RP actually did some empirical testing on this and we concluded that people really like the name “Effective Altruism”, but not the ideas, values or mission.
That’s unfortunate. But I think it suggests there’s scope for a new ‘Centre for Effective Altruism’ to push forward exciting new ideas that have more mainstream appeal, like raising awareness of the cause du jour, while the rebranded Center for ████████ continues to focus on all the unpopular stuff.
I feel like mainstream people like EA until they understand the implications and are faced with their first trade-off for who to help. To keep them engaged, maybe the new CEA could skip the prioritization part and just focus on making people feel better about their first choice.
RP actually did some empirical testing on this and we concluded that people really like the name “Effective Altruism”, but not the ideas, values or mission.
That’s unfortunate. But I think it suggests there’s scope for a new ‘Centre for Effective Altruism’ to push forward exciting new ideas that have more mainstream appeal, like raising awareness of the cause du jour, while the rebranded Center for ████████ continues to focus on all the unpopular stuff.
I feel like mainstream people like EA until they understand the implications and are faced with their first trade-off for who to help. To keep them engaged, maybe the new CEA could skip the prioritization part and just focus on making people feel better about their first choice.
Maybe a slogan could be “All altruism is effective”?