Nancy Pelosi is retiring; consider donating to Scott Wiener.
[Link to donate; or consider a bank transfer option to avoid fees, see below.]
Nancy Pelosi has just announced that she is retiring. Previously I wrote up a case for donating to Scott Wiener, an AI safety champion in the California legislature who is running for her seat, in which I estimated a 60% chance that Pelosi would retire. While I recommended donating on the day that he announced his campaign launch, I noted that donations would look much better ex post in worlds where Pelosi retires, and that my recommendation to donate on launch day was sensitive to my assessment of the probability that she would retire.
I know some people who read my post and decided (quite reasonably) to wait to see whether Pelosi retired. If that was you, consider donating today!
How to donate
You can donate through ActBlue here (please use this link rather than going directly to his website, because the URL lets his team know that these are donations from people who care about AI safety).
Note that ActBlue charges a 4% fee. I think that’s not a huge deal; however, if you want to make a large contribution and are already comfortable making bank transfers, shoot be a DM and I’ll give you instructions for making the bank transfer!
Earnest question: For both this & donating to Alex Bores, does it matter whether someone donates sooner rather than a couple months from now? For practical reasons, it will be easier for me to donate in 2026--but if it will have a substantially bigger impact now, then I want to do it sooner.
(iirc Eric thinks that the difference for Bores was that it was ~20% better to donate on the first day, that the difference would be larger for Bores than for Wiener, and that “first day vs. not first day” was most of the difference, so if it’s more than few percent more costly for you to donate now rather than 2 months from now I’m not sure it makes sense to do that.)
I think that similarly for Wiener, I don’t think it makes a huge difference (maybe 15% or so?) whether you donate today vs. late December. Today vs. tomorrow doesn’t make much difference; think of it as a gradual decay over these couple months. But I think it’s much better (1.3x?) to donate in late December than early January, because having an impressive Q4 2025 fundraising number will be helpful for consolidating support. (Because Wiener is more of a known quantity to voters and party elites than Bores is, this is a less important factor for Wiener than it is for Bores.)
Nancy Pelosi is retiring; consider donating to Scott Wiener.
[Link to donate; or consider a bank transfer option to avoid fees, see below.]
Nancy Pelosi has just announced that she is retiring. Previously I wrote up a case for donating to Scott Wiener, an AI safety champion in the California legislature who is running for her seat, in which I estimated a 60% chance that Pelosi would retire. While I recommended donating on the day that he announced his campaign launch, I noted that donations would look much better ex post in worlds where Pelosi retires, and that my recommendation to donate on launch day was sensitive to my assessment of the probability that she would retire.
I know some people who read my post and decided (quite reasonably) to wait to see whether Pelosi retired. If that was you, consider donating today!
How to donate
You can donate through ActBlue here (please use this link rather than going directly to his website, because the URL lets his team know that these are donations from people who care about AI safety).
Note that ActBlue charges a 4% fee. I think that’s not a huge deal; however, if you want to make a large contribution and are already comfortable making bank transfers, shoot be a DM and I’ll give you instructions for making the bank transfer!
Earnest question: For both this & donating to Alex Bores, does it matter whether someone donates sooner rather than a couple months from now? For practical reasons, it will be easier for me to donate in 2026--but if it will have a substantially bigger impact now, then I want to do it sooner.
Yep, e.g. donations sooner are better for getting endorsements. Especially for Bores and somewhat for Wiener, I think.
Got it. Okay thanks!
(iirc Eric thinks that the difference for Bores was that it was ~20% better to donate on the first day, that the difference would be larger for Bores than for Wiener, and that “first day vs. not first day” was most of the difference, so if it’s more than few percent more costly for you to donate now rather than 2 months from now I’m not sure it makes sense to do that.)
My guess for Bores was:
25% better to donate on first day than second day
2x better to donate in late 2025 than 2026
I think that similarly for Wiener, I don’t think it makes a huge difference (maybe 15% or so?) whether you donate today vs. late December. Today vs. tomorrow doesn’t make much difference; think of it as a gradual decay over these couple months. But I think it’s much better (1.3x?) to donate in late December than early January, because having an impressive Q4 2025 fundraising number will be helpful for consolidating support. (Because Wiener is more of a known quantity to voters and party elites than Bores is, this is a less important factor for Wiener than it is for Bores.)