Taking Systemic Change Seriously

By kbog @ 2016-10-24T23:18 (+7)

This is meant to be a rough response to the attitude that systemic change is too difficult/intractable as well as a response by performance that EAs don't think about systemic change. Note: by systemic change I'm referring to many possible changes in the fundamental structure of economic, political and international systems, not necessarily to what lots of people naively assume to be the one true proper method of systemic changeTM.

EAs have seemed to congregate at the extremes of direct robust aid (poverty, veg ads) and massive technological risks and transformation (x risk, abolitionism) without many people in the middle. This is curious and cries out for an explanation. There are a few people working in policy spaces to improve how governments deal with the aforementioned issues, but none of that really counts as middle ground or systemic change in my opinion (and many people outside EA would agree). It's just applied activism and politics. Systemic change means improving human society's ability to solve many problems and be more ethical in a general long term sense. Some things that would be systemic change include changing the way our political systems operate, altering the structure of the international order and removing the influence of capital on society.

Since so few EAs have seriously approached systemic change, it's likely that there are more underdeveloped ideas in this intervention space than in other intervention spaces, which indicates that it might be a better cause area than we would naively expect. Also, if we are uncertain about cause areas then systemic change makes sense as a way to attack a variety of problems (but if you think that just a few particular causes are by far the most important then spending your time on systemic change seems inefficient). I think systemic change makes the most sense if you expect new important issues to arise in the future. These considerations indicate that the value of systemic change is covariant with the value of movement building.

I want to sketch a better picture of what systemic change should 'look like.' I can give several desideratum for a systemic change effort:

  1. It should be great in expectation. In other words, looking at the potential and likely results of activism should reveal large improvements for the future of sentient life.

  2. It should be robust. It should not rely upon any one political ideology, any one empirical expectation, or any one framework of morality or decision theory. Given the opacity of systemic change and the fact that we will probably never get much reliable feedback about the outcomes of our actions, we should demand high prior confidence.

  3. It should be scalable. At least, it should be the sort of thing where a tiny fraction of the EA community - maybe fewer than 10 people - could accomplish something non-negligible OR have a small probability of achieving something significant. Otherwise we will probably be wasting our efforts for the time being.

  4. It should be ideologically safe depending on how widespread and public we want the campaign to be. Ideally, it should be ideologically positive by getting new people on board with EA in general. But if we are perceived as having views which are repugnant or offensive then we may lose influence with many people. This is a real possibility: people have sneered at EA because of attention given to existential risk and people have rejected it because of the refusal to broadly condemn capitalism. You cannot please everyone but we should think about these factors, especially when we want the movement to have institutional clout with current elites. It sucks, but it's the intelligent road to take.

Before we get into particular intervention ideas, the first questions we should answer are: how good of a cause area do we think systemic change might be, a priori? And are the above desiderata suitable?

Now I can think of several examples of systemic change which would fit some or all of the above criteria.
 
  1. Evidence/science/impact based governance: Generally instilling a culture of more rational decisionmaking in the government would improve its ability to implement a wide range of programs effectively, as would changes in the structure of political processes that are designed to take better guidelines into account. There are more specific proposals that can be investigated in this area, such as futarchy.
  2. World government: For very basic game-theoretic reasons, more credible power in the hands of international organizations and the U.N. in particular could go a long way towards solving global coordination problems (like existential risks) and reducing war. It would set a precedent in political relations that might continue indefinitely. Removing the veto from the U.N. security council is a possible step in this direction. On the other hand, shoring up the E.U. could be critical to preventing a reverse trend in the coming decades. I think this cause is potentially the best, depending on how well it can be meshed with the very defensible realist understanding of international relations.
  3. Public ownership of the means of production: placing more questions about production in democratic hands could go a long way towards reducing poverty and international conflict, according to various theorists. However, these claims are contentious and divisive. It is possible that implementing this change would reduce existential risks as well, due to alleviating coordination problems and rampant consumption drives.

Now the questions to be answered are: how good might the above causes be, and what other types of systemic change should we investigate?

 
null @ 2016-10-25T14:39 (+4)

We do indirectly work on 1 and 2 through our contacts with governments and public servants, plus by voting or working within internationalist parties. EAs are also supportive of research into e.g. prediction markets. But it's really hard to see how you can do either of these things in anything other than an incrementalist way. Institutions in the UN and EU have been built up over 70 years, and even at that pace it has been a struggle. Unless you want to get rid of democratic accountability - which is exceedingly risky - the only way to introduce 'evidence based policy' is to bring politicians and the general public on board, which takes time, even when it's possible.

