FWIW: 75 upvotes (as of now) for Michael’s post seem strong evidence that at least a significant fraction of forum readers find the name “weird” or “off-putting” at first glance. In most cases, that might be enough for people not to look into it more (e.g. if it’s one of hundreds of posts on their Facebook timeline).
Even if the other half of people find the name great, I think I’d rather go for a less controversial name which no-one finds weird (even if fewer people find it great).
Finding a good name is difficult—all the best and let us know if we can help! You could e.g. solicit ideas here on in a Facebook group and run polls in the “EA polls” group to get better quantitative feedback.
We’re definitely taking into account the different comments and upvotes on this post. We appreciate people upvoting the views they’d like to support—this is indeed a quick and efficient way for us to aggregate feedback.
We’ve received recommendations against opening public polls about the name of the organization from founders of existing EA organizations, and we trust those recommendations so we’ll probably avoid that route. But we will likely look into ways we can test the hypothesis of whether a “less controversial” name has positive or negative effects on the reaction of someone hearing this name for the first time.
FWIW: 75 upvotes (as of now) for Michael’s post seem strong evidence that at least a significant fraction of forum readers find the name “weird” or “off-putting” at first glance. In most cases, that might be enough for people not to look into it more (e.g. if it’s one of hundreds of posts on their Facebook timeline).
Even if the other half of people find the name great, I think I’d rather go for a less controversial name which no-one finds weird (even if fewer people find it great).
Finding a good name is difficult—all the best and let us know if we can help! You could e.g. solicit ideas here on in a Facebook group and run polls in the “EA polls” group to get better quantitative feedback.
We’re definitely taking into account the different comments and upvotes on this post. We appreciate people upvoting the views they’d like to support—this is indeed a quick and efficient way for us to aggregate feedback.
We’ve received recommendations against opening public polls about the name of the organization from founders of existing EA organizations, and we trust those recommendations so we’ll probably avoid that route. But we will likely look into ways we can test the hypothesis of whether a “less controversial” name has positive or negative effects on the reaction of someone hearing this name for the first time.
Sorry if this is not helpful, but I felt like brainstorming some names.
Worthwhile/Worthy Pursuits
Paths of Impact
Good Callings
Careers for Good/Change
Good Careers Advice
Altruistic Career Support
(Impactify, WorkWell seem already taken… and for the latter GiveWell might not appreciate the association)
How about just Good Careers?
The two most widely known EA organizations, GiveWell and 80,000 Hours, both have short and simple names.