The Case for Being Nonpartisan

20.03.2026David Veldran

Posted in Cause prioritisation, Cooperation, Politics. Tagged Cooperation.

Modern politics often turns moral issues into tribal contests. Crucial debates about what we should value and how we should act quickly devolve from truth-seeking to status-defending, as ideas and causes become signals of identity and allegiance.

If we hope to reduce suffering, this pattern is dangerous. When a cause gets caught up in a political culture war, it invites backlash and shrinks the coalition of people willing to help. For that reason, there is great value in being nonpartisan in our efforts to reduce suffering. By nonpartisan, I don’t mean unprincipled, centrist, or reluctant to take strong stances. Rather, I mean not identifying with a pre-defined political tribe, like the Red or Blue (or Grey) tribe. Resisting the tribal logic of modern politics is difficult but important: it helps to keep the movement to reduce suffering healthy—with norms of cooperation and open inquiry—and focused. [...]

Reducing Suffering: An Institutional Approach

06.03.2026David Veldran

Posted in Cause prioritisation, Politics.

There are many different approaches we can take to reduce suffering. One that seems especially promising is to target society’s institutions and better equip them to reduce suffering.

Why institutions? First, they have disproportionate power. Legal systems, markets, regulatory frameworks, research norms, media ecosystems, and international agreements do not merely express social values; they shape them to a large extent. Institutions structure incentives, constrain behavior, allocate authority, and determine which problems receive sustained attention. [...]

Popular views of population ethics imply a priority on preventing worst-case outcomes

11.12.2022Magnus Vinding

Posted in Politics, The Asymmetry.

A wide variety of views can support a focus on preventing worst-case outcomes. More than that, it appears that the views of population ethics held by the general population also, on average, imply a priority on preventing futures with large numbers of miserable beings. My aim in this post is to elaborate on this point and to briefly explore its relevance.

Asymmetric scope sensitivity

A recent study set out to investigate people’s intuitions on population ethics, exploring how people judge the value of different populations of happy and unhappy individuals (Caviola et al., 2022a). The study included a number of sub-studies, which generally found that people endorse a weak asymmetry in population ethics. That is, people tend to believe that miserable lives and suffering weigh somewhat stronger than do happy lives and happiness, even when the misery and happiness in question are claimed to be equally intense (Caviola et al., 2022a, p. 8). [...]

Five recommendations for better political discourse

14.03.2022Tobias Baumann & Magnus Vinding

Posted in Politics.

Introduction

Political decisions arguably represent the linchpin of human decision-making, constraining and influencing every choice we make. And our political system is currently operating far from ideally, to put it mildly. This renders it uniquely important that we do better.

From a longtermist perspective, what matters most is that we advance politics over the long term. Rather than focusing on any specific near-term issue, we are interested in improvements in governance and political norms that can plausibly result in a lasting impact on the long-term future. For instance, the intellectual originators of liberalism have arguably had outsized impact, and are perhaps among the most impactful people ever. [...]