I downvoted this post – I think it’s unhelpful to write a polemic complaining that “X isn’t being done” without taking basic steps to find out what’s already being done, or first writing a post asking about what’s being done.
For instance:
Next week a major PR campaign to promote Will’s book will begin.
Open Phil, CEA, 80k and others are already advised by a professional PR agency.
There are many in-progress efforts to get EA more into the media (e.g. it’s a key focus for Longview).
I read the posts I could find on this topic on the forum, none of which mention a PR agency or hiring a PR team for the movement
I’ve talked about this with a lot of other EA professionals and no one has mentioned that this idea is coming, although all of them thought it was a good idea to some degree
I posted it as an idea for FTX and it wasn’t taken up, without feedback or any suggestion that it was already happening
I visited the many examples of mainstream press criticism of EA cited in other posts and saw no response or comment ‘from EA’
But, most importantly, the things you list here don’t address the suggestion of this post. Individual orgs being advised by PR professionals, or Longview aiming for more press coverage, has at best partial overlap with the effect of a dedicated PR team for EA.
This is also self-evidently not having the effect of countering op-eds like this one (although that might be low priority work).
So, when OFTW, at least one GiveWell charity and presumably others are forwarded this op-ed by potential or actual major donors, and there is crickets ‘from EA’ in response, I think it’s pretty reasonable to say ‘this seems like a good idea—can we make it happen?’
I think it’s valuable to point out a problem. The fact is that the majority of media articles about EA are negative (and often inaccurate), and this has been the case for years. Inasmuch as this is a problem, all existing efforts to solve it have failed! Listing upcoming efforts seems like more of a nice addition than a mandatory component.
I interpreted this post as also complaining about there not being any sort of consesus among EAs as a community for how to deal with negative press. Most of what you listed would not qualify as a community-wide strategy. Sure, Open Phil, CEA, 80k, etc. having some PR guidance seems awesome, but what about everyone else? I’m guessing there are many orgs, individual people who have a lot of twitter followers or whatever, etc. that don’t know how to respond to negative press.
There’s a communications strategy being drafted.
seems to be the only thing you listed that actually addresses this. Which is great! But it seems pretty unrealistic to expect OP to know that this was happening. I’m also guessing this wouldn’t have been answered in an EA forum question; questions don’t seem to gain that much traction on EA forum, and the vast majority of users probably had no clue a communications strategy was being drafted.
I downvoted this post – I think it’s unhelpful to write a polemic complaining that “X isn’t being done” without taking basic steps to find out what’s already being done, or first writing a post asking about what’s being done.
For instance:
Next week a major PR campaign to promote Will’s book will begin.
Open Phil, CEA, 80k and others are already advised by a professional PR agency.
There are many in-progress efforts to get EA more into the media (e.g. it’s a key focus for Longview).
There’s a communications strategy being drafted.
Etc.
Thanks Ben. A few things:
I read the posts I could find on this topic on the forum, none of which mention a PR agency or hiring a PR team for the movement
I’ve talked about this with a lot of other EA professionals and no one has mentioned that this idea is coming, although all of them thought it was a good idea to some degree
I posted it as an idea for FTX and it wasn’t taken up, without feedback or any suggestion that it was already happening
I visited the many examples of mainstream press criticism of EA cited in other posts and saw no response or comment ‘from EA’
But, most importantly, the things you list here don’t address the suggestion of this post. Individual orgs being advised by PR professionals, or Longview aiming for more press coverage, has at best partial overlap with the effect of a dedicated PR team for EA.
This is also self-evidently not having the effect of countering op-eds like this one (although that might be low priority work).
So, when OFTW, at least one GiveWell charity and presumably others are forwarded this op-ed by potential or actual major donors, and there is crickets ‘from EA’ in response, I think it’s pretty reasonable to say ‘this seems like a good idea—can we make it happen?’
I think it’s valuable to point out a problem. The fact is that the majority of media articles about EA are negative (and often inaccurate), and this has been the case for years. Inasmuch as this is a problem, all existing efforts to solve it have failed! Listing upcoming efforts seems like more of a nice addition than a mandatory component.
I interpreted this post as also complaining about there not being any sort of consesus among EAs as a community for how to deal with negative press. Most of what you listed would not qualify as a community-wide strategy. Sure, Open Phil, CEA, 80k, etc. having some PR guidance seems awesome, but what about everyone else? I’m guessing there are many orgs, individual people who have a lot of twitter followers or whatever, etc. that don’t know how to respond to negative press.
There’s a communications strategy being drafted.
seems to be the only thing you listed that actually addresses this. Which is great! But it seems pretty unrealistic to expect OP to know that this was happening. I’m also guessing this wouldn’t have been answered in an EA forum question; questions don’t seem to gain that much traction on EA forum, and the vast majority of users probably had no clue a communications strategy was being drafted.