Propose and vote on potential tags
(I have no association with the EA Forum team or CEA, and this idea comes with no official mandate. I’m open to suggestions of totally different ways of doing this.)
Update: Aaron here. This has our official mandate now, and I’m subscribed to the post so that I’ll be notified of every comment. Please suggest tags!
The EA Forum now has tags, and users can now make tags themselves. I think this is really cool, and I’ve now made a bunch of tags.
But I find it hard to decide whether some tag ideas are worth including, vs being too fine-grained or too similar to existing tags. I also feel some hesitation about taking too much unilateral action. I imagine some other forum users might feel the same way about tag ideas they have, some of which might be really good! (See also this thread.)
So I propose that this post becomes a thread where people can comment with a tag idea there’s somewhat unsure about, and then other people can upvote it or downvote it based on whether they think it should indeed be its own tag. Details:
I am not saying you should always comment here before making a tag. I have neither the power nor the inclination to stop you just making tags you’re fairly confident should exist!
I suggest having a low bar for commenting here, such as “this is just a thought that occurred to me” or “5% chance this tag should exist”. It’s often good to be open to raising all sorts of ideas when brainstorming, and apply most of the screening pressure after the ideas are raised.
The tag ideas I’ve commented about myself are all “just spitballing”.
Feel free to also propose alternative tag labels, propose a rough tag description, note what other tags are related to this one, note what you see as the arguments for and against that tag, and/or list some posts that would be included in this tag. (But also feel free to simply suggest a tag label.)
Feel free to comment on other people’s ideas to do any of the above things (propose alternative labels, etc.).
Make a separate comment for each tag idea.
Probably upvote or downvote just based on the tag idea itself; to address the extra ideas in the comment (e.g., the proposed description), leave a reply.
Maybe try not to hold back with the downvotes. People commenting here would do so specifically because they want other people’s honest input, and they never claimed their tag idea was definitely good so the downvote isn’t really disagreeing with them.
Also feel free to use this as a thread to discuss (and upvote or downvote suggestions regarding) existing tags that might not be worth having, or might be worth renaming or tweaking the scope of, or what-have-you. For example, I created the tag Political Polarisation, but I’ve also left a comment here about whether it should be changed or removed.
- Our plans for hosting an EA wiki on the Forum by (2 Mar 2021 12:45 UTC; 124 points)
- Reworking the Tagging System by (24 Jan 2021 18:03 UTC; 24 points)
- 's comment on EA Forum update: New editor! (And more) by (5 Aug 2020 0:34 UTC; 2 points)
- 's comment on Our plans for hosting an EA wiki on the Forum by (3 Mar 2021 3:52 UTC; 2 points)
Political Polarisation
I already made this tag, but maybe it should be removed.
Arguments against its existence:
Not currently a very commonly discussed topic in EA
Arguably related to the tag Policy Change
Maybe there’s some other tag that would do a better job covering this and related matters. Super rough ideas: Cultural Forces; Culture, Politics, & Norms; Institutions & Norms
Arguments for its existence:
Some EAs seem quite interested in this
Interest may be increasing: There were 3 posts on the topic just this year, which each got decent to large amounts of attention
There may also be a lot of interest in this on LessWrong? If so, this may ultimately spill over to more interest here?
My shortform collection of posts on the topic got 17 karma
I like Lists, so get me a List of Lists for my tag List.
There are a number of good posts that are basically lists of links to different articles (like this one). It would be nice to be able to easily access them.
I very much share this affection for lists.
I think Collection and Resources might cover this? E.g., those reading lists from Richard Ngo have each been given that tag.
Do you think there’s still a gap for a List tag, or a way the description of the Collection and Resources tag should be adjusted?
Ahh yes, that covers it. I looked through the list of tags to check if there was already something on there; I guess I missed that one.
Now vs Later, or Optimal Timing, or Optimal Timing for Altruists, or some other name.
This would be intended to capture posts relevant to the debate over “giving now vs later” and “patient vs urgent longtermism”, as well as related debates like whether to do direct work now vs build career capital vs movement-build, and how much to give/work now vs later, and when to give/work if not now (“later” is a very large category!).
