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This is the third in a sequence of posts taken from my recent report: Why Did Environmentalism Become Partisan?
Summary
Rising partisanship did not make environmentalism more popular or politically effective. Instead, it saw flat or falling overall public opinion, fewer major legislative achievements, and fluctuating executive actions.
Public Opinion...
I think right now EAs might be making a significant mistake by paying insufficient attention to the political realm. As EAs we tend to figure out what’s most impactful for us to work on and focus hard. That’s great! But there are various actions that are ‘non-delegatable’ - the extent to which an individual can do the action is limited (like voting, going to a protest, making hard money contributions to particular campaigns). It might be useful if we were all more in the habit of doing variou...
This post presents the executive summary from Giving What We Can’s impact evaluation for 2025. At the end of this post we share links to more information, including the full report and...
Recent opportunities to take action
I'm sorry to hear that you're stressed and anxious about AI. You're certainly not alone here, and what you're feeling is absolutely valid.
More generally, I'd suggest checking out resources from the Mental Health Navigator service. Some of them might be helpful for coping with these feelings.
More specifically, maybe I can offer a take on this events that's potentially worth considering. One off-the-cuff reaction I've had to Bing's weird, aggressive replies is that they might be good for raising awareness and making the concerns about AI risk much more salient. I'm far more scared about worlds where systems' bad behaviour is hidden until things get really bad, such that the world is lulled into a false sense of complacency up until that point. Having a very prominent system exhibit odd behaviour could be helpful for galvanising action.
Thanks, Julian. I hope so. I truly hope so.