I wrote briefly during and after the primary election about people on this forum who contributed fairly heavily to elect Carrick Flynn, a known entity in your community. Many of you contributed the maximum of $2900 to his campaign. He lost significantly to Andrea Salinas who brings powerful and progressive credentials to this race. Unfortunately, the contributions you made plus the many millions from the PAC funded by Bankman-Fried required Salinas supporters to dig deeply in their pockets to respond to a tsunami of ads, including untrue attacks.
Now Salinas is in a very tight general election race against Mike Erickson, a conservative Republican who has praised Trump. Erickson, a multimillionaire, is financing part of his election from his millions. Salinas, who has been in public service most of her life has no such option.
Building a financial base for a close race is made more difficult after a financially hard primary. In addition, Oregon has three swing Congressional seats in addition to a three way Governor's race and multiple close legislative races. There has rarely been as many demands for dollars and volunteers on the left as there are this election. The fate of much national legislation, including funding for science, pandemic research and mitigation, and climate change issues may hinge on whether or not Salinas wins and secures a Democratic majority. As one of the few new congressional districts in the nation, CD-6 is central to the future of much that EA adherents say that they value.
My ask: To the many hundreds of you who so readily supported Flynn in the primary, please consider supporting Andrea Salinas now. The choice of readers of this forum to fund Flynn in the primary plus the massive influx of money from PACs guided by EA principles made it more likely that she will lose this general election. If the Congress loses the Dem majority, if the chairs of committees that will make decisions about pandemic research and preparedness are all Republican, if the focus is on short term business success instead of long term sustainability of our world, we stand to lose so much. You can learn about this candidate and contribute here: https://www.andreasalinasfororegon.com
I have no involvement in the Oregon race, but I disagree with this particular line of reasoning. Even setting aside traditional non-consequentialist arguments for compensating for harm (which I happen to believe in, and which I think are perfectly fine for EAs to act upon while still being EAs), this line of reasoning only works if one adopts causal decision theory.
If we instead adopt functional decision theory, then there are much stronger reasons to consistently act as a harm-compensating agent. In particular, it can disincentivize harmful strategic behavior by others who try to influence you by simulating what might do in the future. If you cannot be simulated to harm some party without compensating them later, then you cannot be influenced to do so by others. It also enables co-operation with others who can now trust you will compensate them for harm (necessary even for everyday economic interactions).
I think one could disagree as to whether FDT applies in this case (and also disagree with FDT in general), but I want to push back against the general argument that we should always be marginal thinkers, without consideration for the history of past events.
(S/O to particlemania for having first explained this argument to me. There's also an argument to be made that conventional morality evolved FDT-like characteristics precisely to solve these strategic problems, but I won't get into that here.)