Hello!
It seems to me that the EA community leans towards progressive or liberal political ideologies. This feels especially pertinent within animal advocacy, where moral and cultural disagreements often create barriers to broader acceptance. However, I think it’s an analogous problem within EA and so feel free to weigh in even if animals aren’t your primary concern.
If we agree that engaging more conservatives is desirable, how might we achieve this? Here are a few ideas:
1. Highlight conservative-friendly interventions: Focus on initiatives that align with conservative priorities, such as promoting free-market solutions to factory farming (e.g., supporting cultured meat startups) or emphasizing the health benefits of plant-based diets.
2. Engage conservative leaders: Collaborate with conservative thought leaders, policymakers, and organizations to bridge ideological divides and promote EA principles in ways that resonate with their audiences.
3. Encourage open dialogue: Create spaces within EA for conservatives to voice their perspectives without fear of judgment, and ensure these conversations are framed as opportunities for mutual learning.
Open questions
• Do you think the lack of political diversity in EA and animal advocacy is a significant problem? Why or why not?
• Are there risks to actively recruiting conservatives to the movement, such as diluting core values or sparking internal conflicts?
• What strategies have been successful in building coalitions across political divides in other contexts, and could these be applied to EA?
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. Does engaging more conservatives represent a meaningful opportunity for animals/EA more broadly, or would it be a distraction?
I think there's an inherent limitation to the number of conservatives that EA can appeal to, because the fundamental values of EA are strongly in the liberal tradition. For example, if you believe the five foundations theory of moral values (which I think has at least a grain of truth to it), conservatives value tradition, authority and purity far more than liberals or leftists do: and in EA these values are (correctly, imo) not included as specific endgoals. An EA and a conservative might still end up agreeing on preserving certain traditions, but the EA will be doing so as a means to an end of increasing the general happiness of the population, not as a goal in of itself.
Even if you're skeptical of these models of values, you can just look at a bunch of cultural factors that would be offputting to the run-of the mill conservative: EA is respectful of LGBT people including respecting transgender individuals and their pronouns, they have a large population of vegans and vegetarians, they say you should care about far off Africans just as much as your own neighbours.
As a result of this, when EA and adjacent groups tries to be welcoming to conservatives, they don't end up getting your trump-voting uncle: they get unusual conservatives, such as mencius moldbug and the obsessive race-IQ people (the manifest conference had a ton of these). These are a small group of people and are by no means the majority, but even their presence in the general vicinity of EA is enough to disgust and deter many people from the movement.
This puts EA in the worst of both worlds politically: the group of people that are comfortable with tolerating both trans people and scientific racists is miniscule, and it seriously hampers the ability to expand beyond the Sam Harris demographic. I think a better plan is to not compromise on progressive values, but be welcoming to differences on the economic front.
Speaking as a conservative EA, I often feel uneasy about advocating for public funds. I believe that taxpayer money is semi-sacred, given by my fellow citizens in the trust that it will be spent responsibly and frugally in the service of our society. Taxes are for our essentials--roads, schools, courts, etc. What's non-essential should remain in the pockets of citizens, to enable their own vision of The Good and the pursuit of utility.
That's why I love when EAs talk about earn to give and other ways to direct non-taxpayer funds toward EA goals. There's a lot of opportunity for narrative-making there that would appeal to conservatives. A scrappy EA hustles hard to donate his/her personal wealth to causes that are maybe a bit unusual, but he's passionate about. Many conservatives would respect that, even if it's for something like shrimp welfare.
I think the lowest hanging fruit is 'don't repeatedly post publicly about how conservatives are odious people that we don't want to be even vaguely associated with'.
You might also enjoy this longer piece I shared here.
We don't, though... or do we? Who decides?
See also:
(Perhaps there should be a forum tag for this issue specifically, idk)
Be the change you want to see in the world.
"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.
a far better fit than the populist right which seems to have the precise opposite set of priorities...
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.
Yes! For clarity, I mean any and all of these conservative-oriented people/communities. I'm not using a definition with strict criteria.
I would describe myself as a conservative EA.
I think I got to a conservative political compass because of cause prioritisation. I felt that Liberal political groups were focused on personal identity considerations at the expense of more important goals. An example would be diversity hiring over talent hiring (which might be an overblown, optical concern that doesn't really exist as much as I think it does.)