This tag would overlap with Hinge of History, but seems meaningfully distinct from that.
Not sure what the best name would be.
Patient Philanthropy seems like the general category. Not all of it will be about the debate as to whether it’s right, but it seems like a tag that encompasses questions like, “given that I want to give later, how do I do that” seems good.
Thanks for highlighting patient philanthropy as an option, and good point that it’d be good for this tag to not just be about the debate but also how to implement the patient approach.
I’ve now made this tag, though with the name Patient Altruism. I haven’t heard that term used, but it makes sense to me as a generalisation of patient philanthropy to also account for how to use work, not just how to use donations. I’ve now also written a shortform post arguing for the term.
One worry I have is that by saying Patient Altruism rather than Patient vs Urgent Altruism, this tag puts virtuous connotations on one side but not the other. But the version with “vs Urgent” is longer, it perhaps doesn’t as naturally include posts about how to take the patient approach, and I’ve only heard the term “urgent longtermism”, not “urgent philanthropy” (though I do suggest use of the terms “urgent philanthropy” and “urgent altruism” in that shortform post).
When tags were introduced, the post said to “submit new tag ideas to us using this form.” I made a bunch of suggestions (don’t remember what they were) and probably some other people did too. Could someone who has access to results of that form paste all those suggestions here?
That sounds like a great idea!
I think ideally they’d be pasted as separate comments, so they can each be voted up or down separately. (Not saying you were suggesting otherwise.)
UPDATE: I’ve proposed the change to the tag.
Proposal: Change the EA Global tag to EA Conferences.
Since many of the tagged posts are relevant to EA Student Summit, EAGx’s etc. and the description itself is conference posts.
Markets for Altruism or Market Mechanisms for Altruism or Impact Certificates or Impact Purchases (or some other name)
Tentatively proposed description:
The posts listed here would fit this tag. Some other posts tagged EA Funding might fit as well.
I’m unsure precisely what the ideal scope and name of this tag would be.
I like it. Impact Certificates is more recognizable, but Markets for Altruism is more general. I think I agree with your favoring it.
Cool, thanks for the input—given that, I’ve now made the tag, with the name Markets for Altruism :)
I think it wouldbe useful to be able to see all the posts from a particular organisation all at once on the forum. For the most part, individuals from those organisations post, rather than a single organisation account it can be difficult to see e.g. all of Rethink Priorities’ research on a given topic
Curious to hear if people think it’s better to have tags or sequences for group these posts?
New issue: How do we deal with name changes ? (E.g. EAF became CLR, .impact became rethink charity)
I think it’s nice to have a single tag (the new name) for continuity but sometimes an org had a different focus or projects associated with the old name.
Maybe it’s enough to mention in the tag description “previously called X”?
Update: I’ve now made tags for Rethink Priorities, Future of Humanity Institute, and Global Priorities Institute. I believe I’ve tagged all RP posts. I wasn’t very thorough in tagging FHI or GPI posts. Other people can tag additional FHI and GPI posts, and/or add tags for other orgs.
I think something like this would be a good idea :)
Some thoughts:
One downside could be that we might end up with quite a few of these tags, which then clutter up the tags page.
Maybe it’d be best if the Forum team can set it up so there’s a separate, collapsable part of the tags page just for all the organisation tags?
That might also make it easier for someone who’s looking for org tags in general (without knowing what specific orgs might have tags) to find them.
Most EA organisations probably already have pages on their site where you can find all/most their research outputs. E.g., Rethink Priorities’ publications page.
But one thing tags allows you to do is (from the home page of the forum) filter by multiple tags at once. So you could e.g. filter by both the Rethink Priorities tag and the Wild Animal Welfare tag, to find all of Rethink’s posts related to that topic.
That said, I’ve never actually used the approach of filtering by multiple tags myself.
And the lists of publications on an org’s site may often be organised by broad topic area anyway. Though this could still be useful if you want to see if an org wrote something related to a concept/topic they probably wouldn’t organise their pages by (perhaps because it’s cross-cutting, slightly obscure, or wasn’t the main focus of the post) - e.g., if you want to see whether Rethink has written anything related to patient altruism.
