Extendability. GP wins. It’s more natural to use GP than EA to describe non-agents e.g. GP research vs EA research, and “policy prioritisation” is a better extension than “effective policy”, because we’re 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 “I’m an [EA / effective altruist / aspiring EA]”. That sounds a bit arrogant, but probably less so than saying “I’m a global priority” :P
Obviously that’s not the label we’d use for individuals, but I’m not sure the alternative. Some ideas that seem bad:
Global prioritist
GP (obviously that acronym is already taken, and in any case it’d just expand out to things like “I’m a global priority” or “we’re global priorities”)
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 “I’m an EA/he’s an EA/etc” 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 “I’m interested in / I work on global priorities / I’m in the prioritisation community”, or anything that you would say about the AI safety community, for example.
I kinda think that “I’m an EA/he’s an EA/etc” is mega-cringey (a bad combo of arrogant + opaque acryonym + tribal)
It sounds like you think it’s 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 shouldn’t have made it part of their life identity to do the most good they can do. They shouldn’t have said “I’m that sort of person” but they should have said “This is one of my interests”.
I also find that a bit cringy. To me, the issue is saying “I have SUCCEEDED at being effective at altruism”, which feels like a high bar and somewhat arrogant to explicitly admit to
By a similar token, one could replace “I’m/He’s an EA” with “I’m/He’s interested in effective altruism”, which would at least somewhat reduce the problems you note.
People usually don’t 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/write and hear/read things like “EAs are often interested in …”, “One mistake some EAs make is...”, 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 “EAs” to “people interested in global priorities” would be a hassle (though not necessarily net negative).
“I’m interested in global priorities” and “I work on global priorities” also seem kind-of arrogant, bland, and/or weirdly vague to me. Maybe like a parody of vacuous business speak.
Not sure how common this perception would be—we 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/criteria/desiderata more, and running a bunch of surveys. My intention isn’t really to definitively argue against “global priorities”.)
ETA: I just saw that Will Bradshaw already said things quite similar to what I said here, but a bit more concisely...
Yeah, I’m much more sympathetic to concerns with “effective altruist” than with “effective altruism”, and it doesn’t seem like GP does any better in that regard – all the solutions you could apply here (“I’m a member of the global priorities community”, “I’m interested in global priorities”) 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 (“effective altruist”); GP’s 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 Jonas’s proposal anyway.
But it seems like GP is harder to extend to agents specifically? Currently, I can say “I’m an [EA / effective altruist / aspiring EA]”. That sounds a bit arrogant, but probably less so than saying “I’m a global priority” :P
Obviously that’s not the label we’d use for individuals, but I’m not sure the alternative. Some ideas that seem bad:
Global prioritist
GP (obviously that acronym is already taken, and in any case it’d just expand out to things like “I’m a global priority” or “we’re global priorities”)
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 “I’m an EA/he’s an EA/etc” 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 “I’m interested in / I work on global priorities / I’m in the prioritisation community”, or anything that you would say about the AI safety community, for example.
It sounds like you think it’s 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 shouldn’t have made it part of their life identity to do the most good they can do. They shouldn’t have said “I’m that sort of person” but they should have said “This is one of my interests”.
I also find that a bit cringy. To me, the issue is saying “I have SUCCEEDED at being effective at altruism”, which feels like a high bar and somewhat arrogant to explicitly admit to
But:
By a similar token, one could replace “I’m/He’s an EA” with “I’m/He’s interested in effective altruism”, which would at least somewhat reduce the problems you note.
People usually don’t 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/write and hear/read things like “EAs are often interested in …”, “One mistake some EAs make is...”, 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 “EAs” to “people interested in global priorities” would be a hassle (though not necessarily net negative).
“I’m interested in global priorities” and “I work on global priorities” also seem kind-of arrogant, bland, and/or weirdly vague to me. Maybe like a parody of vacuous business speak.
Not sure how common this perception would be—we 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/criteria/desiderata more, and running a bunch of surveys. My intention isn’t really to definitively argue against “global priorities”.)
ETA: I just saw that Will Bradshaw already said things quite similar to what I said here, but a bit more concisely...
Yeah, I’m much more sympathetic to concerns with “effective altruist” than with “effective altruism”, and it doesn’t seem like GP does any better in that regard – all the solutions you could apply here (“I’m a member of the global priorities community”, “I’m interested in global priorities”) 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 (“effective altruist”); GP’s 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 Jonas’s proposal anyway.
(Or, of course, we could cut the arrogance down by just saying “I’m an early-career aspiring global priority.”)