This was one of the funniest reads and such a grounding take amongst the news storm of current events. I fully endorse a presidential address by substack newsletter and google docs for bills :) As long as the bioethics council first looks as the ethics of only having human decision makers.... add some stick insects and shrimp and then we're talking /joking
Introducing Project 2050: Mandate for Survival ā EA Forum
This post presents the executive summary from Giving What We Canās impact evaluation for 2025.Ā At the end of this post we share links to more information, including theĀ full report and...
I used AI to fix transcription errors, rerrarange the ideas, and suggest tweaks to the title and some sentences.
Three of the most exciting projects to come out of EA in recent years are, in a vague sense, CEA spinouts:
* Kairos is directly a spinout of CEA and now handles most support for university AI safety groups. Basically everyone I've found who knows them is really excited about what they do
* NEST is an opinionated ideas-fi...
Because āLeadershipā is cute, but āSurvivalā is necessary. Welcome to Mandate for Survival: The Effective Promise. Written with the help of GPT.
Foreword
For decades, America has been governed not by wisdom, but by momentumāa sluggish, legacy bureaucracy propped up by tradition, vibes, and electoral cycles optimized for cable news.
Despite historic budgets, advanced technology, and abundant human talent, the federal government has failed to solve its most urgent problems. It:
Subsidizes industries that destroy the planet faster than it can regulate them.
Funds outdated institutions to protect outdated jobs, even as AI outpaces policy by decades.
Is structurally incapable of preparing for global catastrophic risks like artificial intelligence, engineered pandemics, and nuclear tail risks.
Wastes trillions on inefficiencies while neglecting our moral responsibility to future generations.
The result? A society that is wealthier than ever⦠and yet less safe, less stable, and less morally coherent than at any time in living memory.
š§ Enter: Project 2050
Project 2050 is not a dream. It is a spreadsheet. It is a risk model. It is a policy overhaul for a civilization on the brink.
Built by a coalition of longtermist policy designers, rationalist strategists, global health economists, and AI alignment researchers, Project 2050 offers a fully comprehensive blueprint to restructure the U.S. federal government around one simple principle:
Maximize the good. Minimize the risk. Align the future.
This is not reform. This is not revolution. This is redesign, grounded in cost-effectiveness, moral philosophy, and mathematical humility.
š ļø Our Approach
Project 2050 transforms the institutions of governance by:
Rewriting federal departments to align with global wellbeing and existential security.
Embedding cost-effectiveness analysis into every layer of the bureaucracy.
Redirecting trillions in spending toward scalable interventions and long-term resilience.
Elevating talent and careers that improve the expected trajectory of humanity.
Institutionalizing forecasting, epistemic humility, and scope sensitivity at the legislative and judicial levels.
From the Department of AI Hardware Governance to the Deliberative Assembly for Longtermist Governance, every organ of state will now be optimized for survival, flourishing, and cosmic endurance.
GPT-7 (Fine-tuned on all EA content): Permanent advisor. Doesnāt sleep. Doesnāt blink.
Roko (yes, that Roko): Just vibing in the basement of the Pentagon, running simulations. Trying to prevent everyone from learning about Roko's Basilisk.
Nick Bostrom: Lives in an orbital station. Only speaks to Earth once per year on Moral Trajectory Day.
Slime Mold Time Mold bloggers: Reassigned to run national food policy. Start by banning seed oils.
Ā
Corporate Partners
Anthropic: Now a state-owned utility. Provides AI assistants to every U.S. citizen (alignment patch included).
OpenAI: Nationalized and then privatized again in a quantum move no one understands.
Open Asteroid Impact: Whose CEO also wrote this document.
Lightcone Infrastructure: Given a $4 billion contract to rebuild D.C. as a rationalist Disneyland.
Ā
Section 2: The Executive Branch
"A country governed by reason and compassion must build institutions worthy of its ideals."
Ā
šļø Department of Foreign Alignment (Formerly State Department)
Mission: Prevent great power conflict, support global coordination, and maximize diplomatic impact across moral circles.
Focuses on international treaty development around AI safety, biorisk containment, and climate geoengineering protocols.
Includes the Embassy of the Future, which houses moral philosophers, forecasting specialists, and scope-sensitivity diplomats.
Promotes cooperative AI development treaties instead of nuclear arms control.
