Imagine thinking this is a good outcome of the “keep your mouth shut” strategy CEA recommends regarding media:
Effective altruism is not a cult. As one EA advised his peers in a forum post about how to talk to journalists: “Don’t ever say ‘People sometimes think EA is a cult, but it’s not.’ If you say something like that, the journalist will likely think this is a catchy line and print it in the article. This will give readers the impression that EA is not quite a cult, but perhaps almost.”
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Effective altruism treats public engagement as yet another dire risk. Bostrom has written about “information hazards” when talking about instructions for assembling lethal weaponry, but some effective altruists now use such parlance to connote bad press. EAs speak of avoiding “reputational risks” to their movement and of making sure their “optics” are good. In its annual report in 2020, the Centre for Effective Altruism logged all 137 “PR cases” it handled that year: “We learned about 78% of interviews before they took place. The earlier we learn of an interview, the more proactive help we can give on mitigating risks.” It also noted the PR team’s progress in monitoring “risky actors”: not people whose activities might increase the existential risks to humanity, but those who might harm the movement’s standing.
Isn’t it somewhat ironic though that you’re caring what the Economist journalists think, and implicitly connoting that that forum post shouldn’t have been made because it gave bad PR?
I just find it funny how posting something like that in a public forum will, of course, make it seen by journalists sooner or later, anyway.
It’s the second bit that concerns me more because I think it’s essentially a correct description of how CEA, and EAs in general (largely because of CEA’s influence), view public engagement. Any interaction outside the community is seen mainly as something that should be handled through a lens of risk mitigation. The way it’s phrased makes it sound like the CEA stopped 78% of 137 virus outbreaks.
Like I wrote elsewhere, I think the danger with the “don’t talk to media” approach is that you get very few views into a movement, mostly from leadership, and if one of those rare appearances takes a wrong turn, there is not a plurality of other views and appearances out there to balance it.
For example, if the only people who “should” give interviews are EA leadership philosophers that are deeply into longtermism, that will make it seem like the entire EA movement is all about longtermism. This is not true.
Imagine thinking this is a good outcome of the “keep your mouth shut” strategy CEA recommends regarding media:
Terrible look, to be honest.
Isn’t it somewhat ironic though that you’re caring what the Economist journalists think, and implicitly connoting that that forum post shouldn’t have been made because it gave bad PR?
I just find it funny how posting something like that in a public forum will, of course, make it seen by journalists sooner or later, anyway.
It’s the second bit that concerns me more because I think it’s essentially a correct description of how CEA, and EAs in general (largely because of CEA’s influence), view public engagement. Any interaction outside the community is seen mainly as something that should be handled through a lens of risk mitigation. The way it’s phrased makes it sound like the CEA stopped 78% of 137 virus outbreaks.
Like I wrote elsewhere, I think the danger with the “don’t talk to media” approach is that you get very few views into a movement, mostly from leadership, and if one of those rare appearances takes a wrong turn, there is not a plurality of other views and appearances out there to balance it.
For example, if the only people who “should” give interviews are EA leadership philosophers that are deeply into longtermism, that will make it seem like the entire EA movement is all about longtermism. This is not true.