The Importance of Politics in EA

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I think that it's true that I think politics is a lot more important than the average person in the EA community or maybe your audience. Do you think that people write it off just because of sort of the ickiness of it where it's like, well, so much of politics is just marketing and people saying what they need to say to get elected? A lot of the people voting haven't really researched the topics and don't really understand what they're voting on that while and they're being manipulated and so on. Yeah, I think that there's a sense both that the problems are intractable and that they're not neglected overall.

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Is our adoption of beliefs primarily motivated by wanting to be the heroes of our own stories? Why do we have such a hard time understanding the stories other people are telling about themselves and the world? How can we reduce political polarization? How plausible are the various theories (conspiracy or otherwise) around the origins of COVID? Why don't the EA, Rationalist, and related communities focus more on transforming political landscapes? Free speech is incredibly important, of course; but does absolute free speech tip the scales in favor of misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda? Has the internet fundamentally changed the way we converse with each other, or has it merely scaled up and accelerated those conversations while preserving their original characteristics? Is there ultimately a way to land on a principled answer around free speech and censorship? Does a globally optimum free speech policy even exist, or are we stuck picking from a lineup of equally unsavory options?

Cate Hall is a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Alvea, a newly clinical stage EA biotech company. She is also the co-founder and President of Juniper Ventures, a biosecurity and pandemic preparedness foundry. She is a former Supreme Court litigator and former no. 1 female poker player in the world. She tweets at @catehall.

Staff