I think the global poverty thing is great for PR and it’s very important to have a highly visible discourse on it in outer EA outposts like the subreddit because otherwise people see us talking about AI and think we’re a cult. There’s a serious problem on Reddit with many young people getting taken in by an intelligent, fashionable and dangerous anti rationalsphere group that grows at 300% per year. It’s very important that EA makes humanitarian noises on Reddit rather than just doing our usual thing of just helping people, to handle the antagonistic group. I used to frequent the sub trying to handle them and I think we got a reputation increase but right now my mental health can’t cope with that kind of emotional labour and the required self restraint and empathy for influential insane bpd people who will soon grow up to become journalists. There’s already at least one journalist who dedicates his career to attacking rationalsphere x risk and gets published in intellectually fashionable outlets like salon.com—there’s a very real danger imho that we’ll have a plague of these bastards soon and we’ll be considered the new far right, as this guy is already successfully painting us. We need to make more good PR noises and take a countering violent extremism approach to our adversaries, prevent them from turning young intelligent people against us.
I think there is serious neglect of PR in EA . EAs seem to be PR blind. Those who see the threat are often tempted to argue with nutters and make it worse. People forget that teens grow up to be adults with academic ppsts and journalism careers. I personally understand that mundane humanitarianism is relatively unimportant compared to x risk but we still need to look after the reputation side of things so I suggest retaining some humanitarian stuff on the highly visible outside of the movement and talking about it constantly is necessary for survival. I feel sometimes anti-superficial-bullshit-altruism sentiment in our glorious movement works as a kind of masochism where we basically fail to get credit for anything and invite irrational but intelligent and socially skilled people to attack us. We need a highly socially skilled and emotionally resilient counter-force to spout humanitarianism and take care of people’s feelings.
To respond to one specific point here. I don’t think EA exists to save young people from being taken in by antirationalism. If it acheives that, great, but I don’t think that’s our stated goal and I’m not sure it should be. I guess I worry a bit when PR concerns are ends in themselves rather than instrumental goals.
But maybe I’m wrong? I like helping people become more rational, but do you think it’s underrated by EA currently?
I’m pretty clearly Longtermist by most reasonable definitions of that phrase and think there are much better reasons to care about GHW than PR, for example the fact that future people mattering doesn’t stop me thinking that people dying of malaria is bad. I think this is also in general true of my Longtermist friends.
I think the global poverty thing is great for PR and it’s very important to have a highly visible discourse on it in outer EA outposts like the subreddit because otherwise people see us talking about AI and think we’re a cult. There’s a serious problem on Reddit with many young people getting taken in by an intelligent, fashionable and dangerous anti rationalsphere group that grows at 300% per year. It’s very important that EA makes humanitarian noises on Reddit rather than just doing our usual thing of just helping people, to handle the antagonistic group. I used to frequent the sub trying to handle them and I think we got a reputation increase but right now my mental health can’t cope with that kind of emotional labour and the required self restraint and empathy for influential insane bpd people who will soon grow up to become journalists. There’s already at least one journalist who dedicates his career to attacking rationalsphere x risk and gets published in intellectually fashionable outlets like salon.com—there’s a very real danger imho that we’ll have a plague of these bastards soon and we’ll be considered the new far right, as this guy is already successfully painting us. We need to make more good PR noises and take a countering violent extremism approach to our adversaries, prevent them from turning young intelligent people against us.
I think there is serious neglect of PR in EA . EAs seem to be PR blind. Those who see the threat are often tempted to argue with nutters and make it worse. People forget that teens grow up to be adults with academic ppsts and journalism careers. I personally understand that mundane humanitarianism is relatively unimportant compared to x risk but we still need to look after the reputation side of things so I suggest retaining some humanitarian stuff on the highly visible outside of the movement and talking about it constantly is necessary for survival. I feel sometimes anti-superficial-bullshit-altruism sentiment in our glorious movement works as a kind of masochism where we basically fail to get credit for anything and invite irrational but intelligent and socially skilled people to attack us. We need a highly socially skilled and emotionally resilient counter-force to spout humanitarianism and take care of people’s feelings.
To respond to one specific point here. I don’t think EA exists to save young people from being taken in by antirationalism. If it acheives that, great, but I don’t think that’s our stated goal and I’m not sure it should be. I guess I worry a bit when PR concerns are ends in themselves rather than instrumental goals.
But maybe I’m wrong? I like helping people become more rational, but do you think it’s underrated by EA currently?
I’m pretty clearly Longtermist by most reasonable definitions of that phrase and think there are much better reasons to care about GHW than PR, for example the fact that future people mattering doesn’t stop me thinking that people dying of malaria is bad. I think this is also in general true of my Longtermist friends.
I have thought this about PR for some time. Do you know anyone in EA who is skilled at PR?