I downvoted your comments as well, Milan, because I think this is exactly the kind of thing that should go on the EA Forum. The emergence of this term “longtermism” to describe a vaguer philosophy that was already there has been a huge, perhaps the main EA topic for like 2 years. I don’t even subscribe to longtermism (well, at least not to strong longtermism, which I considered to be the definition before reading this post) but the question of whether to hyphenate has come up many times for me. This was all useful information that I’m glad was put up for engagement within EA.
And the objection that words can never be precise is pretty silly. Splitting hairs can be annoying but this was an important consideration of meaningfully different definitions of longtermism. It’s very smart for EA to figure this out now to avoid all the problems that Will mentioned, like vagueness, when the term has become more widely known.
It sounded like your objection was that this post was about words and strategy instead of about the concepts. I for one am glad that EA is not just about thinking but about doing what needs to be done, including reaching agreement about how to talk about ideas and what kind of pitches we should be making.
I downvoted your comments as well, Milan, because I think this is exactly the kind of thing that should go on the EA Forum. The emergence of this term “longtermism” to describe a vaguer philosophy that was already there has been a huge, perhaps the main EA topic for like 2 years. I don’t even subscribe to longtermism (well, at least not to strong longtermism, which I considered to be the definition before reading this post) but the question of whether to hyphenate has come up many times for me. This was all useful information that I’m glad was put up for engagement within EA.
And the objection that words can never be precise is pretty silly. Splitting hairs can be annoying but this was an important consideration of meaningfully different definitions of longtermism. It’s very smart for EA to figure this out now to avoid all the problems that Will mentioned, like vagueness, when the term has become more widely known.
It sounded like your objection was that this post was about words and strategy instead of about the concepts. I for one am glad that EA is not just about thinking but about doing what needs to be done, including reaching agreement about how to talk about ideas and what kind of pitches we should be making.