I think it’s fair to say that “aspiring” doesn’t quite fit for you. The point of that word being there is to reduce the strength of the claim: you’re focused on being effective, you’re trying hard to be effective, but to say that you are effective is different.
Maybe the slightly poor epistemology doesn’t matter enough to make up for the much clearer name… I’m not sure.
The point of that word being there is to reduce the strength of the claim: you’re focused on being effective, you’re trying hard to be effective, but to say that you are effective is different.
I don’t really want to reduce the strength of my claim though[1] -- if I have to be pedantic, I’ll talk about being effective in probabilistic expectation-value terms. If donating to our best guesses of the most cost-effective charities we can find today doesn’t qualify as “effective”, then I don’t think there’s much use in the word, either to describe an -ism or an -ist. It’d be more accurate to call it “hopefully effective altruism”, but I don’t think it’s much of a sacrifice to drop the “hopefully”.
[1] At an emotional level, I have a bit of a I’ve donated a quarter of my salary to the best charities I could find for the last five years, stop trying to take my noun phrase away reaction as well.
I think it’s fair to say that “aspiring” doesn’t quite fit for you. The point of that word being there is to reduce the strength of the claim: you’re focused on being effective, you’re trying hard to be effective, but to say that you are effective is different.
Maybe the slightly poor epistemology doesn’t matter enough to make up for the much clearer name… I’m not sure.
I don’t really want to reduce the strength of my claim though[1] -- if I have to be pedantic, I’ll talk about being effective in probabilistic expectation-value terms. If donating to our best guesses of the most cost-effective charities we can find today doesn’t qualify as “effective”, then I don’t think there’s much use in the word, either to describe an -ism or an -ist. It’d be more accurate to call it “hopefully effective altruism”, but I don’t think it’s much of a sacrifice to drop the “hopefully”.
[1] At an emotional level, I have a bit of a I’ve donated a quarter of my salary to the best charities I could find for the last five years, stop trying to take my noun phrase away reaction as well.