My feeling is that dividing up identity groups based on what makes one similar (similar gender identity or sexual orientation) is the wrong way of understanding community. Rather community is predicated on the need for diversity (builder, baker, candlestick makers make community. Not straight men.) I am an EA because of my similarities with EA's, but I am a member of my local community first and foremost. That is the community I need to exist, local community is more important than identity based communities like EA. [I really welcome red-teaming on this!]
I think EA's have the mental strength to handle diverse political views well. What makes it difficult for conservatives and liberals to have conversations is an unwillingness to view others complexly, and being unwilling to assume good intent. We are EA's because we care about doing good well. We already assume a certain amount of good intention in interaction with other EA's. We could signal this to conservative folks. Liberals do not have a monopoly on moral feelings.
That said, a real conservative/liberal divide is the size of one's circle of moral concern. EA's have very broad ones, conservatives have very local ones. But this also seems like a general problem with EA, that it can think too large, too broad, too un-local. I'm pretty unsure about that.
My guess (I have no hard data) is that many people on the left (or at least many of the minority of people on the left who have heard of EA at all) already (mostly wrongly) perceive EA as "conservative" or at least (much more fairly) "neoliberal". It could be that engaging with conservatives more increases that impression, and leads to reduce recruitment amongst left-wingers, without drawing in enough more conservative people to compensate. I'm not saying don't engage with conservatives, just that there might be unintended consequences.
I'd be curious to learn a little more about this. Do you have any vague impressions about leftist perceptions of EA as conservative? Would these be perspectives like the following? (none of the following are real quotes, nor are things I believe; they are my simplistic minimum viable attempt to have a placeholder for leftist perceptions of EA as conservative)
I think other than the meat one, your along the lines of how some people are thinking, albeit described in a very polemical and pejorative way, that probably isn't particularly fair. But also, a lot of these people see any obviously and transparently "elite" group* as dodgy, not to mention that EAs tend to think like economists and don't want to abolish capitalism which to makes them "neoliberal" to a lot of leftists (not unfairly I don't think, though whether "neoliberalism" in this weak sense is obviously bad and evil is another matter). And as Titotal as already mentioned there are people kicking around the general EA scene with views on race that are to the right of what is acceptable even in some mainstream conservative contexts.
More generally, if you see the left/right division as about whether we want to keep or get rid of current hierarchies, EAs are associated with things the top of current hierarchies-like big tech firms and Oxford University-and don't seem very ashamed about it. And then when we actually think about improving the world "how do we get rid of current hierarchies" isn't usually our starting question. Also, for the sort of leftists who try and explain disagreement with leftism in terms of false consciousness, there seems to be a constant temptation to see anything that isn't explicitly about getting rid of current unjust hierarchies as a ploy to distract people from current unjust hierarchies, especially if it has billionaire backing. (Of course, many things other than EA receive money from >3 billionaires, but are not perceived as "billionaire" backed to the same degree.)
*that isn't humanities profs, but I would argue they aren't really "elite" in the same way as some EA leaders-Holden Karnofsky is married to the President of Anthropic after all, which is a hell of a lot more elite than "went to a fancy grad school, but now teaches history at mid-ranking state uni
EA doesn't have much of a political lens. If you are person who believes the problems EA is trying to solve are inherently political problems, then the technocratic/economist lens of EA is probably just not very moving to you. I think that is more to the heart of the question.
For example: political movements can and do radically change the world (for better and worse), which isn't captured in metrics like neglectedness and tractability. Participation in a isn't easily measurable. Specific examples might be:
I do think EA would benefit from appealing more to conservatives. According to the most recent survey, EA is heavily leftist. And I don't see any good reason for this.
The 80,000 Hours website lists these as the most pressing world problems:
Apart from factory farming and maybe pandemic preparedness, none of these issues seem especially aligned with the political left. These are issues that everyone can get on board with. No one wants AI to kill everyone. No one wants North Korea to launch a nuclear missile.
So this doesn't seem to me like a case of failing to appeal to conservative values. It seems more like a failure to appeal to conservatives, period. Anecdotally, a lot of outreach happens through people's loose social networks. And if people only have leftist friends, then they're only going to recruit more leftist people into EA.
I think it would be worth actively seeking out more conservative spaces to present EA ideas. I'd expect the College Republicans on many campuses to be open to learning more about policy in AI, nuclear weapons, and great power conflict. And I'd expect many Christian groups to be open to hearing about effective uses for their charitable donations.
