In the latest edition of my Tactics In Practice (TIPs) series, I analyzed the research behind protest in the animal protest movement! The full resource is well worth reading for any activist who uses street demonstrations — check out the full thing here: Tactics In Practice: The Science Of Protests And Demonstrations.
Key Highlights:
Protest groups tend to have three main goals, shown below. I wasn't able to find empirical evidence on Goal 3 (positive or negative), but anecdotal conversations lead me to believe that protests can serve as good cultivation tools for other activists. But I was able to find more information on the other two goals.
Protests can’t change people’s diets; we need to pursue other targets. (That doesn't mean protest is a bad tactic! Just that it's ineffective if we apply it to the wrong target)
All protest has some form of backlash — this backlash is among the highest of animal advocacy interventions, if not the highest. While research shows this backlash fades over time, activists need to think critically about how to work with it. Either take steps to reduce the backlash (through media plans, carefully chosen tactics, etc.), or as part of a larger strategy. Which brings us to:
We need to think more critically about the “radical flank effect” (sometimes called “good cop, bad cop”) — if one protest group is perceived as more radical, a more moderate group will be more accepted. However, this requires careful strategy and coordination. I personally believe that groups involved in protest should consider which role they play in the broader ecosystem: are they radical? Moderate? And how will different groups engage with the key decision-makers?
Protest impact depends on the media in both the short-term and long-term, so protest groups need a media outreach plan.
Protestors need to think very carefully about the salience of their protest — where, when, and why is this protest taking place? Can activists carefully choose a cause more likely to garner media attention (something more specific than “animal rights”)?
Groups need to pick the goals of the protest carefully. As mentioned above, "go vegan" is unlikely to have much impact. This requires understanding opinion polling on a topic as well as the likelihood of specific stakeholders to create positive change.
Crossposted to Less Wrong
‘Like most of life’s dangers, the dangers of artificial intelligence are not easily identified from the armchair.’
J Dmitri Gallow
Epistemic status
I’m not an expert in this field, and herein I make some sweeping generalisations educated guesses about the overall...
Let’s imagine it’s November 2031. We’re both still here, AI is much more capable than it is today, but governments are governing, civilisation is still (mostly) civilised, and there has been no catastrophic loss of control. It just kind of didn’t happen.
What happens to the AI safety field then?
I expect people who currently believe catastrophe could happen within two or three years will start saying five or ten years. Then 15. Then ‘who cares if we’re a few decades of...
Thanks to Bruce Friedrich, Seth Ariel Green, Tobias Leenaert, Jan Willem Bolderdijk, Martine van Haperen, Herman Rohrbach, Chris Popa and Elizabeth Alvarez for comments. Claude helped structure the text. Ideas and mistakes are my own. I currently work with ProVeg International. The prize I propose would be defined and judged by an independent committee, and its money would fund scaling the winning solution(s), not ProVeg or the winner.
TL/DR
* EA could d...
