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?

About remarkable 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

It’s odd to me that people say they “heard about EA” at EA Global. How’d they hear about EA Global, then? 🤔

Thanks for sharing this. It was interesting to read.

I wonder if you wouldn’t mind sharing the rubric for EA involvement. What constitutes a highly engaged EA?

If your idea is that in-country employees/contractors of organizations like GiveDirectly, Fistula Foundation, AMF, MC, Living Goods, etc., should be invited to EA Global — I agree, and I think these folks often have useful information to add to the conversation. Though I don't assume everyone in these orgs is a good fit, many are and it's worth having those voices. Some have an uncritical mindset, basically just doing what they're told, while others are a little bit too sharp-elbowed and are just looking at what can get funders' attention without caring how good it actually is.

On the other hand, if your idea is to (for example) invite some folks from villages where GiveDirectly is operating, I pretty strongly feel that this would be a waste of resources. We can get a much better perspective from this group by surveying (and indeed GiveWell and GiveDirectly have sponsored such surveys). If you were to just choose randomly, I think most of those chosen wouldn't be in a good position to contribute to discussions; and if you were to choose village elites, then you end up with a systematic bias to elite interests, which has been a serious systematic problem in trying to make bottom-up charitable interventions work.