Just finished Semple (2021), 'Good Enough for Government Work? Life-Evaluation and Public Policy,' which I found fascinating for its synthesis of philosophy + economics + public policy, and potential relevance to EA (in particular, improving institutional decisionmaking).

The premise of the paper is essentially, "Normative policy analysis—ascertaining what government should do—is not just a philosophical exercise. It is (or should be) an essential task for people working in government, as well as people outside government who care about what government does. Life-evaluationist welfare-consequentialism is a practical and workable approach." 

Some things that are potentially EA-relevant

• It gives brief policy analysis using a prioritarian welfare-consequentialism lens
• It mentions unborn people, foreign residents, and animals as worthy of government + moral concern under welfare-consequentialism
• It avoids having to defining welfare (and, implicitly, addresses the limitation of QALYs re: difficulty in comparing between one's current and alternate lives)
• The inclusion of preferences reminds me of negative ideal preference utilitarianism

I'm (still!!!) thinking about my BA thesis research question and I think my main uncertainty/decision point is what specific policy debate to investigate. I've narrowed it down to two so far - hopefully I don't expand - and really welcome thoughts.

Context: I am examining the relationship between narratives deployed by experts on Twitter and the Biden Administration's policymaking process re: COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy. Specifically,  I want to examine a debate on an issue wherein EA-aligned experts have generally coalesced around one stance.

Motivating questions/insights:

1. COVID-19 policymakers solicited help from experts
   1. However, the U.S. public's trust in experts has varied. It may have peaked last year and now be declining
2. Vaccine diplomacy (along with all health policy) is not solely an issue of 'following the science'
   1. This is not to say that data or rationality is not important. In fact, I would be extremely interested in investigating whether the combination  of scientific evidence + thematic framing is more effective than either alone.
      1. However, that would be an experimental study which is not something I am interested in.
   2. This suggests I might want to investigate the presence of scientific vs thematic elements in expert narratives. Not sure though... It's not what I'm immediately drawn to
3. Evidence/science alone is insufficient. Experts need to be able to tell stories/persuade/make a moral or emotional appeal. (Extrapolated from the claim that narratives can be influential in policymaking)
   1. At the very least, experts should make clear that no decision is value-neutral and the specific values they are prioritizing in their recommendation
   2. Now that I think about it, the fact that I'm 'not sure' about this re: COVID-19 might mean this would make for a good RQ? Or maybe I'm just not thinking of the relevant literature right now.

The two debates below, including general thoughts

1. The COVID-19 TRIPS Waiver (waiving IP)
   1. What most excites me about this: The Biden Admin did a strong 'about-face' on this and the discourse around this was very rich (involved many actors with strong opinions, and entwines with debates around vaccine sharing etc.).
   2. Main hesitation: I don't know how to think about experts as an actor here. Should they be considered a coalition, per the Advocacy Coalition Framework? Or should I look at a specific set of aligned expert organizations/individuals? Or should I look at all experts on Twitter?
      1. But ACF emphasizes long-term policymaking and shared beliefs - and it seems like there was no singular expert consensus on whether the TRIPS waiver would be a net good. Now that I think about it, this might be due to a lack of transparency over what is being [morally] prioritized...
      2. But why focus on aligned orgs/individuals? How can I justify that? How generalizable is that even?
      3. But if I include all experts, including experts who might have other avenues to policy influence (e.g. big think tanks or former officials), then why not also examine non-expert narratives?
         1. Specifically, the rationale behind examine Twitter is that it provides a highly-accessible advocacy platform to people who do not otherwise have much visibility/leverage
         2. Also, looking at a wide range of Tweets helps get a sense of the general narrative
2. Delaying child vaccinations (viz. the WHO's recommendation)
   1. What most excites me about this: There is an explicit non-epistemic debate here (prioritizing children domestically vs the global poor), and that is what I care the most about. There still remains a scientific/epistemic component, too: "Are children safe without vaccines?"
      1. Additionally, there is an added controversial non-epistemic element of anti-maskers
   2. Main hesitation: But the Biden administration hasn't really 'made a policy' on this. So what policy process would I be examining?
      1. This also straddles the line between domestic and international, in that the debate is primarily about picking between the two (in contrast to the first debate), which could be tricky

*edited for clarity - was in a rush when I posted!

For my 'Psychology of Negotiation' (PSYC 25700) class, I'm going to write up one/two-line summaries for research articles that feel plausibly relevant to policy, community-building, or really any interpersonal-heavy work. These are primarily informed by behavioral science.

Hopefully, this will also allow me to better recall these studies for my final.

