Thinking of money as a universal means of exchange slightly less. Money can buy many goods and services, but not all of them. I know it sucks for nerds to hear that reputation (popularity) is important but I think it’s unfortunately a real thing, and not just on the margin.
Thinking more about what actions and trade-offs EA organizations should take such that they’re beloved institutions in 25 years’ time – and if such a thing is worth it to pursue.
The larger point I’d say that is relevant to EA is that PR scandals are very bad, and thus it’s worth doing a lot of work to make sure that what you’re doing won’t come back to haunt you.
This is why the recent scandals on FTX, Nick Bostrom’s comment, etc have been so bad for EA: It blew up their good reputation, and it’s going to be very tricky to get it back, if ever.
This fundamentally matters, because IMO EAs underestimate how good a good reputation or good PR is, and underestimate the consequences of bad reputation and bad PR is.
So from my perspective, it means that looking good matters as much as actually doing things.
Ehhh, I think this stuff is easy to overrate. Most people don’t know what EA is. There have been some missteps but I think it’s still very early on reputationally.
Also, it really depends on the amount of good.
If EA as a brand had to be retired, I’d still stand by the impact. I think currently I wouldn’t have wanted to be much more cautious in order to maintain a good brand.
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.
The larger point I’d say that is relevant to EA is that PR scandals are very bad, and thus it’s worth doing a lot of work to make sure that what you’re doing won’t come back to haunt you.
This is why the recent scandals on FTX, Nick Bostrom’s comment, etc have been so bad for EA: It blew up their good reputation, and it’s going to be very tricky to get it back, if ever.
This fundamentally matters, because IMO EAs underestimate how good a good reputation or good PR is, and underestimate the consequences of bad reputation and bad PR is.
So from my perspective, it means that looking good matters as much as actually doing things.
Ehhh, I think this stuff is easy to overrate. Most people don’t know what EA is. There have been some missteps but I think it’s still very early on reputationally.
Also, it really depends on the amount of good.
If EA as a brand had to be retired, I’d still stand by the impact. I think currently I wouldn’t have wanted to be much more cautious in order to maintain a good brand.
Naive extrapolation says that when EA becomes larger and more known, there will be more missteps, unless something changes dramatically.
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.