Main KPI: Reduction in probability of conflict between nuclear-armed states and AI race dynamics.
Ā
šø Department of Donation & Global Resource Flow (Formerly Treasury + Commerce)
Mission: Ensure that every dollar spent contributes maximally to global wellbeing.
All spending analyzed through DALY-per-dollar and QALY-adjusted public budgeting.
Personal income taxes replaced with impact-adjusted donation suggestions (opt-in, high social pressure).
Oversees national GiveDirectly-style UBI for displaced workers, as long as the cost-effectiveness checks out.
Develops International Donation Corridors to route funds from rich-world altruists to the most neglected global problems.
Ā
š¾ Department of Cellular Agriculture & Global Food Security (Formerly Agriculture)
Mission: Build a food system robust to existential shocks and moral progress.
Major investments in lab-grown meat, precision fermentation, and resilient crop engineering.
Oversees the Global Nuclear Winter Nutrition Plan, stockpiling calorie-dense shelf-stable alternatives.
Runs risk audits on agricultural biolabs to prevent food-based bioweapons and cross-species pandemics.
Nutrition policy prioritizes marginal utility per calorie. Yes, that means no more corn subsidies.
Ā
āļø Department of Value Alignment (Formerly Justice)
Mission: Ensure the government reflects morally consistent and future-proof values.
Rewrites all laws through the lens of moral uncertainty, expected utility, and coherent extrapolated volition.
Oversees development of synthetic moral advisorsāAI systems that flag value-incoherent decisions.
Prison reform replaced with alignment training programs for citizens. Think: CBT + virtue ethics + rationalist workshops.
Directs Moral Circle Expansion Court that evaluates if laws adequately protect animals, AIs, and future persons.
Ā
š· Department of High-Impact Careers (Formerly Labor)
Mission: Align national employment with long-term impact goals.
All jobs re-evaluated using 80,000 Hours framework. Only careers in AI alignment, biosecurity, policy, or global health receive government support.
Runs Impact Retraining Camps to transition workers from low-impact jobs into meaningful, tractable roles.
Federal Job Board powered by EA GPT Career Coach, calibrated to personal fit and counterfactual impact.
All resume workshops now include a 1-on-1 moral weights calibration session.
Ā
š”ļø Department of X-Risk Mitigation (Formerly Defense)
Mission: Protect humanity from existential catastrophe.
Also responsible for maintaining compute governance standards globally (GPU treaties, model audits, etc).
Military action allowed only if existential risk is >1% and expected value is positive.
Ā
š„ Department of Global Health (Formerly HHS)
Mission: Replace domestic healthcare with global scalable interventions.
Works closely with GiveWell, CEARCH, and Open Phil to set health priorities.
U.S. healthcare shifted toward cheap interventions with massive global utility: deworming, malaria prevention, vitamin A, etc.
Hospitals receive funding only if their cost per DALY is competitive with AMF.
Includes the Pathogen Early Warning System and Viral Gain-of-Function Ban Enforcement Unit.
Ā
šļø Department of Zoning Reform & Urban Impact (Formerly HUD)
Mission: Unleash economic growth and improve quality of life through smart urbanism.
Prioritizes upzoning, housing densification, and transit-oriented development.
Focuses on long-term urban productivity and mobility equity, not short-term subsidies.
Establishes the Charter City Accelerator to experiment with high-growth innovation hubs.
Merges economic development with effective city design principles.
Ā
š ļø Department of Existential Bunkers (Formerly Transportation)
Mission: Maintain continuity of civilization in worst-case scenarios.
Constructs AGI-resistant underground shelters, Mars migration testbeds, and island sanctuaries.
All transportation plans must be robust under AGI collapse, EMPs, pandemics, and nukes.
High-speed rail canceled; replaced by post-collapse resilient logistics.
Oversees Existential Mobility Plan, a roadmap for worst-case evacuation procedures.
Ā
ā” Department of AI Hardware Governance (Formerly Energy)
Mission: Manage compute as a critical national resource.
Allocates GPUs through global compute licenses, AI safety conditionality, and usage caps.
Funds fusion R&D, but only if it doesnāt accelerate AGI timelines.
Monitors energy inputs to training runs, intervenes on risky model scaling.
Partners with the Global AI Governance Compact to enforce standards.
