Thanks for posting this detailed and thoughtful review. I think it’s very valuable to have such responses, even just on this forum.
This may be evident from the starting parts of your post (and may illustrate my own naivety), but is there no EA press or comms unit that journalists contact before publishing such articles? I appreciate much of the criticism is focused on the works by MacAskill and Singer so maybe their office was contacted. I also accept it’s not desirable to have a big comms. function that speaks for EA and makes the community more formal than it is. However, I agree with your reflection that having no rebuttal or standard lines (from say CEA) means no way to counter the potential damaging effects from an inaccurate narrative.
“is there no EA press or comms unit that journalists contact before publishing such articles” — sometimes CEA or Forethought get asked for comment on pieces, but the vast majority of the time no one contacts us. It’s quite frustrating.
The closest would be CEA’s communication team, but as you point out: “it’s not desirable to have a big comms. function that speaks for EA and makes the community more formal than it is.”
I think it’d be challenging (and not in good taste) for CEA to craft responses on behalf of the entire EA community; it is better if individual EAs critique articles which they think misrepresents ideas within the movement.
Thanks for posting this detailed and thoughtful review. I think it’s very valuable to have such responses, even just on this forum.
This may be evident from the starting parts of your post (and may illustrate my own naivety), but is there no EA press or comms unit that journalists contact before publishing such articles? I appreciate much of the criticism is focused on the works by MacAskill and Singer so maybe their office was contacted. I also accept it’s not desirable to have a big comms. function that speaks for EA and makes the community more formal than it is. However, I agree with your reflection that having no rebuttal or standard lines (from say CEA) means no way to counter the potential damaging effects from an inaccurate narrative.
“is there no EA press or comms unit that journalists contact before publishing such articles” — sometimes CEA or Forethought get asked for comment on pieces, but the vast majority of the time no one contacts us. It’s quite frustrating.
The closest would be CEA’s communication team, but as you point out: “it’s not desirable to have a big comms. function that speaks for EA and makes the community more formal than it is.”
I think it’d be challenging (and not in good taste) for CEA to craft responses on behalf of the entire EA community; it is better if individual EAs critique articles which they think misrepresents ideas within the movement.