By a similar token, one could replace āIām/āHeās an EAā with āIām/āHeās interested in effective altruismā, which would at least somewhat reduce the problems you note.
People usually donāt do this, which I think is because we naturally gravitate towards shorter phrases. I guess this could be seen as a downside of the fact that the current phrase can be conveniently shortened.
But, of course, the ability to shorten also has an upside (saving time and space).
I often say/āwrite and hear/āread things like āEAs are often interested in ā¦ā, āOne mistake some EAs make is...ā, etc. This is more common than me referring to myself as an EA, and somewhat less at risk of seeming arrogant (though it still can). I think expanding all such uses of āEAsā to āpeople interested in global prioritiesā would be a hassle (though not necessarily net negative).
āIām interested in global prioritiesā and āI work on global prioritiesā also seem kind-of arrogant, bland, and/āor weirdly vague to me. Maybe like a parody of vacuous business speak.
Not sure how common this perception would beāwe should run a survey.
(Though I feel I should emphasise that I just see these as small reasons to doubt your views, which therefore pushes in favour of gathering more options, considering our goals/ācriteria/ādesiderata more, and running a bunch of surveys. My intention isnāt really to definitively argue against āglobal prioritiesā.)
ETA: I just saw that Will Bradshaw already said things quite similar to what I said here, but a bit more concisely...
But:
By a similar token, one could replace āIām/āHeās an EAā with āIām/āHeās interested in effective altruismā, which would at least somewhat reduce the problems you note.
People usually donāt do this, which I think is because we naturally gravitate towards shorter phrases. I guess this could be seen as a downside of the fact that the current phrase can be conveniently shortened.
But, of course, the ability to shorten also has an upside (saving time and space).
I often say/āwrite and hear/āread things like āEAs are often interested in ā¦ā, āOne mistake some EAs make is...ā, etc. This is more common than me referring to myself as an EA, and somewhat less at risk of seeming arrogant (though it still can). I think expanding all such uses of āEAsā to āpeople interested in global prioritiesā would be a hassle (though not necessarily net negative).
āIām interested in global prioritiesā and āI work on global prioritiesā also seem kind-of arrogant, bland, and/āor weirdly vague to me. Maybe like a parody of vacuous business speak.
Not sure how common this perception would beāwe should run a survey.
(Though I feel I should emphasise that I just see these as small reasons to doubt your views, which therefore pushes in favour of gathering more options, considering our goals/ācriteria/ādesiderata more, and running a bunch of surveys. My intention isnāt really to definitively argue against āglobal prioritiesā.)
ETA: I just saw that Will Bradshaw already said things quite similar to what I said here, but a bit more concisely...