MichaelA🔸 comments on Some quick notes on “effective altruism”

[MichaelA🔸]

I think it might actually be pretty good if EA groups called themselves Global Priorities groups, as this shifts the implicit focus from questions like “how do we best collect donations for charity?” to questions like “how can I contribute to [whichever cause you care about] in a systematic way over the course of a lifetime?”

I think it’s true that introductions to EA and initial perceptions of EA often focus on increasing regular individual people’s donations to charity (as well as better allocating such donations to charity) to an extent that’s disproportionate both to the significance of those topics and to how much of a focus those topics actually are in EA.

But I’m not confident that the label “effective altruism” makes that issue worse than the label “global priorities” would. We already aren’t using charity in the name, and my guess is that “altruism” isn’t very strongly associated with “individual charity donations” in most people’s minds (I’d guess the term “altruism” is similarly or more strongly associated with “heroic sacrifices”). I’d guess that this problem is more just a result of earlier EA messaging, plus local groups often choosing to lead with a focus on individual donations.

(Of course, survey research could provide better answers on this question than our guesses would.)