Effective altruism and political power

Biff Wiff

I just saw that Donald Trump is running for president. Which led me to the following thought: would any of the big names in tech have a chance at being elected president of the US? Elon Musk? Sergey Brin? Jeff Bezos? Reid Hoffman? Peter Thiel? Edit: Bill Gates?

Some follow up questions/thoughts:

As far as maximizing altruistic impact goes, would it be a good idea for them to become president?
Do these people care about maximizing altruistic impact? To what extent? If so/enough, why not do it?
What other "sane" people have enough reputation in the public eye to have a chance at acquiring a lot of political power? My first thought was tech people, but I'm sure there are others. Big hedge fund managers? Ray Dalio? Or maybe some famous scientists?
What does EA have to say about acquiring political power?

Edit: hypothetically, if one of these big-name tech people were to try to gain political power, how should they go about doing so?

Some follow up questions/thoughts:

As far as maximizing altruistic impact goes, would it be a good idea for them to become president?
Do these people care about maximizing altruistic impact? To what extent? If so/enough, why not do it?
What other "sane" people have enough reputation in the public eye to have a chance at acquiring a lot of political power? My first thought was tech people, but I'm sure there are others. Big hedge fund managers? Ray Dalio? Or maybe some famous scientists?
What does EA have to say about acquiring political power?

Edit: hypothetically, if one of these big-name tech people were to try to gain political power, how should they go about doing so?

If the two environmentalists had a debate about this subject

This is not what this subthread is about. It started with me saying

What you want above all in a political leader is that his value system be aligned to yours. If it is not, the fact that he is effective at reaching his goals becomes a threat, not a benefit.

and skeptical_lurker pointing out that

Only if the goals are actually opposed to yours.

and me continuing with

I still think that similar values are MUCH more important than the capability to execute.

I don't see how trying to tease apart terminal and instrumental goals is relevant to this issue. I also think that in practice many theoretically-instrumental goals are, in fact, terminal. Stewart Brand changed his mind, but a great deal more people didn't and I am willing to argue that for at least some and probably many of them the opposition to the nuclear effectively became a terminal goal (along the "when you forget your goal you redouble your efforts" lines).

So there are two models I can have of politicians who advocate policies different from mine. The first is that we have different terminal goals--even though our model of the world is quite similar, in the sense that we agree about which policies would create which outcomes, we differ on which outcomes we prefer to create. The second is that we have different beliefs--for example, you think raising the minimum wage would be on net beneficial for the working class, whereas I think it's likely to increase unemployment.

These two models suggest different stra... (read more)

4

Effective altruism and political power

4

4

4

Effective altruism and political power

4

4