Well, my default opinion is that we should keep things as they are; I don’t find the arguments against “effective altruism” particularly persuasive, and name changes at this scale are pretty costly.
Insofar as people want to keep their identities small, there are already a bunch of other terms they can use—like longtermist, or environmentalist, or animal rights advocate. So it seems like the point of having a term like EA on top of that is to identify a community. And saying “I’m part of the effective altruism community” softens the term a bit.
around half of the participants (including key figures in EA) said that they don’t self-identify as “effective altruists”
This seems like the most important point to think about; relatedly, I remember being surprised when I interned at FHI and learned how many people there don’t identify as effective altruists. It seems indicative of some problem, which seems worth pursuing directly. As a first step, it’d be good to hear more from people who have reservations about identifying as an effective altruist. I’ve just made a top-level question about it, plus an anonymous version—if that describes you, I’d be interested to see your responses!
Well, my default opinion is that we should keep things as they are; I don’t find the arguments against “effective altruism” particularly persuasive, and name changes at this scale are pretty costly.
Insofar as people want to keep their identities small, there are already a bunch of other terms they can use—like longtermist, or environmentalist, or animal rights advocate. So it seems like the point of having a term like EA on top of that is to identify a community. And saying “I’m part of the effective altruism community” softens the term a bit.
This seems like the most important point to think about; relatedly, I remember being surprised when I interned at FHI and learned how many people there don’t identify as effective altruists. It seems indicative of some problem, which seems worth pursuing directly. As a first step, it’d be good to hear more from people who have reservations about identifying as an effective altruist. I’ve just made a top-level question about it, plus an anonymous version—if that describes you, I’d be interested to see your responses!