I think tags might be better than sequences for this purpose. One reason is the above-mentioned benefit of allowing for filtering by both org and some tag. Another reason is that these posts usually won’t really be sequences in the usual sense—it won’t be the case that the order of publication is the most natural order of reading, and that one gains a lot from reading them all together. (Though some subset of each org’s posts may be a sequence, e.g. Rethink’s nuclear risk stuff.)
A complexity might be deciding which orgs should have tags—in particular, should orgs which aren’t especially prominent or don’t post often have tags?
Maybe some forum users can just make tags for orgs they want there to be tags for, and then orgs can make tags for themselves if they want, and we can see what results.
(It happens to be that I’ll be working at Rethink soon, but this comment was just my own opinion, and I only used them as an example because Vaidehi did.)
I agree that tags seem better than sequences.
I think rather than specific tags, it may be better to just have them regular tags. This would solve the issue about which organisations get org tags. I think it’s okay for people to tag their own early stage projects or orgs even if they aren’t very big (I’m biased here as I have some projects which I would like to be able to link people to).
I don’t think there’s a lot of risk—having a tag doesn’t mean your project is endorsed by EA or anything, it’s just a organisational tool.
I think this is probably the best strategy!
Also congrats on starting at Rethink :)
A possibility would be to add the organization as a coauthor for all official posts.
I’ve added a Meta-Science tag. I’d love for some help with clarifying the distinction between it and Scientific Progress.
Generally, I imagine meta-science as being more focused on specific aspects of the academic ecosystem and scientific progress to be related more to the general properties of scientific advances. There is clearly an overlap there, but I’m not sure where exactly to set the boundaries.
I think the overlap would be a if say, in the field of survey methodology, someone discovers a new way to measure bias in surveys—this would be a meta-science improvement but also scientific progress in the field of survey methodology
I’m surprised that “cost-effectiveness evaluation” doesn’t exist yet.
Some others that it’s weird enough that they don’t exist yet: “meta-charities”, “advocacy”, “pandemic preparedness”.
A couple of tags that would apply to all of my posts: “aging research”, “scientific research”.
I’d be in favor of all of those tags, except “pandemic preparedness” which I currently think is too overlapping with “Biosecurity”.
I’d say “scientific research” is probably covered by Scientific Progress, Research Methods, and tags about specific areas scientific research can be done in?
I think I’m in favour of a Cost-Effectiveness Evaluation tag. (Or maybe Cost-Effectiveness Analysis? I think that’s the more common term?)
That seems similar to Impact Assessment (a tag I made last month), so some of my thoughts on that tag might also be relevant. But I think Cost-Effectiveness Analysis is probably different enough from existing tags to be worth having.
Would be good if tags always had descriptions/definitions of the things they’re for.
Agreed. I think people creating tags should probably always add those descriptions/definitions.
One thing I’d note is that anyone can add descriptions/definitions for tags, even if they didn’t create them. This could be hard if you’re not sure what the scope was meant to be, but if you think you know what the scope was meant to be, you could consider adding a description/definition yourself.
(Update: I’ve now made this tag.)
Operations
Arguments against
Maybe overlaps somewhat with Org Strategy, EA Hiring, and Entrepreneurship
Maybe not very many posts on the forum that are especially related to operations in particular
Arguments for:
I’d guess there are at least 5 relevant posts
Some posts with the above-mentioned tags might be relevant
I’d guess there’ll be more relevant posts in future
I’d guess at least a few EA forum users would appreciate seeing a collection of posts on this
Update: I’ve now made this tag.
[Something about war, armed conflict, or great power conflict]
Arguments against:
Arguably a subset of International Relations.
Also overlaps with some tags like Nuclear Weapons and Existential Risk.
Arguments for:
Arguably a very important subset of International Relations, which might warrant a tag of its own.
Arguably not entirely a subset of International Relations, as things like civil/intrastate armed conflicts could also be important. (But maybe any EA Forum post that covers that would in practice also cover other International Relations things.)
What do you think about a tag for posts that include Elicit predictions? I’d like to see all posts that include them and it might be a tiny further reminder to use them more.
This seems plausibly useful to me.
