Attention theory

Scott Alexander (whose blog, sadly, is still down) has written about the conflict theory and the mistake theory of politics. Conflict theory says that the core problem of politics is flawed goals. Some people are pursuing their self-interest, rather than that of society at large. Or they have flawed moral values. That causes a myriad of poor outcomes.

Mistake theory rather says that the problem is ineffective means. People don’t know how to realise their goals. For instance, how to stop a pandemic.

(At least that’s one way of cashing out these notions.)

But there’s another factor, namely attention. Some problems are much more salient than others. Problems that occur here and now. Problems that involve identifiable victims. And problems that divide people along tribal lines. These problems are more visible, and speak more to our emotions. So if we don’t take a step back and think through which problems we should focus on, we’ll give disproportionate attention to these salient problems. We’ll focus on them even if we on further reflection don’t actually think they’re the most important problems.

Of course, more often than not, we don’t take a step back. We don’t tend to be very disciplined when it comes to politics, but focus on whatever catches our attention. We lack a strategy, much like someone who eats whatever appears in front of them, instead of having a plan for eating healthily. Therefore, I think attention, and lack of it, is an important explanation of poor political outcomes.

Attention should be of special interest to effective altruists. Effective altruists are famously focused on (spatially or temporally) distant problems, that tend to be neglected. The standard explanation is that they’re neglected because people’s circle of moral concern is narrow. They don’t care about distant beneficiaries. This is, in effect, a conflict theory explanation, as I use that term. And the solution is moral circle expansion.

But these distant problems also tend to be unsalient, since they don’t occur here and now. That’s an additional reason why they tend to be neglected, which is separate from people’s lack of moral concern with them. In particular, problems pertaining to the distant future are often unsalient. That means that even people who have included the distant future within their moral circle may come to neglect it in practice.

This attention-driven neglect of distant problems can’t be solved just by moral circle expansion. Instead what we need to do is to become more disciplined and more strategic regarding what problems to focus on. We need to make a deliberate plan on what to focus on, and then restrain ourselves when our gut feelings tell us to focus on more salient problems.