Extendability. GP wins. Itās more natural to use GP than EA to describe non-agents e.g. GP research vs EA research, and āpolicy prioritisationā is a better extension than āeffective policyā, because weāre more about doing the important thing than just doing something well.
But it seems like GP is harder to extend to agents specifically? Currently, I can say āIām an [EA /ā effective altruist /ā aspiring EA]ā. That sounds a bit arrogant, but probably less so than saying āIām a global priorityā :P
Obviously thatās not the label weād use for individuals, but Iām not sure the alternative. Some ideas that seem bad:
Global prioritist
GP (obviously that acronym is already taken, and in any case itād just expand out to things like āIām a global priorityā or āweāre global prioritiesā)
Member of the global priorities community (way too long)
(In any case, as Jonas notes, our focus for now should probably be on brainstorming ideas rather than pitting them against each other so far. So this comment may not be very important.)
I kinda think that āIām an EA/āheās an EA/āetcā is mega-cringey (a bad combo of arrogant + opaque acryonym + tribal) , and that deprecating it is a feature, rather than a bug.
Though you can just say āIām interested in /ā I work on global priorities /ā Iām in the prioritisation communityā, or anything that you would say about the AI safety community, for example.
I kinda think that āIām an EA/āheās an EA/āetcā is mega-cringey (a bad combo of arrogant + opaque acryonym + tribal)
It sounds like you think itās bad that people have identified their lives with trying to help people as much as they can? Like, people like Julia Wise and Toby Ord shouldnāt have made it part of their life identity to do the most good they can do. They shouldnāt have said āIām that sort of personā but they should have said āThis is one of my interestsā.
I also find that a bit cringy. To me, the issue is saying āI have SUCCEEDED at being effective at altruismā, which feels like a high bar and somewhat arrogant to explicitly admit to
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...
Yeah, Iām much more sympathetic to concerns with āeffective altruistā than with āeffective altruismā, and it doesnāt seem like GP does any better in that regard ā all the solutions you could apply here (āIām a member of the global priorities communityā, āIām interested in global prioritiesā) also apply to EA.
Maybe the fact that the short forms are so awkward for GP is part of the idea? Like, EA has this very attractive but somewhat problematic personalised form (āeffective altruistā); GPās personalised forms are all unattractive, so you avoid the problematic attractor?
But it still seems that, if personalised forms are a big part of the concern (which I think they are), this is a good argument in favour of keeping looking. Which was Jonasās proposal anyway.
But it seems like GP is harder to extend to agents specifically? Currently, I can say āIām an [EA /ā effective altruist /ā aspiring EA]ā. That sounds a bit arrogant, but probably less so than saying āIām a global priorityā :P
Obviously thatās not the label weād use for individuals, but Iām not sure the alternative. Some ideas that seem bad:
Global prioritist
GP (obviously that acronym is already taken, and in any case itād just expand out to things like āIām a global priorityā or āweāre global prioritiesā)
Member of the global priorities community (way too long)
(In any case, as Jonas notes, our focus for now should probably be on brainstorming ideas rather than pitting them against each other so far. So this comment may not be very important.)
I kinda think that āIām an EA/āheās an EA/āetcā is mega-cringey (a bad combo of arrogant + opaque acryonym + tribal) , and that deprecating it is a feature, rather than a bug.
Though you can just say āIām interested in /ā I work on global priorities /ā Iām in the prioritisation communityā, or anything that you would say about the AI safety community, for example.
It sounds like you think itās bad that people have identified their lives with trying to help people as much as they can? Like, people like Julia Wise and Toby Ord shouldnāt have made it part of their life identity to do the most good they can do. They shouldnāt have said āIām that sort of personā but they should have said āThis is one of my interestsā.
I also find that a bit cringy. To me, the issue is saying āI have SUCCEEDED at being effective at altruismā, which feels like a high bar and somewhat arrogant to explicitly admit to
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...
Yeah, Iām much more sympathetic to concerns with āeffective altruistā than with āeffective altruismā, and it doesnāt seem like GP does any better in that regard ā all the solutions you could apply here (āIām a member of the global priorities communityā, āIām interested in global prioritiesā) also apply to EA.
Maybe the fact that the short forms are so awkward for GP is part of the idea? Like, EA has this very attractive but somewhat problematic personalised form (āeffective altruistā); GPās personalised forms are all unattractive, so you avoid the problematic attractor?
But it still seems that, if personalised forms are a big part of the concern (which I think they are), this is a good argument in favour of keeping looking. Which was Jonasās proposal anyway.
(Or, of course, we could cut the arrogance down by just saying āIām an early-career aspiring global priority.ā)