3 is interesting but less obviously a good idea. If the government wishes to accumulate assets, arguably it should do so by investing in the health and education of taxpayers, or just building useful public infrastructure, rather than buying up the stock market. That avoid common problems with governments making poor decisions as active managers of companies. But I wouldn't discourage someone suitable from doing research into ways to make 'market socialism' work well.

null @ 2016-10-31T20:40 (+3)

It seems clear to me that in some cases positive systemic change is possible, even with relatively limited teams working on them.

However, systemic changes can also lead to substantial problems. Even some of the examples you gave here are far from objectively good - I note with some worry that historical attempts to place the means of production into the hands of the people have led to some of the greatest disasters of human history.

The "downside risks" of these sorts of approaches seem very high. That isn't to say that nobody should do them, but I would be quite cautious about supporting unusual new ventures in these areas. To some extent your category 4 (ideologically safe) seems to screen off this objection, but the fact that you put public ownership of the means of production down afterwards makes me worry about how effectively that categorization will be applied.

null @ 2016-10-29T17:57 (+3)

I agree that world government could help solve some problems like climate change. However, there is a risk that it could become a totalitarian world government. In the past, totalitarian governments have not lasted very long because they have been outcompeted by their neighbors. However, if it were a global totalitarian government, there would be no competition, so it could become a permanent state. This is one of the significant existential risks (one that would not let humanity achieve its potential). See the book Global Catastrophic Risks for details.

null @ 2016-10-26T18:42 (+3)

Of the examples you give here, I think #1 is the best by far.

Regarding #2, I think that world government is a great idea (assuming it's a liberal, democratic world government!) but it's highly unobvious how to get there. In particular, am very skeptical about giving more power to the UN. The UN is a fundamentally undemocratic institution, both because each country has 1 vote regardless of size and because (more importantly) many countries are represented by undemocratic governments. I am not at all convinced removing the security council veto power would have positive consequences. IMHO the first step towards world government or any similar goal would be funding a research programme that will create a plan that is evidence based, nonpartisan and incremental / reversible.

Regarding #3, I am really not sure who these theorists are and why should we believe them.

Another potentially relevant cause area (although I'm not sure whether this is "systemic change" as you understand it) is reforming the education system: setting more well-defined goals, using evidence based methods, improving incentive mechanisms, educating for rationality.

null @ 2016-10-25T07:32 (+3)

I agree that EAs should pay more attention to systemic risk. Aside from exerting indirect influence on many concrete problems, it is also one of the few methods available to combat the threat of unknown risks (or equivalently increase our ability to capitalize on unknown opportunities). Achieving positive systemic change may also be more sustainable than relying on philanthropy.

In particular, I like the global governance example as a cause. This can be seen as improving the collective intelligence of humanity, and increasing the level of societal welfare we are able to achieve. Certain global public goods are simply not addressed, even despite much fanfare in the case of carbon emission abatement. Better global governance would thus create new possibilities for our species.

A full-fledged world government might be the endgame, but in the meantime small advances might be made to existing institutions like the UN and the EU, as you suggest. Unfortunately this can be very difficult; removing veto power in the UN Security Council is a case in point. Fundamentally, any advance on this front requires countries to sacrifice part of their own sovereignty, which seldom feels comfortable. But fortunately the general trend since WWII has been towards more global coordination, the recent visible setback of Brexit notwithstanding. My personal belief is that any acceleration of this trend could have huge positive consequences.

null @ 2016-10-28T16:01 (+3)

I agree that systematic change should be given more thought in EA, but there's a very specific problem that I think we need to tackle before we can do this seriously: a lot of the tools and mindsets in EA are inadequate for dealing with systematic change.

To explain what I mean, I want to quickly make reference to a chart that Caroline Fiennes uses in her book. Essentially, you can think of work on social issues as a sort of 'pyramid'. At the top of the pyramid you have very direct work (deworming, bed nets, cash transfers, etc.). This work is comparably very certain to work, and you can fairly easily attribute changes in outcomes to these programs. However, the returns are small - you only help those who you directly work with. As you go down the pyramid, you start to consider programs that focus on communities... then those that focus on changing larger policy and practice ... then changing attitudes and norms (or some types of systematic change) ... and eventually you get to things like existential risks. As you go down the pyramid, you get greater returns to scope (can impact a lot more people), but it becomes a lot more uncertain that you will have an impact, and it also becomes very hard to attribute change in any outcome to an program.