Obviously it’d overlap a lot with the Forecasting tag. But if it’s the case that several posts include Elicit forecasts but most posts tagged Forecasting don’t include Elicit forecasts, then I imagine a separate tag for Elicit forecasts could be useful. (Basically, what I’m thinking about is whether there would be cases in which it’d be useful for someone to find / be sent a collection of links to just posts with Elicit forecasts, with the Forecasting tag not covering their needs well.)
But maybe a better option would be to mirror LessWrong in having a tag for posts about forecasting and another tag for posts that include actual forecasts (see here)? (Or maybe the latter tag should only include posts that quite prominently include forecasts, rather than just including them in passing here and there.) Because maybe people would also want to see posts with Metaculus forecasts in them, or forecasts from Good Judgement Inc, or just forecasts from individual EAs but not using those platforms. And I’d guess it’d make more sense to have one tag where all of these things can be found than to try to have a separate tag for each.
(That’s just my quick thoughts in a tired state, though.)
It could also be handy to have a tag for posts relevant to “Ought / Elicit”—I think it’d probably be good to bundle them together but note Elicit explicitly—similarly to how there’s now tags for posts relevant to each of a few other orgs (e.g. Rethink Priorities, FHI, GPI, QURI). So maybe the combination of a tag for posts that contain actual forecasts and a tag for Ought / Elicit would serve the role a tag for posts containing Elicit forecasts would?
Update: I’ve now made this tag.
Charitable pledges or Altruistic pledges or Giving pledges (but that could be confused with the Giving Pledge specifically) or Donation pledges or similar
Maybe the first two names are good in that they could capture pledges about resources other than money (e.g., time)? But I can’t off the top of my head think of any non-monetary altruistic pledges.
This could serve as an entry on this important-seeming topic in general, and as a directory to a bunch of other entries or orgs on specific pledges (e.g., Giving Pledge, GWWC Pledge, Generation Pledge, Founders Pledge).
See also this post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/W2f7AZEe2kCoZhwrf/a-list-of-ea-donation-pledges-gwwc-etc
EA vs Non-EA Orgs
Proposed tag description:
Alternative tag names:
EA vs Non-EA Organisations
EA and Non-EA Orgs
Explicitly EA Careers vs Other Careers
Explicitly EA vs Other Careers
Other ideas?
Some posts that would fit this tag:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vHPR95Gnsa3Gkgjof/consider-a-wider-range-of-jobs-paths-and-problems-if-you
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jmbP9rwXncfa32seH/after-one-year-of-applying-for-ea-jobs-it-is-really-really
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Lms9WjQawfqERwjBS/the-career-and-the-community
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yAFXfuwsebEhNgLTf/getting-people-excited-about-more-ea-careers-a-new-community
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/vMpuXz2zqS8iHya7i/ea-jobs-provide-scarce-non-monetary-goods
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mPMg9aL3HwGQ3ghK9/eas-working-at-non-ea-organizations-what-do-you-do
Maybe https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CkYq5vRaJqPkpfQEt/a-framework-for-thinking-about-the-ea-labor-market-1
Maybe https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EP6X362Q3ziibA99e/show-a-framework-for-shaping-your-talent-for-direct-work
Maybe https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YHyvjYSEQtp3nfd6c/thoughts-on-80-000-hours-research-that-might-help-with-job
Maybe some posts tagged Criticism (EA Orgs), or under the other Criticism tags
I like it. Maybe “Working at EA vs Non-EA Orgs?”
Cool, done.
I think that that name is clearer, but thought brevity was substantially preferred for tag names. But I’m personally more inclined towards clarity than brevity here, so I’ll use your suggested name. Someone can change it later anyway.
Scalably Using People or Scalably Using Labour or Task Y or something like that
Proposed description:
Notes on that description:
I’ll obviously add the links to the “See also” tags if I actually make the tag; I’m just being lazy here
Not sure all those “See also” tags are relevant enough to mention
That description is assuming the name is something like Scalably Using People.
Task Y is a somewhat different concept, and it’s less immediately obvious how the term links to the concept, so the description would need to be different.
