I agree that it is unfortunately easy to overrate reputation, or at least slide down the gradient towards reputation/looking good so hard that nothing much real gets done.
However, the point that matters most is that one should be somewhat wary of associating and praising people who are a big PR risk, since it can blow up your own reputation.
At the very least, you need to be able to know when to separate the person’s/other organization’s reputation from your organization’s reputation. That’s the big issue with people like SBF/FTX and, to a lesser extent, Nick Bostrom: They essentially tied their reputation to EA’s reputation, such that if there was a crisis in their reputation, EA’s reputation would fall too. And it did happen.
It’s usually OK to take money from even PR-risky people or organizations, but you absolutely should keep it quiet, and in particular don’t try to tie their reputation to yours, and you need a plan for how to respond to bad PR, and maybe cutting ties, or at least not-advertising the most PR risky people/organizations you take money from.
I agree that it is unfortunately easy to overrate reputation, or at least slide down the gradient towards reputation/looking good so hard that nothing much real gets done.
However, the point that matters most is that one should be somewhat wary of associating and praising people who are a big PR risk, since it can blow up your own reputation.
At the very least, you need to be able to know when to separate the person’s/other organization’s reputation from your organization’s reputation. That’s the big issue with people like SBF/FTX and, to a lesser extent, Nick Bostrom: They essentially tied their reputation to EA’s reputation, such that if there was a crisis in their reputation, EA’s reputation would fall too. And it did happen.
It’s usually OK to take money from even PR-risky people or organizations, but you absolutely should keep it quiet, and in particular don’t try to tie their reputation to yours, and you need a plan for how to respond to bad PR, and maybe cutting ties, or at least not-advertising the most PR risky people/organizations you take money from.
Yeah I think this is well put.