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...
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...