Today was a pretty bad day for American democracy IMO. The guy below me got downvoted and yea his comment wasn't the greatest but I directionally agree with him.

Pardons are out of control: Biden starts the day pardoning people he thinks might be caught in the political crossfire (Fauci, Milley, others) and more of his family members. Then Trump follows it up by pardoning close to all the Jan 6 defendants. The ship has sailed on whatever "constraints" pardons supposedly had, although you could argue Trump already made that true 4 years ago. 

Ever More Executive Orders: Trump signed ~25 executive orders (and even more "executive actions" - don't worry about the difference unless you like betting markets). This included withdrawing from WHO and ending birthright citizenship, though the latter is unlikely to stick since it's probably unconstitutional. I haven't had time to wade through all the EOs but like the pardons, this seems to be a cancerous growth of executive encroachment on the other branches with no clear end in sight. 

Pre$idential $hitcoins: To be fair, the $TRUMP coin happened a few days ago, with $MELANIA following more recently. I'm not sure if people remember this, but it was a genuine scandal when Trump didn't release his tax returns in 2016. Now, 8 years later, he is at best using his office to scam American citizens. Less charitably he has created a streamlined bribery pipeline. It was a blip in the news cycle. 

Multiple reasons.

1. Your style of writing doesn't meet the standards of this forum. It's vague and memey. I'm inclined not to be that bothered but it definitely is outside of the expected decorum of the forum. 

2. You aren't adding much to the conversation here, this is a pretty liberal forum and we already know Trump acts like a buffon and Elon is an anti-woke troll who has recently supported the AfD (I generally think people here are too quick to downvote things that feel low-effort, it's probably directionally better if people spew a bit more garbage if that would generate more discussion and cause people to second-guess commenting less - and second I don't think it's so irrelevant that he did this although their are lots of other reasons to be concerned that are more concrete).

3. People here are on net not super involved in politics and might feel offended that you imply it is important since it hurts their ego, and since you write in a style that is not within the accepted standards it's easy for them to express their discontent with your writing style even if the impetus to downvote is partially that they think you are being reactionary and disagreeing with their priors. 

But yea I'd recommend writing something like ~ "The trump inauguration festivities have caused me to update towards thinking American politics is a more important cause area because x". It still probably won't be received particularly well here without being more quantitative/fleshing it out more but you won't get 26 downvotes.

To rank interventions or causes as a whole (so not just making comparisons of outputs apples to apples), you need to have a moral framework. Unless you (1) believe there is an objectively correct moral framework and (2) trust that EA is both good at cost-benefit analysis and moral philosophy, I think you may be hoping for too much. 

I'm pretty sure the personal benefits of getting the flu vaccine for a male in their 20-30s is not much higher than the costs. Agree on the bike helmet thing though. 

I don't know unfortunately, basically just going off trusting the leadership to be cost effective plus they are in a really good position to influence policy/executive orders.

I haven't quite finished donating because waiting on a final input on whether rand actually needs funding but I expect my final donations to look more or less like below.  I don't really believe in spreading this amount of funding on the object level but it's more fun and allows me to tell my friends that I think these issues are all important. I gave about 10% of my income. 

RAND- earmarked for emerging risks
Chicago growth project (YIMBY/good governance PAC) 
ARI
Horizon 
rethink
ACE 
Givewell unrestricted 

I probably won't be donating again for at least a year or two because I left my trading job to start a startup—happy new year.
 

Yea I have no idea if they actually need money but if they still want to hire more people to the AI team wouldn't it be better to give the money to RAND to hire those policymakers rather than like the Americans for Responsible Innovation - which open phil currently recommends but is much less prestigious and I'm not sure if they are working side by side with legislators. The fact that open phil gave grants but doesn't currently recommend for individual donors makes me think you are right that they don't need money atm but it would be nice to be sure. 

Haven't seen anyone mention RAND as a possible best charity for AI stuff and I guess I'd like to throw their hat in the ring or at least invite people to tell me why I'm wrong. My core claims are approximately:

• Influencing the US (federal) government is probably one of the most scalable cost-effective routes for AI safety.
• Think tanks are one of the most cost-effective ways to influence the US government.
• The prestige of the think tank matters for getting into the room/influencing change.
• Rand is among the most prestigious think tank doing AI safety work.
• It's also probably the most value-aligned, given Jason Matheny is in charge.
• You can earmark donations to the catastrophic risks/emerging risks departments
  
  I'll add I have no idea if they need/have asked for marginal funding.
  
   

The get-out-of-RSP-free card

If I'm reading this correctly it seems quite vaguely written, so expecting them to pull this out literally whenever they want but maybe I'm overly skeptical. Bush invading Iraq vibes. 

do you feel confident about your moral philosophy?