Why aren’t more LW’s public intellectuals in the conventional sense—making appearances on radio or television news bulletins? The benefits seem obvious, if you’re okay with fame. And, It’s a position of influence and seems relatively easy to contact news organisations to say you have original research for a reputable organisation. Many of us are academics so that’s probably true. Perhaps there is even an easier way to contact many news distributes at once to get your name out there and get offers coming to you. Something easier than say manually sending out press releases for instance. Though, they are probably paid PR services, but I mean there’s probably a free service somewhere too.
The only existing ways I know are to get listed in expert databases like this one for Australia or this one for the world. I vaguely remember one run by an institute in Australia that requires experts to have completed meta-analyses or systematic reviews in their area, but it’s for consulting work not journalists and the institute gets a cut (but they are prestigious, so it’s good affiliation). Their name starts with K if I remember correctly. Don’t know why I tend to remember the first names of things, but I tend to be pretty accurate with it. There’s probably a menmotechnical explanation out there that some cogpsy LW will inform me about.
In general, having weird beliefs and politics makes it very dangerous to speak on live TV. Interviewers and editors are incentivized to make you seem crazy, scary, or ridiculous depending on where you appear. Eliezer is especially leery (justifiably so given his experiences with journalists) of this sort of thing, and he’s the most prominent LW public intellectual.
There’s also a question of need: Given that Elon Musk knows about and has given millions of dollars to the cause of AI risk, does MIRI really need to do TV publicity?
Why aren’t more LW’s public intellectuals in the conventional sense—making appearances on radio or television news bulletins? The benefits seem obvious, if you’re okay with fame. And, It’s a position of influence and seems relatively easy to contact news organisations to say you have original research for a reputable organisation. Many of us are academics so that’s probably true. Perhaps there is even an easier way to contact many news distributes at once to get your name out there and get offers coming to you. Something easier than say manually sending out press releases for instance. Though, they are probably paid PR services, but I mean there’s probably a free service somewhere too.
The only existing ways I know are to get listed in expert databases like this one for Australia or this one for the world. I vaguely remember one run by an institute in Australia that requires experts to have completed meta-analyses or systematic reviews in their area, but it’s for consulting work not journalists and the institute gets a cut (but they are prestigious, so it’s good affiliation). Their name starts with K if I remember correctly. Don’t know why I tend to remember the first names of things, but I tend to be pretty accurate with it. There’s probably a menmotechnical explanation out there that some cogpsy LW will inform me about.
In general, having weird beliefs and politics makes it very dangerous to speak on live TV. Interviewers and editors are incentivized to make you seem crazy, scary, or ridiculous depending on where you appear. Eliezer is especially leery (justifiably so given his experiences with journalists) of this sort of thing, and he’s the most prominent LW public intellectual.
There’s also a question of need: Given that Elon Musk knows about and has given millions of dollars to the cause of AI risk, does MIRI really need to do TV publicity?