(3) Artificially filtering out positive reputational effects, then claiming that the reputational effects of openness are skewed negative.
“By “public discourse,” I mean communications that are available to the public and that are primarily aimed at clearly describing one’s thinking, exploring differences with others, etc. with a focus on truth-seeking rather than on fundraising, advocacy, promotion, etc.”
If you exclude from public discourse any benefits pertaining to fundraising, advocacy, and promotion, then you are essentially stacking the deck against public discourse—now any reputational or time-sink impacts are likely to be negative.
Here’s an alternate perspective. Any public statement should be thought of both in terms of the object-level points it is making (specifically, the information it is directly providing or what it is trying to convince people of), and secondarily in terms of how it affects the status and reputation of the person or organization making the statement, and/or their broader goals. For instance, when I wrote http://effective-altruism.com/ea/15o/effective_altruism_forum_web_traffic_from_google/ my direct goal was to provide information about web traffic to the Effective Altruism Forum and what the patterns tell us about effective altruism movement growth, but an indirect goal was to highlight the value of using data-driven analytics, and in particular website analytics, something I’ve championed in the past. Whether you choose to label the public statement as “fundraising”, “advocacy”, or whatever, is somewhat besides the point.
(3) Artificially filtering out positive reputational effects, then claiming that the reputational effects of openness are skewed negative.
“By “public discourse,” I mean communications that are available to the public and that are primarily aimed at clearly describing one’s thinking, exploring differences with others, etc. with a focus on truth-seeking rather than on fundraising, advocacy, promotion, etc.”
If you exclude from public discourse any benefits pertaining to fundraising, advocacy, and promotion, then you are essentially stacking the deck against public discourse—now any reputational or time-sink impacts are likely to be negative.
Here’s an alternate perspective. Any public statement should be thought of both in terms of the object-level points it is making (specifically, the information it is directly providing or what it is trying to convince people of), and secondarily in terms of how it affects the status and reputation of the person or organization making the statement, and/or their broader goals. For instance, when I wrote http://effective-altruism.com/ea/15o/effective_altruism_forum_web_traffic_from_google/ my direct goal was to provide information about web traffic to the Effective Altruism Forum and what the patterns tell us about effective altruism movement growth, but an indirect goal was to highlight the value of using data-driven analytics, and in particular website analytics, something I’ve championed in the past. Whether you choose to label the public statement as “fundraising”, “advocacy”, or whatever, is somewhat besides the point.