality (cuts are going to happen, whether I like it or not), and which suggested that effectiveness matters, this might be viewed as a much more constructive email, which might land better and be more influential.
Sorry I didn’t see this sooner. Yes, I do believe that an email will be more likely to be effective if it looks like it’s not copied and pasted. My basis for this is that when I supported a group of people to campaign on ODA about 4 years ago, I asked several people, including veteran campaigners and people who have worked for an MP replying to emails for them. Those people explained that if the email looks like a copy-and-paste/boilerplate email, they will assume that it was driven by a campaign group, which carries less weight than if you do it yourself.
I’d also bear in mind that this email is unlikely to be a particularly impactful action. (but also not a zero-impact action either). So I’d be sympathetic to people putting in less effort on this email (and saving their efforts for other effective ways of making the world a better place :-))
Strong upvoted. I’m definitely among the people who saw the headlines, thought that it was a simple case of Musk losing, and didn’t appreciate that it’s potentially much less favourable to OpenAI that it appears from the headlines.
Thanks for the question. Happy to set out how I think about this, but note that I haven’t researched this deeply, and for several parts of this argument, I could imagine myself changing my mind with a bit more research.
Firstly, we’re not considering the aid spend in isolation. Rather, the impact of our actions may be to redirect spend from one usage to another, so we’re comparing to some counterfactual spend, which is typically likely to be some sort of spend which leads to (probably) some sort of economic activity in a developed economy.
Secondly, I think it’s useful to consider three levels of impact
Aid spend: effect on animals Counterfactual spend: effect on animals First order Direct effect on people: presumably some sort of economic benefit None (directly) None (directly) Second order Indirect effect: the economic benefit means people eat more meat Moderate negative Smaller negative Third order Very indirect effect: moral circle expansion Potentially large positive Minimal positive Part of the reason why I consider the meat-eater problem to be only a “moderate negative” (as per “second order” row) is because I’m inclined to believe it’s not always bad for animals. If the aid targets the poorest of the poor (which doesn’t always happen) these are likely to be rural poor, who live in areas where land is cheap, and animals have lots of space to peck around, graze, and seem, from what I’ve seen, to have a nice time (source: hanging around in poor parts of sub-Saharan Africa, not that I’m an expert at judging animal welfare just from looking at an animal, so my judgement may be off). These animal lives appear (to me) to be net positive. On the other hand, I do expect the effect of aid will be to accelerate the rate at which people become middle class. This is more likely to lead to consumption of factory farmed animals, which is a negative.
The third order effects are much more speculative. To what extent does greater economic development spur moral circle expansion? There’s lots to say on this, and I don’t want to lengthen this comment further.
To my mind, the second order effects are very speculative, and the third order effects even more so. But they are potentially more important in the long term.
Putting together all the second order and third order considerations, I don’t think it’s clear which outcome leads to be better outcomes for animals, so I’m inclined to treat the effects on animals as a neutral factor.
If I spent more time looking into this, I may still change my mind.
Thanks Larks. Agree, both of those ideas are already in the template
This seems superficially like a great idea, but I think it works better for, say, the centre for effective aid policy (if it still existed).
It’s easier to decide which things to prioritise if you’ve gone through the things that UK aid actually does and worked out which are better and which are less good.
Your ask will be more effective if you have a good handle on which deprioritisation are a no-go politically (eg are you suggesting deprioritising work in Gaza or Ukraine? Would the politics of that work? Does any of your suggestions bump up against anything the politicians have said publicly?)
You’re more likely to be effective if you can access the right channels. Simply emailing your MP is a very indirect way of getting through to the right people.
All of the issues look surmountable to me if you’re deciding time to this. I don’t think I can do a decent job of this in my spare time. Especially since the window is very tight—these decisions will be made quickly, I suspect.
But if you think you can, please do so and share your thinking with the rest of us :-)
I haven’t thought about this in great depth, so I’m very open to the possibility that this topic should be deprioritised. I haven’t understood your rationale, so I hope you don’t mind if I probe further.
Firstly, a lot of the concerns expressed here I think are extremely unlikely. I do not think there is any serious risk that Trump will send the military after, or otherwise seriously harass, former government employees.
I guess I’d be somewhat interested to know why serious harassment is so unlikely. The sources that I cited seemed to be quite worrying to me on this front.
The Guardian reported the following: “Trump’s escalating threats to pervert the criminal justice system need to be taken seriously,” said the former justice department inspector general Michael Bromwich. “We have never had a presidential candidate state as one of his central goals mobilizing the levers of justice to punish enemies and reward friends. No one has ever been brazen enough to campaign on an agenda of retribution and retaliation.” And NPR reported that “Trump has issued more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents”.
Having said that, the point I was making relied less on whether Trump would actually seriously harass people, but rather whether they would fear that Trump would do so, and specifically fear this enough that they would avoid taking actions which might act as a check/balance on presidential power. Do you believe that people don’t have this fear?
Some of the other things you fear I don’t necessarily see as bad. As a matter of democratic accountability, by which I mean accountability to the people rather than checks and balances or “good” governance, I do think the president has the right to fire executive branch employees, whether or not we like the particular decisions he makes.
