Is it possible that organizations are privately deliberative, using a scout mindset to identify the best approach, but then publicly confident, projecting a soldier mindset to focus action, attention, funding, volunteers, etc., on the chosen model?

Social and political action are quite different from international aid funding, in that they are naturally adversarial. In such an environment it might not be best to project your uncertainties or vulnerabilities.

Perhaps https://justfacts.votesmart.org/ is what you’re looking for?

I think this is a quite hard problem, perhaps much harder that is seems initially. Besides the fact that different voters have different opinions and priorities about policy (or character, for that matter), it is for the most part not the case that serious candidates lay out their policy prescriptions in detailed/possible ways. That’s because doing so tends to make oneself less electable. The way to get into office is to keep things vague enough that any particular voter could convince themselves that the candidate supports, or at least might be persuaded later to support, whatever the voter is looking for. And if you keep things vague then you can present an impossible platform, such as promising funding for particular programs without specifying what unpopular policies (taxes or budget cuts) would produce that funding. Furthermore electorates change their mind and a successful politician needs to be able to follow the crowd without being accused of flip-flopping. Finally, candidates also want to be able to tailor their messaging to different constituencies or donor groups.

The bottom line is that candidates and political parties (at least, serious ones) aren’t going to subject themselves to a GiveWell-like process, at least not without a really significant and legible benefit (votes or $$) available on the other end.

When it comes to local or regional elections, the problem is even harder because the issues vary from place to place and office to office, and information about candidates is not widely disseminated, often available only in the local paper or candidate forum.

Is there a reason you did not hyperlink to the article itself?

After googling, I assume it is this one: US climate philanthropies fear Trump blow from loss of tax-free status.

Interesting write up! Thanks for producing it. If effective altruism is going to do more political interventions we should also have a good evidence based understanding of what works and why.

Speaking of the why.. do we know what the mechanism is for the effectiveness of protests? I can imagine a few possibilities.

• Protests raise the salience of the issue in the media, producing the appearance of popular/widespread/intense support, which affects the behavior of voters and policymakers.
• Protests affect the behavior of protesters themselves, making them more involved in political action and more committed to the particular cause in question.
• Protests create an opportunity to discuss issues within protester’s own social networks, which has some influence. The act of protesting here is just taking some personal cost to show commitment to the cause within ones community.

I assume the reality is far more complicated than these ideas above, and probably somewhat unknowable. But, what do we know?

This is a remarkably evenhanded treatment of an issue about which it’s hard to be fair minded. Thanks for that.

A fourth article in this genre is Maxim Lott’s “The Rational Case for Trump”.

Just so I understand you correctly, is your claim that if the EA movement had in 2016 spent resources advocating for sortition or electoral system changes, that we would not now be seeing cuts to USAID?

I'm asking because you started this thread with "These sorts of cuts highlight IMO the incorrect strategy EA has been on." and finished with an article advocating sortition and an article advocating policies like approval voting (which EA already funds).

If you want to understand what expected behavior looks like in these sorts of situations, I would suggest you consider taking a course in journalistic ethics. The industry’s poor reputation for truth seeking is deserved; but there are standards for when and how to seek comment that would serve you well in this context.

I think it is basically erroneous to say that EA has "refused to engage in the political".

• Farm animal welfare programs are inherently political
• Much of the EA safety advocacy is inherently political
• Open Philanthropy specifically has had a program area since 2022 to influence global aid policy, which is obviously and directly political.

If you're not proposing electioneering, what exactly is the program that you are suggesting could have prevented these USAID cuts? Because from where I'm sitting, I don't really think there was anything EA could have done to prevent that, even if the whole weight of the movement were dedicated to that one thing.

Let's imagine I have a proposal or a white paper. How and where can I submit it for evaluation?

This forum might not be a bad place to start?

Probably a reference to this study. https://thefilter.blogs.com/thefilter/2009/12/the-israeli-childcare-experiment.html