Hello!
It seems to me that the EA community leans towards progressive or liberal political ideologies. This feels especially pertinent within animal advocacy, where moral and cultural disagreements often create barriers to broader acceptance. However, I think it’s an analogous problem within EA and so feel free to weigh in even if animals aren’t your primary concern.
If we agree that engaging more conservatives is desirable, how might we achieve this? Here are a few ideas:
1. Highlight conservative-friendly interventions: Focus on initiatives that align with conservative priorities, such as promoting free-market solutions to factory farming (e.g., supporting cultured meat startups) or emphasizing the health benefits of plant-based diets.
2. Engage conservative leaders: Collaborate with conservative thought leaders, policymakers, and organizations to bridge ideological divides and promote EA principles in ways that resonate with their audiences.
3. Encourage open dialogue: Create spaces within EA for conservatives to voice their perspectives without fear of judgment, and ensure these conversations are framed as opportunities for mutual learning.
Open questions
• Do you think the lack of political diversity in EA and animal advocacy is a significant problem? Why or why not?
• Are there risks to actively recruiting conservatives to the movement, such as diluting core values or sparking internal conflicts?
• What strategies have been successful in building coalitions across political divides in other contexts, and could these be applied to EA?
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. Does engaging more conservatives represent a meaningful opportunity for animals/EA more broadly, or would it be a distraction?
"Conservative" can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people worldwide.
For people whose conservatism is rooted in sets of religious beliefs, it seems that there are already are initiatives (for Christianity and Islam at least) to encourage them to associate their religious principles with EA principles. The average EAer might be more likely to read New Atheist blogs than attend church, but I don't get the impression that anyone's doing anything to actively discourage religious people's participation or that their funding hurdles are higher (I could be wrong on this) . Limiting factors are likely to be that religious conservatives already have their own philanthropic movements, and sometimes conflicting ideas, and are far more likely to engage on a "these orgs are cost effective ways of saving lives" level than a "let's do lots of hedonic utility calculations and speculate about man creating superintelligences in their own image" level.
From the point of view of the individualist, market-oriented right, I think EA is fairly firmly rooted in that already. It's a movement which values prediction markets, touts billionaire philanthropy as a solution to global problems and has relatively little interest in redistributive social policies and minimal interest in capital allocation. The area where EA farmed animal welfare seems to stand out from other animal welfare movements is that some organizations are willing to work with commercial farmers (and it's totally receptive to supporting meat-culturing). EA might not appeal to the subset of the economic right that thinks that markets are so perfect at allocation that it would be wrong to suggest that poor people deserve a chance of handouts or that rich people should feel some sense of obligation to donate, but I'm not sure there's much point in trying there!
Likewise, for the "Chesterton's fence" type conservatives who are principally cautious that drastic changes to the status quo might be harmful EA really sounds like the movement for them![1] An incrementalist approach to lifting people out of poverty and protecting animals and existential risk reduction as a major cause area.[2] That might actually be a growth area, but I've no idea how to reach those sort of people.
For nationalists, EA's assumption that people are fundamentally equal wherever they are might be a sticking block (and yet oddly isn't when it comes to the likes of Hanania and the HBD set who find other aspects of EA weirdness interesting) but I'm not sure that toning down that message to appeal to people who worry that the movement isn't "$Country First" enough would be a positive step (or that EA has much to say about the national defence strand of conservatism). Technically "EA but local" could nevertheless become a worthwhile thing (independently from a mainstream conservative-liberal dichotomy), but I suspect programmes to help the poorest people locally would outrage nationalists shouting about borders and trade wars as much as it would attract them...
And lastly, trying to appeal to the sort of partisans whose attraction to EA would be based on it publicly echoing support for local [notionally] conservative political figures and dislike of the liberal/left party and selected groups of Bad People would be obviously pointless and counterproductive, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't what was suggested here.
a far better fit than the populist right which seems to have the precise opposite set of priorities...
on the other hand they might be more sceptical than average of EA's futurism. But they're definitely not the only people that feel that way about EA's futurism, and "appeal to conservatives" isn't the most compelling argument for shifting that emphasis.
Yes! For clarity, I mean any and all of these conservative-oriented people/communities. I'm not using a definition with strict criteria.