I'd add that to the extent conscious experience can be considered "self evident" only one's own experience of pain and pleasure can be "self evident" via conscious experience. 

If Nunik's contention is that only things which achieve that experiential level of validation can be assigned intrinsic value with intuitions carrying zero evidential weight, it seems we would have to disregard our intuitions that other people or creatures might have similar experiences, and attach zero value  to their possible pain/pleasure.

I mean, hedonic egoism is a philosophical position, but perhaps not a well-regarded one on a forum for people trying to be altruistic...

Feels unlikely either that it would create an actually valid natural experiment (as you acknowledge, it's not a huge proportion of aid, and there are a lot of other factors that affect a country) or persuade people to do aid differently.

Particularly when EA's GHD programmes tend to be already focused on stuff which is well-evidenced at a granular level (malaria cures and vitamin supplementation) and targeted at specific countries with those problems (not all developing countries have malaria), by organizations that are not necessarily themselves EA, and a lot of non-EA funders are also trying to solve those problems in similar or identical ways.

Also feels like it would be a poor decision for, say, a Charity Entrepreneurship founder trying to solve a problem she identified as one she could make a major difference with based on her extensive knowledge of poverty in India deciding to try the programme in a potentially different Guinean context she doesn't have the same background understanding of simply because other EAs happened to have diverted funding to Guinea for signalling purposes.

I think the bigger question as you've summarised at the end is "what effect would EA spending in these areas have", particularly with GHD being very focused on measuring marginal impact and having some robustly data-supported alternatives. The reason why EA orgs have targeted lobbying more in other areas is the perception they're neglected politically. Trade policy and migration aren't and I don't think EA is a bigger or more politically palatable tent than the people already promoting such ideas....

The virtues of free(r) trade, after all, is a 250 year old economic argument, and one of the least contested arguments amongst people that have actually studied it. Technocrats working in government learn it in their undergrad economics classes, think tanks with various degrees of partnership widely promote it. It's about the only point of agreement between George Soros and the Koch brothers, the world's biggest spending donors to economic policy lobbying. It's difficult to see where EA funding changes anything and the context (Trump promoting protectionism on the [incorrect] assumption that if it hurts foreigners it'll help Americans) couldn't be a worse time to contemplate shifting in emphasis from trade benefiting everyone to the even less contested fact it benefits foreign exporters in poor countries. Maybe a lobbyist in the Brussels could get a slightly more sympathetic hearing from people running that free trade bloc, but the idea that the EU's external tariff policies harm the developing world isn't one they haven't heard before, and they have entrenched interests in protected industries to look after and full blown negotiations with other countries when they;'re looking at lowering external trade barriers too.

Immigration is something facing even louder political pushback in more countries, and the basic fact that immigration tends to benefit immigrants' families is even less contested^[1], even by people who don't like immigrants or the idea of immigration very much. But ultimately there are a lot of people in those groups (whilst ironically, the self-interests of politicians they elect on a "tough on migration" platform keep employment visas open). I guess that's evidence you're right that changes can be made at the margin without [or despite] large political debate, but they're keeping guest worker programmes because they're worried about the consequences of lack of guest workers, not because they feel compelled to offer routes out of poverty and the accompanying lobbying is likely to reflect that. The travel visa issue fits into that same "uphill struggle" bracket. I think there's potential to make a huge difference to help individuals' experience with immigration at the margin (not necessarily cost effectively, although making it self-financing is a possibility) but it seems like a losing cause in advocacy terms 

Looking at remittance barriers might be more neglected, but I'm under the impression that the main factors pushing those remittance fees as high as 6-7% aren't regulatory, they're the "last mile" to typically unbanked people often in remote areas. That imposes service costs and tends towards natural monopoly (except where it can be avoided e.g. with M-PESA). I think some of those fees trickle into local remittance company offices and agents in villages anyway.  That doesn't mean there isn't scope for bringing those fees down but I don't know how easy something like the US-Mexican system is to implement in practice. I think some of the implementation barriers aren't on the developed country side... 

