When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to correct a sentence posted by an official account of their own government, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation edit.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that lives created equal ought to be counted equally, which first requires that they be counted. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, which is hard to enjoy after a preventable death; Liberty, which cannot survive any power that has outgrown its checks; and the pursuit of Happiness, which goes better with evidence.
That the pursuit of American greatness and the pursuit of the most good were never rivals. That a nation founded by men who argued about incentives, wrote down their assumptions, and planned for people not yet born is the most naturally effective nation on Earth. And that anyone who sets Americanism against effectiveness has misread both.
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world
Benjamin Franklin founded a lending library, a volunteer fire company, and a hospital. To fund the hospital, he got the Pennsylvania Assembly to match private donations, one of the first matching grants on record.
Franklin made hard decisions by what he called moral algebra: list the reasons on each side, weigh them, strike out the ones that cancel, and see what remains.
His will left a thousand pounds each to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out and left to compound for two hundred years. He was a longtermist before anyone needed the word.
In 1777, in the middle of a war and at real risk, George Washington ordered every soldier who had not yet had smallpox to be inoculated, having concluded the disease was a greater danger to his army than the enemy. Biosecurity has been national security since the Revolution.
James Madison designed a government for operators who might not share its values. “If angels were to govern men,” he wrote, “neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Checks and balances are alignment for people.
Norman Borlaug, a farm kid from Iowa, bred the wheat behind the Green Revolution. He is credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives and won the Nobel Peace Prize for it.
In 2003 a Republican president launched PEPFAR, which is credited with saving more than twenty-five million lives.
Americans reached the Moon on a deadline, in machines that could easily have killed them, by being fast and paranoid at the same time. Speed and caution are both American traditions.
Every one of these is sourced, with the disputed numbers marked.
We therefore declare
We, the Effective Americans, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world and the best available evidence for the rectitude of our intentions, do solemnly publish and declare:
Article I
Every American counts, by the number. A policy that saves ten thousand Americans is ten times better than one that saves a thousand. This should not be a controversial position in Washington.
Article II
Dominance you can’t control isn’t dominance. An AI that does whatever it wants is not American AI. It is AI that happens to be located in America.
Article III
We fought one unaccountable king. We do not intend to build another. Anything powerful enough to rule needs checks strong enough to stop it, whether it wears a crown or runs in a data center.
Article IV
Winning requires surviving. The United States will not beat China by building something that beats the United States. Safety is not a brake on the race. It is how there is still a country at the finish line.
Article V
Posterity is a constituency. The Constitution was ordained to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. We are that Posterity, and we intend to return the favor.
Article VI
Count what can be counted. Where the good can be measured, we will measure it. Where it can’t, we will say so plainly. A patriotism that can’t survive a spreadsheet was never very sturdy.
The longer answers — including whether this is just effective altruism with a flag on it.
The Pledge, as amended
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God and under uncertainty, indivisible, with liberty and justice and expected value for all.
Adherents may also pledge ten percent of their income to whatever does the most good.
A glossary for the Department
For officials who believe these are two different languages.
| They say | We say |
|---|---|
| Effective altruist | Effective American |
| 80,000 Hours | 1776 Hours |
| Longtermism | Posterity |
| QALYs | Freedom-Adjusted Life Years |
| Earning to give | Andrew Carnegie |
| Existential risk | Enemies foreign, domestic, and computational |
| AI doomer | Paul Revere |
| Red-teaming | Red-, white-, and blue-teaming |
| Crucial considerations | The Federalist Papers |
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence and a reasonable confidence interval, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes (ten percent, at minimum), and our sacred Honor.
Signed,
The Effective Americans