I think CEA often plays the role of expressing some sort of aggregate or social choice for the EA movement—like in the case fo the guiding principles.
On the other hand, I take reputational risk really seriously, especially if we start criticizing policy decisons or specific institutions; so it would be more prudent to have particular organizations issuing statements and open letters (like TLYCS, or FLI, etc.), so that any eventual backlash wouldn’t extrapolate to EA as a whole.
Those open letters could also be accompanied with the option to sign them and thereby signal the support of a larger group of people. Though then I think there is more traction with an open letter signed by relevant experts, like the Open Letter on Artificial Intelligence (would be interested to see data on this). So probably that would not be a particularly useful idea for using the voice of a particular community.
I think CEA often plays the role of expressing some sort of aggregate or social choice for the EA movement—like in the case fo the guiding principles.
On the other hand, I take reputational risk really seriously, especially if we start criticizing policy decisons or specific institutions; so it would be more prudent to have particular organizations issuing statements and open letters (like TLYCS, or FLI, etc.), so that any eventual backlash wouldn’t extrapolate to EA as a whole.
Those open letters could also be accompanied with the option to sign them and thereby signal the support of a larger group of people. Though then I think there is more traction with an open letter signed by relevant experts, like the Open Letter on Artificial Intelligence (would be interested to see data on this). So probably that would not be a particularly useful idea for using the voice of a particular community.