Currently I get the impression EA has more critics than supporters, with critical tweets getting thousands of likes and the most popular supportive tweets just hundreds. My impression might be wrong, but yeah I feel like we’re definitely doing things wrong PR wise.
I disagree with this inference. If I’d heard that (say) supportive feminist tweets were routinely getting fewer retweets than tweets critical of feminism, I don’t think I’d believe that feminists were “definitely doing things wrong PR-wise”. Tweet numbers could be relevant evidence, given some wider context, like “there’s a social trend where the most controversial and peripheral feminist ideas get disproportionately promulgated, at the expense of more central and popular ideas”, but I’m not convinced EA is in a similar situation.
I don’t have a view on whether buying Wytham was a good idea, but I do agree with Owen that we should “let decisions be guided less by what we think looks good, and more by what we think is good”. I want people to act on important ideas, and I think it’s bad when people are turned away from important ideas — but one important idea I want to spread is Owen’s, where we emphasize the virtue of performing actions you can ultimately stand behind, even if the action has bad optics.
This point is boring, but I don’t think Twitter gives an accurate picture of what the world thinks about EA. I still think there is a point in sometimes reacting to bad-faith arguments and continuing to i) put out good explanations of EA-ish ideas and ii) writing up thoughts on what went wrong. But communicating too fast, before, e.g., we have an improved understanding of the FTX situation, seems bad.
Also, as a semi-good analogy for the Wytham question, the World Economic Forum draws massive protests every year but is still widely respected among important circles.
Currently I get the impression EA has more critics than supporters, with critical tweets getting thousands of likes and the most popular supportive tweets just hundreds. My impression might be wrong, but yeah I feel like we’re definitely doing things wrong PR wise.
I disagree with this inference. If I’d heard that (say) supportive feminist tweets were routinely getting fewer retweets than tweets critical of feminism, I don’t think I’d believe that feminists were “definitely doing things wrong PR-wise”. Tweet numbers could be relevant evidence, given some wider context, like “there’s a social trend where the most controversial and peripheral feminist ideas get disproportionately promulgated, at the expense of more central and popular ideas”, but I’m not convinced EA is in a similar situation.
I don’t have a view on whether buying Wytham was a good idea, but I do agree with Owen that we should “let decisions be guided less by what we think looks good, and more by what we think is good”. I want people to act on important ideas, and I think it’s bad when people are turned away from important ideas — but one important idea I want to spread is Owen’s, where we emphasize the virtue of performing actions you can ultimately stand behind, even if the action has bad optics.
This point is boring, but I don’t think Twitter gives an accurate picture of what the world thinks about EA. I still think there is a point in sometimes reacting to bad-faith arguments and continuing to i) put out good explanations of EA-ish ideas and ii) writing up thoughts on what went wrong. But communicating too fast, before, e.g., we have an improved understanding of the FTX situation, seems bad.
Also, as a semi-good analogy for the Wytham question, the World Economic Forum draws massive protests every year but is still widely respected among important circles.