Posts that would warrant this tag include:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uWWsiBdnHXcpr7kWm/can-the-ea-community-copy-teach-for-america-looking-for-task
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HBKb3Y5mvb69PRHvP/dealing-with-network-constraints-my-model-of-ea-careers
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/oNY76m8DDWFiLo7nH/what-to-do-with-people
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/G2Pfpkcwv3bJNF8o9/ea-is-vetting-constrained
Many of the posts that link to that post (see the “pingbacks” at the end of the post)
A sequence of small posts I’m working on
I think a bunch of other stuff on the Forum too
I’m pro. I’d call it Task Y, though I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a reason not to.
Cool, given that, I’ve now made the tag. I’ve called it Scalably Using People rather than Task Y, with the key reason being that Alex originally described Task Y as being a single task. More generally, I think that the description of Task Y wouldn’t neatly cover things like the vetting-constrained discussion or Jan’s discussion of hierarchical network structures, and I’m hoping for this tag to cover things like that as well. So I see Task Y as a subset of what I’m hoping this tag will cover.
I’m definitely open to people suggesting alternative names, though.
Industrial Revolution
We already have a variety of related tags, like History, Economic Growth, and Persistence of Political/Cultural Variables. But the Industrial Revolution does seem like perhaps the single most notable episode of history for many/all EA cause areas, so maybe we should have a tag just for it?
Some posts that would warrant the tag:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7QiXR2dv8KL4fkf9D/notes-on-henrich-s-the-weirdest-people-in-the-world-2020
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TMCWXTayji7gvRK9p/is-democracy-a-fad
Maybe https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XXLf6FmWujkxna3E6/are-we-living-at-the-most-influential-time-in-history-1
My guess is that a better tag would be “History of Economic Growth”. Because I can’t picture a case where someone wants to find things about the industrial revolution but not all of economic growth. (Unless they’re doing a specific research project, but that sounds pretty niche.)
But even still, I’d tentatively lean towards economic growth being enough. But I think that depends on how fine-grained our tagging system should be, which I don’t have a strong opinion on.
This seems reasonable. I was also unsure about my suggestion, hence popping it here rather than making it. I’ll hold off for now, at least.
Cultural Evolution
One relevant post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7QiXR2dv8KL4fkf9D/notes-on-henrich-s-the-weirdest-people-in-the-world-2020
I haven’t searched my memory or the Forum for other relevant posts yet.
This would overlap somewhat with the tags for Memetics and Persistence of Political/Cultural Variables.
I’m in favor.
Cool—done.
Update: I’ve now made this tag.
Persistence of Political/Cultural Variables (or Cultural Persistence, or Cultural, Political, and Moral Persistence, or something like that)
First pass at a description:
Posts that would warrant this tag include:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TMCWXTayji7gvRK9p/is-democracy-a-fad
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/usL8XErNqDxwoNQj8/long-term-influence-and-movement-growth-two-historical-case
Probably many others; I haven’t scanned my memory for relevant posts yet
Seems reasonable to me. Want to go ahead and create it?
Done!
One consideration I just thought of, which I do not recall seeing mentioned elsewhere, is that the optional number of tags depends somewhat on the typical tag use case.
Clicking on an article’s tags to find other related articles
As only a small % of tags apply to any given article, and this % will fall as the number of tags increases, article tag spaces will not become too ‘busy’.
Hence there should be many tags, so that each article can be tagged as usefully as possible.
Clicking on the tag list to find a specific topic
There are already so many tags it is hard to find the one you want.
This is especially an issue because any given concept often has multiple associated words, so you can’t always cntrl-f.
Good points.
Maybe the ideal for future will be to have hierarchies/categories of Forum tags? LessWrong now does this (though I haven’t looked at their system in detail).
Longtermism (Cause Area)
We have various tags relevant to longtermism or specific things that longtermists are often interested in (e.g., Existential Risk). But we don’t have a tag for longtermism as a whole. Longtermism (Philosophy) and Long-Term Future don’t fit that bill; the former is just for “posts about philosophical matters relevant to longtermism”, and the latter is “meant for discussion of what the long-term future might actually look like”.
