Note that Toby is a trustee of CEA and did most of his government consulting due to GWWC, not the FHI, so it’s not clear that FHI wins out in terms of influence over government.
Moreover, if your concern is influence over government, CEA could still beat FHI (even if FHI is doing very high level advocacy) by acting as a multiplier on the FHI’s efforts (and similar orgs): $1 donated to CEA could lead to more than $1 of financial or human capital delivered to the FHI or similar. I’m not claiming this is happening, but just pointing out that it’s too simple to say FHI wins out just because they’re doing some really good advocacy.
Disclaimer: I’m the Executive Director of 80,000 Hours, which is part of CEA.
Re: point 1: The bulk of our policy consultations to date have actually been Nick Bostrom, although Anders Sandberg has done quite a bit, Toby has been regularly consulting with the UK government recently, and I’ve been doing some lately (mostly wearing my CSER hat, but drawing on my FHI expertise, so I would give FHI credit there ;) ) and others have also done bits and pieces.
I don’t have the numbers of the top of my head, but the bulk of the consultations in my list are due to Nick. I believe there are even much more done by him previous to FHI even existing back in the 90s. Nonetheless, I would guess he is probably very much willing to transfer the advocacy to CEA and similar organizations, as it seems to be already happening. In my opinion, that isn’t FHI main role at all, even though they been doing it a lot. As a wild guess, I would be inclined to say he probably actively rejects a few consultations by now. As I said, we need research. Influence over the government is useless—and perhaps harmful—without it.
While they work together, I’m not sure advocacy and influence over the government are quite the same. I think advocacy here might just be seen as close to advertising and movement building, which in turn will create political pressure. Quite another thing is to be asked by the government to offer ones opinion.
I think both research and advocacy (both to governments and among individuals) are highly important, and it’s very unclear which is more important at the margin.
It’s too simple to say basic research is more important, because advocacy could lead to hugely increased funding for basic research.
Note that Toby is a trustee of CEA and did most of his government consulting due to GWWC, not the FHI, so it’s not clear that FHI wins out in terms of influence over government.
Moreover, if your concern is influence over government, CEA could still beat FHI (even if FHI is doing very high level advocacy) by acting as a multiplier on the FHI’s efforts (and similar orgs): $1 donated to CEA could lead to more than $1 of financial or human capital delivered to the FHI or similar. I’m not claiming this is happening, but just pointing out that it’s too simple to say FHI wins out just because they’re doing some really good advocacy.
Disclaimer: I’m the Executive Director of 80,000 Hours, which is part of CEA.
Re: point 1: The bulk of our policy consultations to date have actually been Nick Bostrom, although Anders Sandberg has done quite a bit, Toby has been regularly consulting with the UK government recently, and I’ve been doing some lately (mostly wearing my CSER hat, but drawing on my FHI expertise, so I would give FHI credit there ;) ) and others have also done bits and pieces.
I don’t have the numbers of the top of my head, but the bulk of the consultations in my list are due to Nick. I believe there are even much more done by him previous to FHI even existing back in the 90s. Nonetheless, I would guess he is probably very much willing to transfer the advocacy to CEA and similar organizations, as it seems to be already happening. In my opinion, that isn’t FHI main role at all, even though they been doing it a lot. As a wild guess, I would be inclined to say he probably actively rejects a few consultations by now. As I said, we need research. Influence over the government is useless—and perhaps harmful—without it.
While they work together, I’m not sure advocacy and influence over the government are quite the same. I think advocacy here might just be seen as close to advertising and movement building, which in turn will create political pressure. Quite another thing is to be asked by the government to offer ones opinion.
I think both research and advocacy (both to governments and among individuals) are highly important, and it’s very unclear which is more important at the margin.
It’s too simple to say basic research is more important, because advocacy could lead to hugely increased funding for basic research.