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I am the president of the EA group at BYU-Idaho, which has been ranked by some sources as the #1 most conservative school in America. With that being said, nearly all of our 21 members are conservative, including myself. Our university is likewise a private religious institution, with the vast majority of students (~98%) professing devotion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Naturally, the tenets of Effective Altruism are seen more as a useful tool that empowers us as Christians to fulfill Jesus Christ's commandment to "love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matthew 22:39). The EA model for global health and poverty is therefor of especial interest to our members.
Due to the nature of our conviction, EAs within our circle typically do not attach much weight to x-risk causes that would vastly reduce the human population and stifle the likelihood of intelligent life reforming (e.g., asteroids or super-volcanic eruptions).
Additionally, though our faith demands the proper treatment of animals and contains a health code which limits our consumption of meat, few members from both our uni-group and the Church at large adhere to this precept. Surprisingly, we have seen several members of our EA group adopt a vegan or plant based lifestyle proceeding our discussions on animal rights/factory farming and how it relates to our belief.
For sake of time, I'm afraid I cannot offer more information. If you would be interested in talking in person, possibly at an EAG conference or virtually, I would be happy to oblige.
I'm a conservative EA who's discussed EA at length with other conservatives.
For context, my conservative friends and I were born and raised in the comfortable left-wing community of Brookline, Massachusetts. I went to a very non-elite state school. One of the friends in the group I discuss here goes to military school and has an eye on a longer term political career.
Things my conservative friends (and I) like about EA:
Things my conservative friends dislike about EA:
Strong upvote. I would guess that another commonality between EAs and conservatives is not tending to resent the rich and their philanthropy, as many on the left do.
You care deeply about human life, and I think you are fighting for others, but the particular topic you linked to, might be difficult to talk about right now.
Is there another topic you wanted to discuss, or you think other conservatives here would share an interest in?
Maybe a topic, where once discussion starts, might be illuminating or build a bridge toward "conservative" thinking?
Sure! Conservatives and libertarians in the United States hail the separation of powers between the federal and state governments. The framers explicitly designed this separation of powers to stymie tyrannical actors:
The framers' intentions were for the vast majority of actual governance to take place at the state level, with the federal government's enumerated powers used primarily for foreign relations:
I think this separation of powers is an extremely valuable idea. Federalism lends the United States a Byzantine fault tolerance with redundancy in the form of individual states. Novel policies can be experimented with on the state level, pros and cons can be assessed, and either other states will be convinced by the marketplace of ideas to adopt the policy or the policy will be rolled back. Even in the worst case where some states succumb to tyranny, the United States will endure.
As the centuries have passed, power has become increasingly concentrated in the federal government, and our politics have become nationalized to the point that virtually every contentious issue today concerns the actions of the federal government.
Progressives (and many EAs) have been frustrated about how the filibuster has prevented Democrats in the federal government from delivering on their ambitious promises during the 2020 election cycle and how conservative the Supreme Court is. The existence of the filibuster, which admittedly was very much unintended by the framers, has the useful role of decreasing the effective power of the federal government. The Supreme Court's power has expanded drastically outside of its original confines to the point that it can be stacked (or has been stacked, depending upon your point of view) to create tyrannical outcomes. I think EAs (and progressives writ large) could do with a greater appreciation of federalism and ways the concept of separation of powers could be extended to our altruistic goals.
This was extremely informative and gave balanced and thoughtful perspectives, thanks!
Also, I don't mean to ignore it, but there's a big issue related to the document you linked and too hard to talk about (the bigness is not about the normal politics or recent SC actions; also no one asked, but I personally 1000% support abortion rights in the lefty/coastal liberal sense).
You're very welcome!
I’m curious if you have any friends who identify as “far right” or “alt-right”—do their views on EA substantially differ?
I have friends who'd identify as "deeply conservative" who I'd include in my above answer, but I'd opine that "deeply conservative" is a significantly different characterization from "far right" in modern American politics. For example, conservative values support upholding the integrity of institutions, not insurrection and/or attempts to overturn democratic elections. Unfortunately I can't give you an informed answer on "far right" or "alt-right" types.
>There aren't any prominent conservative EAs (or at least none that I've heard of).
I feel like Tyler Cowen is reasonably libertarian/right of centre. I don't know if he would call himself an EA, but he has an account on the forum, under his full name. I feel like he's pretty well know, at least in these circles..
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I can see "Republican" becoming its own cluster in the last couple of decades, but what cleanly distinguishes small-c conservative from libertarian? Eg, I definitely would not call Cowen a Republican, but I get the sense he might be somewhat conservative in how he thinks about development, economics and institutions.