We should retain awareness around optics, in good times and bad
I’d like to push back on this frame a bit. I almost never want to be thinking about “optics” as a category, but instead to focus on mitigating specific risks, some of which might be reputational.
I don’t mean to suggest never worrying about “optics” but I think a few of the things you cited in that category are miscategorized:
err on the side of registering charitable foundations to disburse grants; to avoid putting single donors on a huge pedestal inside and outside the community; and to try to avoid major sources of funding being publicly tied to any one individual or industry.
Registering a charitable entity to disburse grants mostly makes sense for legal reasons; avoiding funding sources being too concentrated is a good risk-mitigation strategy. We should do both of these but not primarily for optics reasons.
I agree with you that we should avoid putting single donors on a pedestal, and this is the one that makes most sense to do for “optics” reasons; but it’s also the most nuanced one, because we also want to incentivize such people to exist within the ecosystem, and so shouldn’t pull back too hard from giving status to our heroes. One thing that I would like to be better about along this axis is identifying heroes who don’t self-promote. SBF was doing a lot of self-promotion. A well-functioning movement wouldn’t require self-promotion.
I think optics are worth adding in to your risk calculations, even if e.g. you think the principle risk is legal
I didn’t mention in the OP the most egregious examples of bad optics but I think some exist—I would argue flying people to the Bahamas to cowork has dreadful optics and that might be a strong argument against doing it
I’d like to push back on this frame a bit. I almost never want to be thinking about “optics” as a category, but instead to focus on mitigating specific risks, some of which might be reputational.
See https://lesswrong.substack.com/p/pr-is-corrosive-reputation-is-not for a more in-depth explanation that I tend to agree with.
I don’t mean to suggest never worrying about “optics” but I think a few of the things you cited in that category are miscategorized:
Registering a charitable entity to disburse grants mostly makes sense for legal reasons; avoiding funding sources being too concentrated is a good risk-mitigation strategy. We should do both of these but not primarily for optics reasons.
I agree with you that we should avoid putting single donors on a pedestal, and this is the one that makes most sense to do for “optics” reasons; but it’s also the most nuanced one, because we also want to incentivize such people to exist within the ecosystem, and so shouldn’t pull back too hard from giving status to our heroes. One thing that I would like to be better about along this axis is identifying heroes who don’t self-promote. SBF was doing a lot of self-promotion. A well-functioning movement wouldn’t require self-promotion.
This is interesting and I agree with much of it.
I think two extra things:
I think optics are worth adding in to your risk calculations, even if e.g. you think the principle risk is legal
I didn’t mention in the OP the most egregious examples of bad optics but I think some exist—I would argue flying people to the Bahamas to cowork has dreadful optics and that might be a strong argument against doing it