Another, very obvious reason is just that more EA people are near real power now than in 2018, and with serious involvement in power and politics comes tactical incentives to avoid saying what you actually think. I think that is probably a lot of what is going on with Anthropic people playing down their EA connections.
Is that a separate reason from the one OP names and the ones in my comment? If EA had an excellent brand, tactical incentives would encourage naming yourself as an EA, not discourage it. It’s the intersection of bad brand and/​or brand confusion with tactics that leads to this result, not tactics alone, right?
Another, very obvious reason is just that more EA people are near real power now than in 2018, and with serious involvement in power and politics comes tactical incentives to avoid saying what you actually think. I think that is probably a lot of what is going on with Anthropic people playing down their EA connections.
Is that a separate reason from the one OP names and the ones in my comment? If EA had an excellent brand, tactical incentives would encourage naming yourself as an EA, not discourage it. It’s the intersection of bad brand and/​or brand confusion with tactics that leads to this result, not tactics alone, right?