I thought the paper itself was poorly argued, largely as a function of biting off too much at once. Several times the case against the TUA was not actually argued, merely asserted to exist along with one or two citations for which it is hard to evaluate if they represent a consensus. Then, while I thought the original description of TUA was accurate, the TUA response to criticisms was entirely ignored. Statements like “it is unclear why a precise slowing and speeding up of different technologies...across the world is more feasible or effective than the simpler approach of outright bans and moratoriums” were egregious, and made it seem like you did not do your research. You spoke to 20+ reviewers, half of which were sought out to disagree with you, and not a single one could provide a case for differential technology? Not a single mention of the difficulty of incorporating future generations into the democratic process?
Ultimately, I think the paper would have been better served by focusing on a single section, leaving the rest to future work. The style of assertions rather than argument and skipping over potential responses comes across as more polemical than evidence-seeking. I believe that was the major contributor to blowback you have received.
I agree that more diversity in funders would be beneficial. It is harmful to all researchers if access to future funding is dependent on the results of their work. Overall, it is unclear from your post the actual extent of the blowback. What does “tried to prevent the paper being published” mean? Is the threat of withdrawn funding real or imagined? Were the authors whose work was criticized angry, and did they take any actions to retaliate?
Finally, I would like to abstract away from this specific paper. Criticisms of the dominant paradigm limiting future funding and career opportunities is a sign of terrible epistemics in a field. However, poor criticisms of the dominant paradigm limiting future funding and career opportunities is completely valid. The one line you wrote that I think all EAs would agree with is “This is not a game. Fucking it up could end really badly”. If the wrong arguments being made would cause harm when believed, it is not only the right but the responsibility of funders to reduce their reach. Of course, the difficulty is in differentiating wrong criticisms from criticisms against the current paradigm, while within the current paradigm. The responsibility of the researcher is to make their case as bulletproofed as possible, and designed to convince believers in the current paradigm. Otherwise, even if their claims are correct, they won’t make an impact. The “Effective” part of EA includes making the right arguments to convince the right people, rather than the argument that is cathartic to unleash.
Priors should matter! For example, early rationalists were (rightfully) criticized for being too open to arguments from white nationalists, believing they should only look at the argument itself rather than the source. It isn’t good epistemics to ignore the source of an argument and their potential biases (though it isn’t good epistemics to dismiss them out of hand either based on that, of course).