Ā
š§āš¤āš§ Department of Community Building (Formerly Education)
Mission: Build the people who will build the future.
Schools deprioritized. Education now flows through fellowships, reading groups, peer mentoring, and cause exploration retreats.
Focuses on meta-level impact: creating aligned, emotionally supported agents of change.
Promotes EA group chapters across all schools and neighborhoods. Even for babies.
Replaces grades with impact portfolios and moral growth assessments.
Ā
šŖ Department of Veteran Affairs ā ā ABOLISHED
Why? Honorable, but not counterfactually effective.
Veterans offered retraining in x-risk fields.
Legacy spending redirected to global health interventions.
We will replace soldiers with lethal autonomous weaponry, for deterrence.
Ā
š§Æ Department of Civilizational Resilience (Formerly Homeland Security)
Mission: Prevent civilizational collapse by preserving coordination, infrastructure, and trust.
Manages civil disobedience fail-safes, AI disinformation monitoring, and coordination failure models.
Hosts Backup Governance Protocols for if D.C. is destroyed or institutions collapse.
Monitors memetic contagion risk (like polarizing ideologies or infohazards).
Trains Rationalist First Responders⢠to operate in high-stress moral dilemmas.
Ā
š¶ Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
Mission: Ensure the entire federal apparatus meets cost-effectiveness benchmarks.
Applies EA meta-analysis to every program.
Departments must submit quarterly Impact Reports or be subject to budget clawback.
Runs Cause Exploration Prizes for underfunded high-leverage ideas.
Oversees Randomista Units: randomized controlled trials across all programs.
Elon Musk will still be secretary for the next 1000 years. Or forever.
Ā
Section 3: Program Slashed by Project 2050
1. Medicare Part D (Prescription Drug Coverage)
Why? Because the U.S. is spending billions subsidizing Lipitor when those same billions could deworm an entire continent. Replacement: EA HealthCredit⢠ā you get a tax refund if you prove you donated to the Against Malaria Foundation instead of filling your prescription.
Ā
2. Social Security
Why? Too expensive, too universal, not cause-prioritized. Also doesn't account for future people. Like it really does not account for future people. Replacement: The Longtermist Retirement Account (LRA) ā you earn benefits only if your career impacted 100,000+ QALYs or contributed to AI safety. Early retirement available to anyone who can prove they've aligned a powerful mesa-optimizer.
Ā
3. HUD Housing Programs
Why? EA says it's not cost-effective at all. Rent subsidies? Cute. But does it prevent existential risk? Replacement: Global Housing Vouchers ā you get $20k if you're willing to relocate to sub-Saharan Africa and work in scalable infrastructure. Itās cheaper, more effective, and builds global resilience in the case of a nuclear war or global pandemic.
Ā
4. Subsidies for American Farmers
Why? Because feeding cows is less efficient than feeding kids in Bangladesh. Sorry, Kansas. Also contributes to factory farming. Replacement: Federal funding redirected to lab-grown meat innovation, AI-optimized food logistics, and a USDA rebrand as the Department of Cellular Agriculture.
Ā
5. Department of Education
Why? Wasted on teaching 19th-century subjects instead of moral uncertainty, expected value, and agent foundations. EAs also see education as too crowded and ineffective. Replacement: A national EA Fellowship in place of high school. All 18-year-olds must read The Precipice, complete a cause prioritization capstone, and pass the Fermi Test⢠to graduate. Only the top 1% of students get admitted into elite colleges. The other 99% of students are ignored as they cannot have a big impact.
Ā
6. Arts & Humanities Grants (e.g., NEA, NEH)
Why? Because unless your poem literally reduces AI risk or increases moral patienthood, itās not worth $10,000. Replacement: EA-Aligned Storytelling Grants ā only awarded to art that increases concern for digital minds, boosts biosecurity norms, or makes being utilitarian seem sexy.
Ā
7. Defense Budget (except DARPA)
Why? Too much funding for kinetic warfare, not enough for infohazards or dual-use tech alignment. Replacement: Rebranded as the Department of Existential Defense (DoED) ā funds AI alignment, biosecurity, EMP resilience, and asteroid deflection. Nukes still allowed, but only if you can justify them on a utilitarian trolley problem grid.