1. Epley et al. (2006), 'When perspective taking increases taking'
   1. The common tendency towards naive cynicism suggests that, in competitive contexts, perspective-taking may cause people to behave MORE egoistically (reactive egoism) despite also reducing self-serving judgments of fairness (i.e., they understand they are 'objectively' not behaving fairly). This is because people assume that others will also behave egoistically.
2. Galinsky & Mussweiler (2001), 'First offers as anchors'
   1. The person who makes the first offer gains a robustly good distributive advantage, but this can be mediated by the bargainer by focusing on one's target price or the other's reservation (minimum) price.

A big concern that's cropped up during my current work trial is whether I'm actually just not agentic/strategic/have-good-judgment-enough to take on strategy roles at EA orgs.

I think part of this is driven by low self-confidence, but part of this is the very plausible intuition that not everyone can be in the heavy tail and maybe I am not in the heavy tail for strategy roles. And this feels bad, I guess, because part of me thinks "strategy roles" are the highest-status roles within the meta-EA space, and status is nice.

But not nice enough to sacrifice impact! It seems possible, though, that I actually could be good at strategy and I'm bottlenecked by insecurity (which leads me to defer to others & constantly seek help rather than being agentic). 

My current solution is to flag this for my future manager and ensure we are trialling both strategy and operations work. This feels like a supportive way for me to see where my comparative advantage lies - if I hear, "man, you suck at strategy, but your ops work is pretty good!" Then I would consider this a win!

My brain now wants to think about the scenario where I'm actually just bad at both. But then I'll have to take the advice I give my members: "Well, then you got really valuable information - you just aren't a great fit for these specific roles, so now you get to explore options which might be great fits instead!"

Optionality cost is a useful reminder that option value consists not only of minimising opportunity cost but also increasing your options (which might require committing to an opportunity).

This line in particular feels very EA: 

As Ami Vora writes, “It’s not prioritization until it hurts.” 

I know that carbon offsets (and effective climate giving) are a fairly common topic of discussion, but I've yet to see any thoughts on the newly-launched Climate Vault. It seems like a novel take on offsetting: your funds go to purchasing cap-and-trade permits which will then be sold to fund carbon dioxide removal (CDR).

I like it because it a) uses (and potentially improves upon) a flawed government program in a beneficial way, and b) I can both fund the limitation of carbon emissions and the removal, unlike other offsets which only do the latter.

However, I recognize that I have a blind spot because I respect Michael Greenstone. Some doubts:

• The CDR funding will be allocated based on an RFP rather than directly funding existing solutions (e.g. Climeworks) which lowers my confidence in their ability to definitely find + fund CDR equivalent to the value of the permits they hold. However this is a pretty minor concern, in part because they shouldn't sell the permits until they find a solution they are confident in; although even then, I am concerned they might pick something without a great track record.
• Is it really the most efficient to buy-then-sell these permits, rather than simply investing the funds and later funding the most efficient CDRs?
• This is super new so there's basically no data or public vetting, afaik.

If anyone has thoughts, would appreciate them!

Realizing that what drove me to EA was largely wanting to "feel like I could help people" and not, "help the most beings." This leads me to, for example, really be into helping as many people as I can individually help flourish (at the expense of selecting for people who might be able to make the most impact)*.

This feels like a useful specification of my "A" side and how/why the "E" side is something I should work on!

*A more useful reframing of this is to put it into impact terms. Do I think the best way to make impact is to

(1) find the right contexts/problems wherein a given person can have an outsized impact

(2) focus on specific people that I think have the highest chance of having an outsized impact?

I wonder if anyone has read these books here? https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/04/social-change-books-lynn-hunt/629587/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Future%20Perfect%204-19-22&utm_term=Future%20Perfect

In particular, 'Inventing Human Rights: A History' seems relevant to Moral Circle Expansion.

edit: I should've read the list fully! I've actually read The Honor Code. I didn't find it that impressive but I guess the general idea makes sense. If we can make effective altruism something to be proud of - something to aspire to for people outside the movement, including people who currently denigrate it as being too elitist/out-of-touch/etc. - then we stand a chance at moral revolution.

Two thoughts inspired by UChicago EA's discussion post-Ben-Todd's-talk at EAG:

1. I am aware that there have been some efforts targeted towards high schoolers (I believe Stanford EA ran a workshop/program). Has there been any HS outreach targeting debaters specifically, e.g. a large-scale debate tournament? I'm thinking of, say, introducing EA-relevant debate topics to a big tournament or group
2. Has there been any middle-school outreach?

At work so have no mental space to read this carefully right now, but wonder if anyone has thoughts - specifically about whether there's any EA-relevant content: MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule. (vice.com)

Would it be useful to compile EA-relevant press?

Inspired by me seeing this Vice article on wet-bulb conditions (a seemingly unlikely route for climate change to become an existential risk): Scientists Studying Temperature at Which Humans Spontaneously Die With Increasing Urgency 

If so, what/how? I don't think full-time monitoring makes sense (first rule of comms: do everything with a full comms strategy in mind!) but I wonder if a list or Airtable would still be useful for organizations to pull from or something...