American politics has become increasingly polarized in recent years. During the ongoing George Floyd protests, observers have pointed out that polarization has hit highs not yet seen in modern American history. Whether this trend of increasing polarization will continue is unclear. However, it is at least plausible that the trend is far from over, and therefore, broad picture implications are worth closer attention.

In this post, I will explore my preliminary predictions under a scenario where polarization continues to increase. While I think that full-scale war -- on the level of the civil war -- is unlikely to happen in the United States, for reasons I will go into below, I find that the most relevant comparison might be the Chinese cultural revolution. Although the comparison may seem exaggerated, it is still important to explore key similarities to the Chinese cultural revolution, and what is happening in the United States.

If the United States were to experience a cultural revolution-like event, it would likely affect nearly all areas of impact that effective altruists care about, and would have profound effects on our ability to produce free open-ended research on controversial issues. Given that many of the ideas that effective altruists discuss -- such as genetic enhancement, factory farming abolition, and wild animal suffering -- are controversial, it is important to understand how our movement could be undermined in the aftermath of such an event. Furthermore, conformity pressures of the type exhibited in the Chinese cultural revolution could push important threads of research, such as AI alignment research, into undesirable directions.

When discussing topics as explosive as the one in this post, it is important to stay grounded in solid reasoning and evidence, and to avoid the tendency of waging the war rather than understanding the war. Understanding Julia Galef’s scout versus soldier mindset is helpful here. While in this post I am forced to engage in speculation, it is my hope that readers will judge my argument based on its merits alone, rather than assuming that I’m trying to single out or attack a particular “side” of the current political debate.

Background

Political polarization, as measured by political scientists, has clearly gone up in the last 20 years. It is unclear whether this recent trend is unprecedented, ho...

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