One example of a post that’s relevant to longtermism as a cause area but that doesn’t seem to neatly fit in any of the existing longtermism-related tags is Should marginal longtermist donations support fundamental or intervention research? An analogous post that was focused on global health & dev or mental health could be given the tags that cover those cause areas, and one focused on animal welfare could be given the Farm Animal Welfare and Wild Animal Welfare tags (which seem to me to together fill the role of a tag for that whole cause area).
Agreed. Perhaps Longtermism(Philosophy) is redundant because it could be Longetrmism (Cause Area) + Moral Philosophy - if so, I’d suggest changing the name instead of opening a new tag
Hmm, I think I’d agree that most things which fit in both Longtermism (Cause Area) and Moral Philosophy would fit Longtermism (Philosophy). (Though there might be exceptions. E.g., I’m not sure stuff to do with moral patienthood/status/circles would be an ideal fit for Longtermism Philosophy—it’s relevant to longtermism, but not uniquely or especially relevant to longtermism. But those things tie in to potential longtermist interventions.)
But now that you mention that, I realise that there might not be a good way to find and share posts at the intersection of two tags (which would mean that tags which are theoretically redundant are currently still practically useful). I’ve just sent the EA Forum team the following message about this:
So I’ll hold off on making a Longtermism (Cause Area) tag or converting the Longtermism (Philosophy) tag into that until I hear back from the Forum team, and/or think more or get more input on what the best approach here would be.
ὄD
Update: I’ve now made this tag.
Fellowships or EA-Aligned Fellowships or Research Fellowships or something like that
Stefan Schubert writes:
Maybe this would be partially addressed via a tag for posts about these things. I imagine that could be useful for people who are considering running or participating in such a fellowship, or people who definitely will and want to get some insights into how best to do so.
I think the sort of thing that’d obviously be covered are the Summer Research Fellowships offered by FHI and CLR, and the Early Career Conference Programme offered by GPI.
I’m not sure whether this tag should also include:
longer things that are still training-ish (e.g., FHI’s 2 year Research Scholars Program)
non-research internships at EA orgs
research fellowships at non-EA (but potentially impactful) orgs
the fellowships some EA university groups run
I’m therefore also not sure what the ideal name and description would be.
(Update: I’ve now made this tag.)
Institutions for Future Generations
This is arguably a subset of Institutional Decision-Making and/or Policy Change. It also overlaps with Longtermism (Philosophy) and Moral Advocacy / Values Spreading. But it seems like this is an important category that various people might want to learn about in particular (i.e., not just as part of learning about institutional decision-making more broadly), and like there are many EA Forum posts about this in particular.
(Update: I’ve now made this tag.)
China (or maybe something broader like BRICS or Rising Powers)
Rough proposed description:
It seems perhaps odd to single China out for a tag while not having tags for e.g. USA, Southeast Asia, ASEAN, United Nations, Middle Powers. But we do have a tag for posts relevant to the European Union. And China does seem like a particularly important topic, and one that it makes sense to have a specific tag for. And maybe we should indeed have tags for United Nations and Middle Powers.
I’d be interested in thoughts on whether BRICS, Rising Powers, or something else would be a better label/scope for this tag than China.
Update: I’ve created the tag “Discussion Norms”
Community Norms/Discussion Norms
Very Bad Description: Posts that discuss norms on how EAs to interact with each other.
Posts this tag could apply to:
Robert Wiblin, Six Ways To Get Along With People Who Are Totally Wrong*
Jess Whittlestone, Supportive Scepticism
Michelle Hutchinson and Jess Whittlestone, Supportive Scepticism in Practice
Owen Cotton-Barratt, Keeping the Effective Altruism movement welcoming
The extraordinary value of ordinary norms by Emily Tench
Me, Suggestions for Online EA Discussion Norms
Considering Considerateness: Why communities of do-gooders should be exceptionally considerate by Stefan Schubert
Issues with existing tags:
Cooperation & Coordination—this seems more high-level or strategic like donor coordination. But I’m quite uncertain—it could be include disucsion norms. I think there’s probably value for a separate tag though, because this is the kind of thing group organisers would find useful and could be quickly shared with people.