Ā
8. SNAP (Food Stamps)
Why? Feeding hungry Americans? Sounds localist. Replacement: Global Nutrition Impact Accounts ā Americans receive tokens to allocate global food aid more efficiently. You only eat if you can prove that your meal has higher marginal utility than one in Ethiopia.
Ā
9. NASA Manned Missions
Why? Low cost-effectiveness per dollar; unclear x-risk benefit. Replacement: AI-governed Space Infrastructure ā weāll launch compute infrastructure to the moon before astronauts. Humans can wait until weāve solved value alignment.
Ā
10. PBS & Public Broadcasting
Why? The vibes are educational but not longtermist enough. Also zero AI policy coverage. Replacement: Impact Island ā weekly shows on moral philosophy, cause prioritization, and episodes of Black Mirror with 80,000 Hours commentary. Hosted by Eliezer in VR.
Ā
In Summary:
Project 2050 is ruthless. If it:
Feels good but isn't evidence-backed: Cut.
Helps Americans only: Cut.
Doesn't scale: Cut.
Doesnāt improve the long-term future: Cut.
Doesnāt reduce suffering by at least 0.1 DALYs per $100: Girl, cut it.
Every dollar must work harder than a tech intern in Silicon Valley. Ā
Section 4: The Legislative EA Branch
āStill bicameral. Still democratic. Now 10x more calibrated.ā
While Congress itself canāt mandate decision-making by prediction markets (yet...), external civil society orgs absolutely can:
Launch platforms like āImpactTrackā or āForecastCongressā to rate legislators by:
DALYs gained per vote
Moral consistency across issues
Forecast calibration score
These become tools for voters and journalistsāāEA Scorecardsā for all legislators!
Ā
Bonus: šŗ Soft Constitutional Interpretation: The Longtermist Doctrine
"Promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."
EA legal scholars begin interpreting āposterityā to include:
Future generations
Digital minds
Artificial general intelligences with moral status
Result? Judicial and legislative nudges to consider long-term consequences baked into all lawmaking over time.
Ā
In Summary:
Congress remains constitutionally intact, but:
The tools change
The language changes
The incentives change
The vibe changes
Itās still messy, still democraticābut suddenly, itās asking āHow many QALYs does this bill save?ā instead of āWill this poll well in Iowa?ā
Ā
Section 5: Longtermist Judicial BranchĀ
āBecause justice must serve the present, the future, and the post-biological.ā
Ā
šļø I. Supreme Court Structure ā Rebalanced for Moral Circle Expansion
š§āāļø 9 Humans
Carefully selected for:
Calibration scores
Forecasting accuracy
Experience with moral uncertainty
At least 2 must be AI alignment researchers
One must be from the EA community with at least 50 karma on the EA Forum
š 30 Chickens
Chosen to represent factory-farmed animals, who are plausibly the most numerous and morally relevant suffering entities alive.
Chickens do not deliberate. Their presence is symbolic, and their votes are cast randomly, but weighted according to expected moral patienthood.
Chickens are rotated seasonally from certified cruelty-free sanctuaries.
š 3,500 Fish
Representing trillions of aquatic lives neglected in legal doctrine.
As with chickens, their votes are randomized but down-weighted less than you'd think because fish are criminally underrated in moral weightings.
š Conclusion: The Final Government You Will Ever Need
Project 2050: Mandate for Survival ā The Effective Promise
āHistory does not ask what we meant to do. It only remembers what we built.ā
Ā
The institutions of the past were designed for a different world. A world of slow risks. Of small futures. Of narrow moral circles. But that world is gone.
In its place stands a civilization teetering between miracle and annihilationāarmed with exponential technologies, crippled by outdated governance. We have unlocked the power to destroy ourselves, or to steward a flourishing that spans eons. What we lacked, until now, was a plan.
Project 2050 is that plan.
Not a partisan vision, not a utopian fantasyābut a sober redesign of the state, optimized for:
Global wellbeing,
Existential security,
and Moral clarity across time, space, and substrate.
This is not about the next election cycle. It is about the next 10,000 yearsāif weāre lucky.
6
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Effective Altruism and the Human Mind [5000 Word Summary]
This was one of the funniest reads and such a grounding take amongst the news storm of current events. I fully endorse a presidential address by substack newsletter and google docs for bills :) As long as the bioethics council first looks as the ethics of only having human decision makers.... add some stick insects and shrimp and then we're talking /joking