You make a strong point, and as such I’ll emend my statement a bit—Eliezer is great at PR aimed at a certain audience in a certain context, which is not universal. Outside of that audience, he is not great at Public Relations(™) in the sense of minimizing the risk of gaining a bad reputation. Historically, I am mostly referring to Eliezer’s tendency to react to what he’s believed to be infohazards in such a way that what he tried to suppress was spread vastly beyond the counterfactual world in which Eliezer hadn’t reacted at all. You only need to slip up once when it comes to risking all PR gains (just ask the countless politicians destroyed by a single video or picture), and Eliezer has slipped up multiple times in the past (not that I personally blame him; it’s a tremendously difficult skillset which I doubt he’s had the time to really work on). All of this is to say that yes, he’s great at making powerful, effective arguments, which convince many rationalist-leaning people. That is not, however, what it means to be a PR expert, and is only one small aspect of a much larger domain which rationalists have historically under-invested in.
You make a strong point, and as such I’ll emend my statement a bit—Eliezer is great at PR aimed at a certain audience in a certain context, which is not universal. Outside of that audience, he is not great at Public Relations(™) in the sense of minimizing the risk of gaining a bad reputation. Historically, I am mostly referring to Eliezer’s tendency to react to what he’s believed to be infohazards in such a way that what he tried to suppress was spread vastly beyond the counterfactual world in which Eliezer hadn’t reacted at all. You only need to slip up once when it comes to risking all PR gains (just ask the countless politicians destroyed by a single video or picture), and Eliezer has slipped up multiple times in the past (not that I personally blame him; it’s a tremendously difficult skillset which I doubt he’s had the time to really work on). All of this is to say that yes, he’s great at making powerful, effective arguments, which convince many rationalist-leaning people. That is not, however, what it means to be a PR expert, and is only one small aspect of a much larger domain which rationalists have historically under-invested in.
Sounds about right!