It's difficult to pinpoint a definition of conservatism. Modern politics tends to follow in the Burkean conservatism tradition. One of the animating forces is the belief that hierarchy is necessary for a just an prosperous society. It is to varying degrees a "might makes right" value system, summed up in this quote by Plato: " ...nature herself intimates that it is just for the better to have more than the worse, the more powerful than the weaker; and in many ways she shows, among men as well as among animals, and indeed among whole cities and races, that justice consists in the superior ruling over and having more than the inferior."
Another style is Christian conservatism with dominionism, that believe animals are biblically placed on earth for humans to do with as we please. Many still believe in Descartes Cartesian dualism that humans are distinct from animals in that animals do not have consciousness that even cannot "experience" pain.
These belief systems are unlikely to yield concern for animals, and are usually ambivalent to them. There may be some appeal to a "with great power comes great responsibility" mindset that animals are weak and need our protection.
Another angle is to realize many wear the label of conservative loosely, and can be persuaded to adopt or appreciate other value systems that are much more concerned with the well-being of animals.
I'd be keen to get more diversity of thought in general, including conservatives! I think self-funding charities / impact-orientated for-profits are neglected, especially in donor funding constrained areas.
I expect that the best thing to do will vary substantially depending on whether we're considering
With (a), we'd want to consider some of the cultural risks or unintended consequences (e.g. as pointed by David Mathers and titotal) alongside the benefit of different perspectives. But this is less important for (b), where engaging and collaborating with people with more conversative perspectives could be critical for a project to succeed. With (c) I guess we should welcome and encourage funding from most sources, at least from small/medium donors (with larger donors we may want to be more cautious in case of reputational risks - but this obviously doesn't just apply to conservatives!)
I think that we should aim for using evidence based on reality and not try to change our ways because we want to appeal to different political groups. That doesn't mean that we can find cause areas that are more interesting for different political groups. I guess that many conservatives might be skeptical to some paths in the EA movement that involves areas like animal welfare, climate change and raising some types of taxes and health policies (e.g. the Swedish right actively work against climate change mitigation, animal welfare and health policies), which some EA organisations promote.
But as many people have pointed out already in the comments, there are many interesting areas for conservatives as well and I think we should welcome people on different parts of the political spectrum. Since the EA community is very left leaning, I think it might be easier to recruit people from the left. The problem there is that the left might be skeptical to EA because of the lack of focus on systemic change or welfare systems. But I think that the Effective Institutions Project and Effective Environmentalism might be able to reduce that kind of critique in the future.
Whether EA is considered an autonomous social movement or part of a more complex social change movement, it cannot be considered "conservative" as long as it is based on a rational analysis of human relations that it considers perfectible in the future in the sense of extreme prosociality. Without traditions and without prejudices, conservatism is not possible.
However, every movement for social change appeals to the logical judgment of individuals and it may be quite obvious that a non-political social change would not be part of the threats that are usually perceived by many conservatives.
In a civilizational sense, the best interpretation of a movement like EA is as part of a cultural evolution - moral evolution - that promotes empathy, benevolence and control of aggression. This will not be seen as a threat by all conservatives.
It is possible to draw a parallel with the monastic phenomenon in the Middle Ages. Nobles and kings promoted communities of unconventional lifestyle where charity, poverty and control of aggression - or "sin" - were practiced. Nothing could be further from the lifestyle of conservative elites. Promoting virtue was considered to pacify the social order.
I believe we do need a range of political views in EA and animal advocacy. In part as not one group has all the answers, but equally if we are to create a world which is better for animals we need people from all walks of life on board. Having a diversity will enable us to reach social tipping points quicker by drawing in the innovators/fast followers from a range of groups.
From an animal advocacy perspective, I agree we have to provide our message in a range of ways that can align with conservative priorities – and that could mean highlighting the economic benefits of doing or not doing something. I think we’re able to make arguments about how costly animal agriculture is, especially when looking at the costs of pollution and health care, linked to the $ value, as opposed to the people/non-human animal impact. For example, a recent NZ study* modelled that moving to predominantly plant-based diets could substantially improve public health outcomes and reduce healthcare costs by NZ$11 to 22 billion. (Having said that I may have a stereotypical view of what is important to conservatives and how to engage them in the cause!)
My other concern, as others have mentioned, is their views in other areas may stray too far from what is deemed reasonable by ‘general society’ or yourself, if like me, your values for animals put you at odds with much of ‘general society’! I feel already as EAs our views are not held by ‘general society’ – otherwise there wouldn’t be a need. Working with people which such differing views can be difficult.
* https://healthierlives.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/Modelling-methods-and-theoretical-scenarios.pdf