I think you make good points—basically all of these points came up in my mind when I read Jonas’s post and the comments there, so I’m glad you’ve already written them up nice and clearly!
That said, I think it’s also worth highlighting the following comment Jonas made on his post:
The current discussion in the comments seems quite centered on “effective altruism vs. global priorities”. I just wanted to highlight that I spent, like, 3 minutes in total thinking about alternative naming options, and feel pretty confident that there are probably quite a few options that work better than “global priorities”. In fact, when renaming CLR, we only came up with the new name after brainstorming many options. So I would really like us to generate a list of >10 great alternatives (i.e. actually viable alternatives) before starting to compare them.
Yeah, if anything this post should be positioned as an argument against Ryan Carey, not Jonas. Ryan is the one who really ran with the GP label in his comment; it was clearly just a throwaway suggestion in Jonas’s post.
That said, given how much karma Ryan’s comment was getting it’s not obviously unreasonable to prepare a top-level response. But it should be positioned in that context, rather than misrepresenting Jonas’s post.
Jonas Vollmer and others have a good argument that we should change the name of our movement from EA to Global Priorities.
Ugh, I really want to strongly object to that characterization of my post! I was mostly trying to share some concerns that I wasn’t sure what to make of, and my key recommendation was that we “might want to consider de-emphasizing the EA brand”. Rebranding the EA community was more of a tentative personal opinion, and “global priorities” was just a very tentative example for what the name could be in such a case.
I would appreciate if you could edit the post to make this clearer. I only discovered your post a day after it was posted, and am worried that people will now read my piece as saying something that I tried to avoid saying.
Otherwise, I think these are great points, and I agree with them. A lot ultimately comes down to empirical testing.
Hi Jonas. On taking a second look, the sentence that clinched me interpreting your argument as being for a name change from EA to GP (or something else) was:
“ I personally would feel excited about rebranding “effective altruism” to a less ideological and more ideas-oriented brand (e.g., “global priorities community”, or simply “priorities community”)”
I will make a note that you aren’t advocating a name change. You may want to consider making this clearer in your post as well :)
If you look back at Jonas’ post a name change was just a “potential implication”, alongside other steps to “de-emphasize the EA brand”. I wouldn’t say therefore that he is advocating a name change, just putting the idea out there.
Also he certainly doesn’t advocate changing it to “Global Priorities” specifically as you have claimed. It was just one very tentative idea he had (clue is in the use of “e.g.”).
EDIT: re-tracted as I thought AllAmericanBreakfast still thought Jonas was advocating for a name change but I misread
I think you make good points—basically all of these points came up in my mind when I read Jonas’s post and the comments there, so I’m glad you’ve already written them up nice and clearly!
That said, I think it’s also worth highlighting the following comment Jonas made on his post:
(See also my reply there.)
Yeah, if anything this post should be positioned as an argument against Ryan Carey, not Jonas. Ryan is the one who really ran with the GP label in his comment; it was clearly just a throwaway suggestion in Jonas’s post.
That said, given how much karma Ryan’s comment was getting it’s not obviously unreasonable to prepare a top-level response. But it should be positioned in that context, rather than misrepresenting Jonas’s post.
[Edited to weaken some overstrong phrasing]
Ugh, I really want to strongly object to that characterization of my post! I was mostly trying to share some concerns that I wasn’t sure what to make of, and my key recommendation was that we “might want to consider de-emphasizing the EA brand”. Rebranding the EA community was more of a tentative personal opinion, and “global priorities” was just a very tentative example for what the name could be in such a case.
I would appreciate if you could edit the post to make this clearer. I only discovered your post a day after it was posted, and am worried that people will now read my piece as saying something that I tried to avoid saying.
Otherwise, I think these are great points, and I agree with them. A lot ultimately comes down to empirical testing.
Hi Jonas. On taking a second look, the sentence that clinched me interpreting your argument as being for a name change from EA to GP (or something else) was:
“ I personally would feel excited about rebranding “effective altruism” to a less ideological and more ideas-oriented brand (e.g., “global priorities community”, or simply “priorities community”)”
I will make a note that you aren’t advocating a name change. You may want to consider making this clearer in your post as well :)
If you look back at Jonas’ post a name change was just a “potential implication”, alongside other steps to “de-emphasize the EA brand”. I wouldn’t say therefore that he is advocating a name change, just putting the idea out there.
Also he certainly doesn’t advocate changing it to “Global Priorities” specifically as you have claimed. It was just one very tentative idea he had (clue is in the use of “e.g.”).
EDIT: re-tracted as I thought AllAmericanBreakfast still thought Jonas was advocating for a name change but I misread