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 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.