I like this style of thinking, but I don’t think it pushes in the direction that you suggest. EA entities with “priorities” in the name disproportionately work on surveys and policy, whereas those with “EA” in the name tend to be communal or meta, e.g. EA Forum, EA Global, EA Handbook, and CEA. Groups that act in the world tend to have neither, like GWWC, AMF, OpenAI.
On balance, I think “global priorities” connotes more concreteness and action-orientation than “EA”, which is more virtue- and identity- oriented. If I was wrong on this, it would partly convince me.
I guess I intended my comment above to make three claims:
It is empirically true that those orgs/wikis you noted as having “priorities” in their names are focused on producing or collecting research, not on more directly acting on the world
Separately, to me, “global priorities” does seem to have connotations of working out what the global priorities are and less about actually acting on those answers.
Claim 1 seems to be in line with claim 2.
But I think claim 1 wasn’t the basis for claim 2; I already felt those connotations before you named those orgs, though of course I had already heard of the orgs.
But I don’t see these claims as super important, because:
We can just run a bunch of surveys and see what connotations other people perceive
Action-oriented vs research-oriented is just one of many relevant dimensions
“global priorities” is just one alternative name
I guess I see the small value of my comment as quickly highlighting small reasons to doubt your initial views and therefore additional reasons to gather more options, consider our goals/criteria/desiderata more (I like that your comment lists some general goals for names), and run a bunch of surveys.
I like this style of thinking, but I don’t think it pushes in the direction that you suggest. EA entities with “priorities” in the name disproportionately work on surveys and policy, whereas those with “EA” in the name tend to be communal or meta, e.g. EA Forum, EA Global, EA Handbook, and CEA. Groups that act in the world tend to have neither, like GWWC, AMF, OpenAI.
On balance, I think “global priorities” connotes more concreteness and action-orientation than “EA”, which is more virtue- and identity- oriented. If I was wrong on this, it would partly convince me.
I guess I intended my comment above to make three claims:
It is empirically true that those orgs/wikis you noted as having “priorities” in their names are focused on producing or collecting research, not on more directly acting on the world
Separately, to me, “global priorities” does seem to have connotations of working out what the global priorities are and less about actually acting on those answers.
Claim 1 seems to be in line with claim 2.
But I think claim 1 wasn’t the basis for claim 2; I already felt those connotations before you named those orgs, though of course I had already heard of the orgs.
But I don’t see these claims as super important, because:
We can just run a bunch of surveys and see what connotations other people perceive
Action-oriented vs research-oriented is just one of many relevant dimensions
“global priorities” is just one alternative name
I guess I see the small value of my comment as quickly highlighting small reasons to doubt your initial views and therefore additional reasons to gather more options, consider our goals/criteria/desiderata more (I like that your comment lists some general goals for names), and run a bunch of surveys.
OK, what names would we expect to promote action-orientation if “GP” wouldn’t?
I do not know. Let me try generating names for a minute. Sorry. These will be bad.
“Marginal World Improvers”
”Civilizational Engineers”
”Black Swan Farmers”
“Ethical Optimizers”
”Heavy-Tail People”
Okay I will stop now.
A friend’s “names guy” once suggested calling the EA movement “Unfuck the world”...
We can begin here.
EA popsci would be fun!
§1. The past was totally fucked.
§2. Bioweapons are fucked.
§3. AI looks pretty fucked.
§4. Are we fucked?
§5. Unfuck the world!
I will resist the temptation to further expand that list.
“Hello, I’m an Effective Altruist.”
“Hello, I’m a world-unfucker.”
Honestly, I think the second one might be more action-oriented. And less likely to attract status-seekers. Alright, I’m convinced, let’s do it :)