Within the Existential Hope community a word that is commonly used is “eucatastrophe”. It is derived from Greek and basically means “good surprise”. Originally coined by J.R.R Tolkien, and later described by Oxford-researchers Owen Cotton-Barratt and Toby Ord to suggest that ”an existential eucatastrophe is an event which causes there to be much more expected value after the event than before.”
However, when many people hear the word, it just sounds like someone pronouncing the word “catastrophe” in an odd way, so that’s where our minds tend to go.
Because of the unfortunate connotations of the word as it is currently, we want to collect a better term for “eucatastrophe”. Be it derived from greek, latin or any other language, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that when people hear the word, they think of a big positive surprise and get excited about the future!
What is a better term for “eucatastrophe”?
Note that Owen Cotton-Barratt and Toby Ord were asked about this, and agreed that there was probably room for improvement, and suggested a thread on the EA Forum, which I unfortunately never posted—but Foresight was willing to put up a bounty. Also note that you should feel free to post ideas and discuss in comments, but to submit something eligible for the bounty, it needs to be posted as an entry to the gitcoin submission page. (I have submitted an entry, based on an idea by Ben Garfinkle and another suggestion by Toby, but if I win, the money will be donated. And no, this was not a project of Naming What We Can.)
Contest—A New Term For “Eucatastrophe”
The Foresight Foundation is currently running a gitcoin bounty of 0.15 ETH (around $500) - from their post:
Note that Owen Cotton-Barratt and Toby Ord were asked about this, and agreed that there was probably room for improvement, and suggested a thread on the EA Forum, which I unfortunately never posted—but Foresight was willing to put up a bounty. Also note that you should feel free to post ideas and discuss in comments, but to submit something eligible for the bounty, it needs to be posted as an entry to the gitcoin submission page. (I have submitted an entry, based on an idea by Ben Garfinkle and another suggestion by Toby, but if I win, the money will be donated. And no, this was not a project of Naming What We Can.)