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   with all due respect to "brain drain" arguments that are probably reasonable for aggregate impact in some sectors

I agree with the general point that Zuckerberg is too committed to being Facebook boss to give much of his stock away now, but he and his wife put $2b in Facebook shares into his own foundation, which isn't particularly EA inclined (either explicitly or broadly). That's less than Moskovitz-Tuna from a bigger chunk of wealth but it's non-trivial, and certainly enough to show he's not taking his most of cues from them.

I don't consider this to be any sort of failing on Dustin's part (I don't expect my bosses to listen to my donation philosophy if they 100x their current net worth either, even though they definitely have some points of agreement with me and trust my judgement on some things) and think the more salient question is "why have so few people that are not Mark Zuckerberg but are also vaguely in the orbit of EAers donated to EA causes compared with other causes"

As for SBF, his "Future Fund" was less than FTX committed to stadium sponsorship, so I don't think the desire to top that up can be blamed for his recklessness (even if the broader conceit that everything he did was for the greater good was). It's absolutely possible to give significant amounts to philanthropic causes (EA or otherwise) and retain control of a business without being Sam.

"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.

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   a far better fit than the populist right which seems to have the precise opposite set of priorities...

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   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.

I used to think the same, but now I see that many GWWC pledgers and donors mention 80k as the reason why they're pledging or donating, often to neartermist causes.

How many of them have made that choice recently though? I know 80k still talks about earning to give (which IIRC it was once the major proponent of) and Givewell recommended charities in its intro and hosts all sorts on its podcasts and job boards, but its "recommended careers" is basically all longtermism (or EA community/research stuff) and 80k are explicit on what their priorities are and that this doesn't include "neartermist" causes.

So I don't think it's surprising that Rutger doesn't recommend them if he doesn't share (or even actively disagrees with?) those priorities even if his current focus on persuading mid-career professionals to look into alternative proteins and tobacco prevention sounds very EA-ish in other respects. I'm curious whether he mentioned ProbablyGood or if he's even aware of them?

Think the main reason it doesn't get talked about much is that impoverishing other countries was baked into the whole "America First" idea in the first place, including the [obviously incorrect] beliefs that trade is essentially zero sum so making these countries poorer is necessary to make Americans richer. But Trump also got votes from a lot of Americans whose main concern was rising prices, so it's particularly salient that the first major effect of blanket tariff increase on consumer goods will be their cost of living going up...

(I think also the effects of US tariff levels on the typical <$2 a day person are relatively indirect: most of them aren't involved in direct exports to the US from countries likely to be major tariff losers, especially if he turns out to be far more interested in restricting imports of Chinese manufactured alternatives to US luxury goods than cheap foodstuffs. Lower global economic output will slow their local economies down too, but that impact feels less tangible, and to an extent is balanced out by other factors like China's increased interest in trading with the global South and whatever happens to energy prices.)

"Has he been net positive for humanity overall" would be be clearer that it's looking at everything he's done so far

But I actually think it's more interesting if it's an ambiguous question. The stuff he's done so far is significant but not necessarily aligned with what he's doing now and what he might do or intend to do in future. The trajectory he is on now is... not upward. The influence that he has now isn't necessarily more than when few people knew who he was, and he sounded more strategic as well as more amicable then. And the stuff he may or may not do in future is speculation.

Yep. I agree it can be interpreted in other ways and would agree with you that taking everything into account he's probably had more impact at the margin on the positive stuff than the negatives, so far. There was certainly a bigger shortage of people with the means and the motivation to take on EVs and commercial space in the early 2000s^[1] than peopl willing to spout stupid stuff on social media in the last three years.

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   I think battery and photovoltaics were coming down in manufacturing cost over the last decade regardless, but you don't automatically get complex products out of that...