This is in some sense a small detail, but one important enough to be worth write-up and critique: AFAICT, “PR” is a corrupt concept, in the sense that if you try to “navigate PR concerns” about yourself / your organization / your cause area / etc., the concept will guide you toward harmful and confused actions. In contrast, if you try to safeguard your “reputation”, your “brand”, or your “honor,” I predict this will basically go fine, and will not lead you to leave a weird confused residue in yourself or others.
To explain the difference:
If I am safeguarding my “honor” (or my “reputation”, “brand”, or “good name”), there are some fixed standards that I try to be known as adhering to. For example, in Game of Thrones, the Lannisters are safeguarding their “honor” by adhering to the principle “A Lannister always pays his debts.” They take pains to adhere to a certain standard, and to be known to adhere to that standard. Many examples are more complicated than this; a gentleman of 1800 who took up a duel to defend his “honor” was usually not defending his known adherence to a single simple principle a la the Lannisters. But it was still about his visible adherence to a fixed (though not explicit) societal standard.
In contrast, if I am “managing PR concerns,” there is no fixed standards of good conduct, or of my-brand-like conduct, that I am trying to adhere to. Instead, I am trying to do a more complicated operation:
Model which words or actions may cause “people” (especially media, or self-reinforcing miasma) to get upset with me;
Try to speak in such a way as to not set that off.
It’s a weirder or loopier process. One that’s more prone to self-reinforcing fears of shadows, and one that somehow (I think?) tends to pull a person away from communicating anything at all. Reminiscent of “Politics and the English Language.” Not reminiscent of Strunk and White.
One way you can see the difference, is that when people think about “PR” they imagine a weird outside expertise, such that you need to have a “PR consultant” or a “media consultant” who you should nervously heed advice from. When people think about their “honor," it's more a thing they can know or choose directly, and so it is more a thing that leaves them free to communicate something.
So: simple suggestion. If, at any point, you find yourself trying to “navigate PR”, or to help some person or organization or cause area or club or whatever to “navigate PR,” see if you can instead think and speak in terms of defending your/their “honor”, “reputation”, or “good name”. And see if that doesn’t make everybody feel a bit clearer, freer, and more as though their feet are on the ground.
I read this post for the first time in 2022, and I came back to it at least twice.
What I found helpful
The proposed solution: I actually do come back to the “honor” frame sometimes. I have little Rob Bensinger and Anna Salamon shoulder models that remind me to act with integrity and honor. And these shoulder models are especially helpful when I’m noticing (unhelpful) concerns about social status.
A crisp and community-endorsed statement of the problem: It was nice to be like “oh yeah, this thing I’m experiencing is that thing that Anna Salamon calls PR.” And to be honest, it was probably helpful tobe like “oh yeah this thing I’m experiencing is that thing that Anna Salamon, the legendary wise rationalist calls PR.” Sort of ironic, I suppose. But I wouldn’t be surprised if young/new rationalists benefit a lot from seeing some high-status or high-wisdom rationalist write a post that describes a problem they experience.
Note that I think this also applies to many posts in Replacing Guilt & The Sequences. To have Eliezer Yudkowsky describe a problem you face not only helps you see it; it also helps you be like ah yes, that’s a real/important problem that smart/legitimate people face.
The post “aged well.” It seems extremely relevant right now (Jan 2023), both for collectives and for individuals. The EA community is dealing with a lot of debate around PR right now. Also, more anecdotally, the Bay Area AI safety scene has quite a strange Status Hierarchy Thing going on, and I think this is a significant barrier to progress. (One might even say that “feeling afraid to speak openly due to vague social pressures” is a relatively central problem crippling the world at scale, as well as our community.)
The post is so short!
What could have been improved
The PR frame. “PR” seems like a term that applies to organizations but not individuals. I think Anna could have pretty easily thrown in some more synonyms/near-synonyms that help people relate more to the post. (I think “status” and “social standing” are terms that I hear the younguns using these days.)
Implementation details. Anna could have provided more suggestions for how to actually cultivate the “honor mindset” or otherwise deal with (unproductive) PR concerns. Sadly, humans are not automatically strategic, so I expect many people will not find the most strategic/effective ways to implement the advice in this post.
Stories. I think it would’ve been useful for Anna to provide examples of scenarios where she used the “honor” mindset in her own life or navigated the “PR” mindset in her own life.
But Akash, criticizing posts is easy. Why don’t you try to write your own post that attempts to address some of the limitations you pointed out?
This is in some sense a small detail, but one important enough to be worth write-up and critique: AFAICT, “PR” is a corrupt concept, in the sense that if you try to “navigate PR concerns” about yourself / your organization / your cause area / etc., the concept will guide you toward harmful and confused actions. In contrast, if you try to safeguard your “reputation”, your “brand”, or your “honor,” I predict this will basically go fine, and will not lead you to leave a weird confused residue in yourself or others.
To explain the difference:
If I am safeguarding my “honor” (or my “reputation”, “brand”, or “good name”), there are some fixed standards that I try to be known as adhering to. For example, in Game of Thrones, the Lannisters are safeguarding their “honor” by adhering to the principle “A Lannister always pays his debts.” They take pains to adhere to a certain standard, and to be known to adhere to that standard. Many examples are more complicated than this; a gentleman of 1800 who took up a duel to defend his “honor” was usually not defending his known adherence to a single simple principle a la the Lannisters. But it was still about his visible adherence to a fixed (though not explicit) societal standard.
In contrast, if I am “managing PR concerns,” there is no fixed standards of good conduct, or of my-brand-like conduct, that I am trying to adhere to. Instead, I am trying to do a more complicated operation:
It’s a weirder or loopier process. One that’s more prone to self-reinforcing fears of shadows, and one that somehow (I think?) tends to pull a person away from communicating anything at all. Reminiscent of “Politics and the English Language.” Not reminiscent of Strunk and White.
One way you can see the difference, is that when people think about “PR” they imagine a weird outside expertise, such that you need to have a “PR consultant” or a “media consultant” who you should nervously heed advice from. When people think about their “honor," it's more a thing they can know or choose directly, and so it is more a thing that leaves them free to communicate something.
So: simple suggestion. If, at any point, you find yourself trying to “navigate PR”, or to help some person or organization or cause area or club or whatever to “navigate PR,” see if you can instead think and speak in terms of defending your/their “honor”, “reputation”, or “good name”. And see if that doesn’t make everybody feel a bit clearer, freer, and more as though their feet are on the ground.
Related: The Inner Ring, by CS Lewis; The New York Times, by Robert Rhinehart.