I’m not sure I follow. Which are things which I fear, but which you don’t see as necessarily bad? When I first read this, I thought you were referring to my list of things I fear:
Evisceration of aid becoming permanent
Increased risk of conflict, potentially moving beyond the likes of Greenland and escalating to great power conflict
Increased risk of (accidental or deliberate) use of nuclear weapons. (Apparently the administration fired over 300 employees at the national nuclear security administration, then tried to reinstate them, but at time of writing doesn’t seem to know how; sources: 1,2,3)
Exacerbation of climate change
An unwillingness to follow international norms may lead to greater willingness to develop biological weapons
If tech billionaire “oligarchs” prefer greater deregulation of AI, this could exacerbate the risk of loss of control of AI/misalignment
The human rights abuses typical of a totalitarian state
I’m assuming you do consider all of these to be bad.
When you spoke about the right to fire executive branch employees, were you referring to my concerns about the erosion of democratic institutions? In that section, I observed that:
Trump wants to fire the director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) which monitors conflicts of interests. (Source: MSNBC)
Trump fired 17 inspectors general, whose role is to audit the actions of government.
I’m perfectly willing to believe he has that right, but my question is more about whether it leads to better outcomes. Will government make better decisions without the OGE monitoring conflicts of interest? Will government make better decisions if the inspectors general are loyalists? (assuming that’s what they are.) I imagine this leads to worse outcomes, but if you are more sanguine I’d be interested to know why.
I do think it is good that people are filing lawsuits challenging the questionably legal things Trump is doing. I don’t think that this intervention is particularly neglected.
I had the intuition that there was probably a lot of work that could be done here, but that the firehose of actions meant that it was hard for people to spare the attention on any of them. This gave me the impression that while lawsuits were happening, there’s probably lots more that can be done. Not least because lawsuits are often expensive, and could peter out or become ineffective because of lack of funds. This is pretty impressionistic though, so if you have a more carefully researched opinion, I’d be interested.
It does sound sort of interesting, but I don’t think I have a clear picture of the theory of change. How does the dashboard lead to better outcomes? If the theory of change depends on certain key people (media? Civil servants? Someone else?) making use of the dashboard, would it make sense to check with those people and see if they would find it useful? Should we check if they’re willing to be involved in the creation process to provide the feedback which helps ensure it’s worth their while to use it?
Shortly after I wrote this, the news reported nationwide protests on topics pretty aligned you what in talking about here. This might mean that my assessment of neglectedness should be updated
I have now reviewed and edited the relevant section.
My feeling when I drafted it was as per Ozzie’s comment—as long as I was transparent, I thought it was OK for readers to judge the quality of the content as they see fit.
Part of my rationale for this being OK was that it was right at the end of a 15-page write-up. Larks wrote that many people will read this post. I hope that’s true, but I didn’t expect that many people would read the very last bits of the appendix. The fact that someone noticed this at all, let alone almost immediately after this post was published, was an update for me.
Hence my decision to review and edit that section at the end of the document, and remove the disclaimer.
You wrote:
Consider these types of questions that AI systems might help address:
What strategic missteps is Microsoft making in terms of maximizing market value?
What metrics could better evaluate the competence of business and political leaders?
Which public companies would be best off by firing their CEOs?
<...>
I’m open to the possibility that a future AI may well be able to answer these questions more quickly and more effectively than the typical human who currently handles those questions.
The tricky thing is how to test this.
Given that these are not easily testable things, I think it might be hard for people to gain enough confidence in the AI to actually use it. (I guess that too might be surmountable, but it’s not immediately obvious to me how)
Can you give an indication of how common the problem is? (ie how often do papers get lost/deleted?) My intuition says not very often, and when it does happen it’s most likely to be the least useful papers, but I could believe my intuition is wrong.
I don’t think bringing the ISS down in a controlled way is because of the risk that it might hit someone on earth, or because of “the PR disaster” of us “irrationally worrying more about the ISS hitting our home than we are getting in their car the next day”.
Space debris is a potentially material issue.
There are around 23,000 objects larger than 10 cm (4 inches) and about 100 million pieces of debris larger than 1 mm (0.04 inches). Tiny pieces of junk might not seem like a big issue, but that debris is moving at 15,000 mph (24,140 kph), 10 times faster than a bullet. (Source: PBS)
This matters because debris threatens satellites. Satellites are critical to GPS systems and international communication networks. They are used for things like helping you get a delivery, helping the emergency services get to their destination, or military operations.
Any one bit of space debris probably won’t cause a big deal if you ignore knock-on effects. However a phenomenon called Kessler Syndrome could make things much worse. This arises when space debris hits into satellites, causing more space debris, causing a vicious circle.
The geopolitics of space debris gets complicated.
The more space debris there is, the more legitimate it is to have weapons on a satellite (to keep your satellite safe from debris).
However such weapons could be dual-purpose, since attacking an enemy’s satellite could be of great tactical value in a conflict scenario.
I haven’t done a cost-effectiveness analysis to justify whether $1bn is a good use of that money, but I think it’s more valuable than this article seems to suggest.
For people who haven’t clicked through, it might be worth mentioning that this is about insects being used as livestock for other animals.
This matters because you might consider insect farming for human consumption to be more morally ambiguous. (If insects turn out not to be sentient, and insect consumptions displaces consumption of larger, actually-sentient animals, this could be a positive for the world).
However, insects being used as livestock is more clearly negative.