My worry is that the tools that the EA movement relies on were created with the top of the pyramid in mind - the main forms of causal research, cost effectiveness analysis, and so on that we rely on were not built with the bottom or even middle of the pyramid. Yes, members of EA have gotten very good at trying to apply these tools to the bottom and middle, but it can get a bit screwy very quickly (as someone with an econ background, I shudder whenever someone uses econ tools to try and forecast the cost effectiveness of X-risk reduction activities - it's like trying to peel a potato while blindfolded using a pencil: it's not what the pencil was made for, and even though it is technically possible I'll be damned if the blindfolded person actually has a clue if it's working or not).

We should definitely keep our commitment to these tools, but if we want to be rigorous about exploring systematic risks, we should probably start by figuring out how to expand our toolbox in order to address these issues as rigorously as possible (and, importantly, to figure out when exactly our current tools are insufficient! We already have these for a lot of our tools - basically assumptions that, when broken, break the tool - but I haven't seen people rigorously consulting them!). I'm sure that a lot of us have in mind some very clear ideas of how we can/should rigorously prioritize and evaluate various systematic risks - but I'm pretty sure we have as many opinions as we have people. We need to get on the same page first, which is why I'd suggest that we work on figuring out some basic standards and tools for moving forward, then going from there. Expanding our toolkit is key, though - perhaps someone should look into other disciplines that could help out? I'd do it, but I'm lazy and tired and probably would make a hash of it anyway.

null @ 2016-10-28T22:56 (+2)

"I'd do it, but I'm lazy and tired and probably would make a hash of it anyway." - you seem rather knowledgeable, so I doubt that. I've heard it said that the perfect is the enemy of the good and a top level approach that was maybe twice the size of the above comment and which just provided an extremely basic overview would be a great place to start and would encourage further investigation by other people.

null @ 2016-10-26T08:07 (+1)

I like the desideratum. :)

There does seem to be a lot of potential good in improving governments, just by the sheer math of it. However, I am generally worried when I see EAs engaging in politics. It seems a good majority of us are left-leaning, and I wonder if that may bias people towards suboptimal policy positions. If we undertake reform of governance, it is important that we should strive to critically question our beliefs lest we fall prey to unexamined political assumptions that we adopted because our filter bubble of friends had them. Examples 2 and even moreso 3 struck me as things with political charge.

One way to combat this is striving for intellectual and sociocultural diversity - this would help with the robustness value. We shouldn't just talk to Western educated left-leaning white secular elites who agree with us. This probably applies to all of EA as well, but particularly it seems like something to beware of when it involves anything political, especially anything international in scope.

I am uncertain how much stock I should put in my intuitions here. My priors are that people of all stripes seem to easily get funny in the head about these subjects, and therefore caution is warranted. On the other hand, we're talking about a lot of resources on the line, and the fact that we (as far as I'm aware) don't seem to have good knowledge about the area, suggests this is a neglected topic worthy of further research.

Here are some numbers on government spending. It's big.

null @ 2016-10-27T04:47 (+1)

I am generally worried when I see EAs engaging in politics.

I think my primary issue here is that I don't think that left vs right is a very important divide for effectively-altruistic political decisionmaking. Aside from there being at least some good ideas on both sides, it seems like the weeds of policy are much different and more pragmatic in nature than what gets highlighted on national TV.

One way to combat this is striving for intellectual and sociocultural diversity - this would help with the robustness value. We shouldn't just talk to Western educated left-leaning white secular elites who agree with us.

I haven't looked into this closely, but I suspect that there is a fundamental barrier here in that people who are not Western educated white secular elites (or who are not at least two or three out of the above five) are much more likely to implicitly or explicitly disagree on assumptions which are core to EA. I don't mean it in a "they have unique and interesting perspectives on how to change the world" kind of way, I mean it in "they actually don't think the world has a list of problems to be solved in order from objectively severe to objectively minor" and "they're not comfortable using quantification or subjective probabilities to measure and bound our expectations for improving the world" and "they don't believe in weighting opinions based on the scientific strength of evidence" sorts of ways. If you are stuck to those perspectives (which are also present among plenty of Western educated white secular elites of course) then there's less that you can say which is obviously valuable. Maybe we can talk about which methodological and ethical assumptions are actually true, but I think most of us are reasonably and rightfully confidently in our own.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that the EA mission rests on decent methodological and ethical assumptions over and above the mere mantra of 'doing as much good as you can', so there's less room than people realize for alternative perspectives to add ideas. I think the intellectual diversity we have is actually fairly decent given this constraint. Not that more diversity isn't better, of course.

Here are some numbers on government spending. It's big.

Yes. All other things being equal, it is easier to take public money and turn it into other kinds of public money than it is to fight over it in the private sector and then donate it.