I really like the idea of an acronym! Thank you for taking the time to create one and write a post about it. If I may, I’d like to add another option to the table:
Collaboration
Altruism
Reasoning carefully
Impartiality
Norms (integrity, inclusion etc.)
Greatest impact
I like the word “caring” because it pushes back against the idea that a highly deliberative approach to altruism is uncaring.
I like the word caring too, so this is an interesting suggestion! A couple of comments:
Would “rationality” be better than “reasoning carefully”?
Terms that are two words tend to be harder to remember for acronyms, so that’s why I’d go with “rationality” rather than “reasoning carefully”. Greatest impact isn’t also ideal because it’s two words, and it isn’t a usual phrase used in the community.
I agree that one word is better but I think this factor is less important than other factors like clarity. Because of this, I think “Helping others” would be better than “Helpfulness.”
I also think the placement of “Cause prioritization” and “Collaboration” should be switched in the primary proposal so that “Cause prioritization” is next to “Effectiveness.”
And in the alternative proposal, I think “Cause prioritization” should be replaced with “Commitment to others.”
I strongly prefer “reasoning carefully” to “rationality” to avoid EA being too closely associated with the rationality community and people’s perceptions of it. Notably, in his post defining effective altruism, William MacAskill uses “careful reasoning.”
As for “greatest impact,” I think it works reasonably well in a sentence combining all six values: the EA community uses evidence and careful reasoning to identify causes and approaches that allow for the greatest impact from an altruistic and impartial perspective and pursues those causes and approaches in a collaborative and norm-respecting manner.
I have very little skin in the game here, as I don’t personally have a strong desire for an acronym...but my 2 cents are that “Reasoning carefully” can be shortened to “Reasoning” (or “Reason”) for this purpose with no loss—the “careful” part is implied. And I think I identify more with the idea of using careful reasoning than rationality. “Reason(ing)” also matches an existing short definition of EA as “Using reason and evidence to do the most good” (currently the page title for effectivealtruism.org)
I really like the idea of an acronym! Thank you for taking the time to create one and write a post about it. If I may, I’d like to add another option to the table:
Collaboration
Altruism
Reasoning carefully
Impartiality
Norms (integrity, inclusion etc.)
Greatest impact
I like the word “caring” because it pushes back against the idea that a highly deliberative approach to altruism is uncaring.
I like the word caring too, so this is an interesting suggestion! A couple of comments:
Would “rationality” be better than “reasoning carefully”?
Terms that are two words tend to be harder to remember for acronyms, so that’s why I’d go with “rationality” rather than “reasoning carefully”. Greatest impact isn’t also ideal because it’s two words, and it isn’t a usual phrase used in the community.
I agree that one word is better but I think this factor is less important than other factors like clarity. Because of this, I think “Helping others” would be better than “Helpfulness.”
I also think the placement of “Cause prioritization” and “Collaboration” should be switched in the primary proposal so that “Cause prioritization” is next to “Effectiveness.”
And in the alternative proposal, I think “Cause prioritization” should be replaced with “Commitment to others.”
I strongly prefer “reasoning carefully” to “rationality” to avoid EA being too closely associated with the rationality community and people’s perceptions of it. Notably, in his post defining effective altruism, William MacAskill uses “careful reasoning.”
As for “greatest impact,” I think it works reasonably well in a sentence combining all six values: the EA community uses evidence and careful reasoning to identify causes and approaches that allow for the greatest impact from an altruistic and impartial perspective and pursues those causes and approaches in a collaborative and norm-respecting manner.
I have very little skin in the game here, as I don’t personally have a strong desire for an acronym...but my 2 cents are that “Reasoning carefully” can be shortened to “Reasoning” (or “Reason”) for this purpose with no loss—the “careful” part is implied. And I think I identify more with the idea of using careful reasoning than rationality. “Reason(ing)” also matches an existing short definition of EA as “Using reason and evidence to do the most good” (currently the page title for effectivealtruism.org)