Politics on the EA Forum

By Aaron Gertler 🔸 @ 2020-08-07T07:37 (+98)

With the U.S. presidential election cycle in full swing, we want to lay out the way we think about political discussion on the Forum.

Political issues are clearly relevant to improving the world. However, in our experience, we’ve seen that partisan political discussion tends to have a strong polarizing effect on public forums; it consumes a lot of a community’s attention and can lead to emotionally charged arguments. Overall, we think the EA Forum will be healthier, and better-positioned to achieve its goals, if we limit the space given to political topics.

We don’t plan to prohibit any content based on its political nature. However, the following types of post will remain in the “Personal Blog” category (meaning that they will not appear on the Forum’s homepage, but will appear in “All Posts,” in the author’s profile, and on any relevant tag pages):

Some political content will continue to receive “Frontpage” categorization:

 

These policies aren't set in stone, and we'd welcome any feedback.

(Also, we reserve the right to make exceptions in exceptional circumstances. For example, if the favored candidate of the "Destroy Human Civilization" party is leading the polls in a nuclear-armed nation, that seems to merit a Frontpage post about how to stop them.)

Xaq @ 2026-03-24T00:38 (+3)

Firstly, I think this policy could benefit from some increased specificity. For instance, to my knowledge, there's no explicit list of "main EA causes." The closest available is probably 80,000 Hours' list of the world's most pressing problems, but I don't see any suggestion that this is the official, definitive list of "main EA causes." I prefer this article to specify what constitutes a "main EA cause" for the purposes of restriction to Personal Blog posts. Further, how "tenuous" would a policy connection to a main EA cause have to be for it to be restricted to Personal Blog posts? The example "What John Smith’s position on gun rights means for EA voters" is obviously tenuously connected, but some policies may be considered by some to be highly effective or even vital to helping humans, non-human animals, or future generations, even if not directly related. For instance, there are those (I don't mean to imply I am or am not one of them) who believe that animal exploitation is inseparable from the capitalist system. A non-mainstream economic policy may be advocated for on these or other EA cause-related grounds, despite being only indirectly related.

Secondly, I fear this policy severely limits EA's ability to discuss a huge range of issues merely because their content is political (in the context described), which may fit the criteria of being highly effective for additional people to be working on or funding. Here's an example of an argument advocating for additional attention to US elections (specifically the 2024 election), but I'm aware of other examples. I believe that EA missed a big chance to contribute significantly to the EA cause areas, with the relative lack of attention and sidelining of this issue (as far as I know, EA didn't organize to work on this issue in any meaningful fashion). Restricting discussion about relatively inconsequential policies (relative to EA cause areas, which is a very high bar by design) makes sense to me, but limiting discussion about action related to EA cause areas because of a given action's political nature (e.g., advocating to vote for candidate C, which in turn advocates for EA-related policy P) seems to potentially cause missed opportunities for doing good effectively.

It's also important to note that there's a possibility that the EA community is generally overlooking a specific (potentially policy) area with a potential for good that's similar to the potential of EA cause areas. This policy could be helping to sideline this hypothetical area.

I understand that political discourse is often polarizing, but I've found the EA community to be an intellectual, respectful, and emotionally restrained (when appropriate, such as on this forum) one. While I strongly agree that "partisan political discussion tends to have a strong polarizing effect on public forums," I don't think this applies very strongly to this forum specifically, given the focused and responsible (in my experience) nature of this community. If you have evidence that suggests otherwise (specifically in the context of this particular forum), I'd be interested in seeing and potentially revising my opinion on the matter, but I've yet to see substantial evidence of this kind.

I propose that moderation allows a trial period of allowing political posts, such as those described, to be viewed on the Frontpage (if this hasn't already been tried). I'd expect some emotionally-charged or over-attended discussion, but I'd expect the amount of this to be manageable for moderation. Further, I think the slight increase in unhelpful discussion is worth the reduction in the likelihood that this policy is preventing effective action. Moderation can use the data gathered to determine whether we want a permanent revision to this policy.

Linch @ 2020-08-08T09:05 (+3)

Where does a post on vote-trading/vote-pairing fit in? On the one hand, it's about electoral politics tactics rather than an object-level discussion of which candidates or political parties are better.

On the other hand, they're usually structured to implicitly or explicitly benefit some candidates at the cost of others.

Aaron Gertler @ 2020-08-19T20:23 (+5)

That post seems totally fine to me. I don't see these methods as being too much more implicitly beneficial to certain candidates than approval voting is. And it's hard to talk about political reform without thinking about which groups might benefit. I'd just not want to frontpage people who argue that reform X is good only because it will elect the awesome Y party and kick out the evil Zs.