You have a good point. It would be completely unreasonable to ban topics in such a manner while simultaneously expecting to maintain an image of being down to earth or particularly credible to intelligent external observers. It also doesn’t reflect well on the SIAI if their authorities claim they cannot consider relevant risks because due to psychological or psychiatric difficulties. That is incredibly bad PR. It is exactly the kind of problem this post discusses.
Since the success of an organization is partly dependent on its PR, a rational donor should be skeptical of donating to an organization with bad PR. Any organization soliciting donations should keep this principle in mind.
Since the success of an organization is partly dependent on its PR, a rational donor should be skeptical of donating to an organization with bad PR.
So let me see if I understand: if an organization uses its income to make a major scientific breakthrough or to prevent a million people from starving, but does not pay enough attention to avoiding bad PR with the result that the organization ends (but the productive employees take the skills they have accumulated there to other organizations), that is a bad organization, but if an organization in the manner of most non-profits focuses on staying in existence as long as possible to provide a secure personal income for its leaders, which entails paying close attention to PR, that is a good organization?
Well, let us take a concrete example: Doug Engelbart’s lab at SRI International. Doug wasted too much time mentoring the young researchers in his lab with the result that he did not pay enough attention to PR and his lab was forced to close. Most of the young researchers got jobs at Xerox PARC and continued to develop Engelbart’s vision of networked personal computers with graphical user interfaces, work that directly and incontrovertibly inspired the Macintosh computer. But let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on the fact that Engelbart is a failure because he no longer runs an organization because the organization failed because Engelbart did not pay enough attention to PR and to the other factors needed to ensure the perpetuation of the organization.
I still have a hard time believing it actually happened. I have heard that there’s no such thing as bad publicity—but surely nobody would pull this kind of stunt deliberately. It just seems to be such an obviously bad thing to do.
You have a good point. It would be completely unreasonable to ban topics in such a manner while simultaneously expecting to maintain an image of being down to earth or particularly credible to intelligent external observers. It also doesn’t reflect well on the SIAI if their authorities claim they cannot consider relevant risks because due to psychological or psychiatric difficulties. That is incredibly bad PR. It is exactly the kind of problem this post discusses.
Since the success of an organization is partly dependent on its PR, a rational donor should be skeptical of donating to an organization with bad PR. Any organization soliciting donations should keep this principle in mind.
So let me see if I understand: if an organization uses its income to make a major scientific breakthrough or to prevent a million people from starving, but does not pay enough attention to avoiding bad PR with the result that the organization ends (but the productive employees take the skills they have accumulated there to other organizations), that is a bad organization, but if an organization in the manner of most non-profits focuses on staying in existence as long as possible to provide a secure personal income for its leaders, which entails paying close attention to PR, that is a good organization?
Well, let us take a concrete example: Doug Engelbart’s lab at SRI International. Doug wasted too much time mentoring the young researchers in his lab with the result that he did not pay enough attention to PR and his lab was forced to close. Most of the young researchers got jobs at Xerox PARC and continued to develop Engelbart’s vision of networked personal computers with graphical user interfaces, work that directly and incontrovertibly inspired the Macintosh computer. But let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on the fact that Engelbart is a failure because he no longer runs an organization because the organization failed because Engelbart did not pay enough attention to PR and to the other factors needed to ensure the perpetuation of the organization.
Yes, that would be an example. In general, organizations tend to need some level of PR to convince people to align with with its goal.
I still have a hard time believing it actually happened. I have heard that there’s no such thing as bad publicity—but surely nobody would pull this kind of stunt deliberately. It just seems to be such an obviously bad thing to do.