Thanks – I agree that confusions are likely to arise somewhere as a new term permeates the zeitgeist.
I don’t think longtermism is a new term within EA or on the EA Forum, and I haven’t seen any recent debates over its definition.
[Edited: the Forum doesn’t seem like a well-targeted place for clarification efforts intending to address potential confusions around this (which seem likely to arise elsewhere)]. Encyclopedia entries, journal articles, and mainstream opinion pieces all seem better targeted to where confusion is likely to arise.
Even if the Forum isn’t a “well-targeted place” for a certain piece of EA content, it still seems good for things to end up here, because “getting feedback from people who are sympathetic to your goals and have useful background knowledge” is generally a really good thing no matter where you aim to publish something eventually.
Perhaps there will come a time in the future when “longtermism” becomes enough of a buzzword to justify clarification in a mainstream opinion piece or journal article. At that point, it seems good to have a history of discussion behind the term, and ideally one meaning that people in EA already broadly agree upon. (“This hasn’t been debated recently” =/= “we all have roughly the same definition that we are happy with”.)
Thanks – I agree that confusions are likely to arise somewhere as a new term permeates the zeitgeist.
I don’t think longtermism is a new term within EA or on the EA Forum, and I haven’t seen any recent debates over its definition.
[Edited: the Forum doesn’t seem like a well-targeted place for clarification efforts intending to address potential confusions around this (which seem likely to arise elsewhere)]. Encyclopedia entries, journal articles, and mainstream opinion pieces all seem better targeted to where confusion is likely to arise.
Even if the Forum isn’t a “well-targeted place” for a certain piece of EA content, it still seems good for things to end up here, because “getting feedback from people who are sympathetic to your goals and have useful background knowledge” is generally a really good thing no matter where you aim to publish something eventually.
Perhaps there will come a time in the future when “longtermism” becomes enough of a buzzword to justify clarification in a mainstream opinion piece or journal article. At that point, it seems good to have a history of discussion behind the term, and ideally one meaning that people in EA already broadly agree upon. (“This hasn’t been debated recently” =/= “we all have roughly the same definition that we are happy with”.)