Community—applies but is too broad, so doesn’t help identify these posts
Movement Strategy—also too broad
Diversity & Inclusion—too narrow—not all community norms are about D&I
EA Messaging—too narrow—sometimes relevant when disucssing how you might talk to non-EAs in an EA setting (e.g. a newcomer at an event)
My quick, personal take is that:
A tag for Discussion Norms seems useful and distinct from the other tags you mention. It also wouldn’t have to only be about discussion norms for intra-EA interactions—it could also be about discussion norms in other contexts.
“Community Norms” and “Posts that discuss norms on how EAs to interact with each other” feel very broad to me, and it’s harder for me to see precisely what that’s trying to point at that isn’t captured by one of the first three other tags you mention.
But I have a feeling that something like Community Norms/Discussion Norms could have a clear scope that’s useful and distinct from the other tags. Maybe if you just try flesh out what you mean a little more in the description it’d be clear to me?
Maybe what you have in mind will often relate to things like being welcoming, supportive, and considerate? If so, maybe adjusting the tag label or description in light of that could help?
I think Discussion Norms makes sense!
Discussion Norms: Posts about suggested or encouraged norms within the EA community on how to interact with other EAs, which may often relate to being supportive, welcoming and considerate.
It’s still not great, if you had any feedback I’d be keen to hear it!
Anyone have thoughts on this tag? I’m skeptical, but might be more inclined if I saw more applications that were good. Also if it had a description that described it’s naturalness as a category in the EA-sphere. (If this were a business forum it would obviously be good, and maybe it is in this Forum — I’m not sure.)
My quick take is that it does seem like it at least needs a description that explains why it warrants an EA Forum tag. I’d wonder, for example, whether it’s meant to just be about scaling organisations (e.g., EA orgs), or also about scaling things like bednet distribution programs. (Or maybe those two things are super similar anyway?)
Do we need both Longtermism (Philosophy) and Long-Term Future?
Personally, I think those two tags have sufficiently large and separate scopes for it to make sense for the forum to have both tags. (I didn’t create either tag, by the way.)
But the Longtermism (Philosophy) tag has perhaps been used too liberally, including for posts that should’ve only been given tags like Long-Term Future or Existential Risk. Perhaps this is because the Longtermism (Philosophy) tag was around before Long-Term Future was created (not sure if that’s true), and/or because the first two sentences of the Longtermism (Philosophy) tag didn’t explicitly indicate that its scope was limited to philosophical aspects of longtermism only. Inspired by your comment, I’ve now edited the tag description to hopefully help a bit with that.
The tag description used to be:
The tag description is now:
(The second sentence could perhaps be cut.)
For comparison, the tag description of Long-Term Future is:
(Update: I’ve now made this tag.)
Cooperation & Coordination or [just one of those terms] or Moral Trade
(I think I lean towards the first option and away from Moral Trade.)
Proposed description:
Some posts this would cover:
Effective Altruism and Free Riding
Common ground for longtermists
Various things which have the other tags mentioned above
Some of the sorts of things the Center on Long-Term Risk and 80,000 Hours have written previously, though I’m not sure how many of those specific things are on the forum
Arguments against this:
Too broad?
Maybe it just sounds that way, and a different name and/or description would fix that?
Well covered by the other tags mentioned above?
I don’t think so, really
Not enough forum posts this is relevant too?
Even if that’s true, I expect there will be more in future, or that we should just fix that by making link posts to CLR and 80k posts
Alternative idea:
A tag for Game Theory?
But that feels like a less natural category for the forum for me
I lightly think both is better than either one on its own.
Ok, I’ve now made this tag and used the name that includes both terms :)
(Update: I’ve now made this tag.)
Improving Institutional Decision-Making (or similar)
Argument against:
Arguably overlaps somewhat with the existing tags Forecasting, Policy Change, Political Polarisation, International Relations, Direct Democracy, and European Union
It might make more sense to instead change the name and description of Policy Change so it more clearly covers improving institutional decision-making as well
Arguments for:
Seems substantially distinct from any of the above tags, including Policy Change
A major topic in EA (e.g., one of 80k’s main problem areas, has a large FB group)
There are already 64 posts tagged Policy Change, and I’d guess >20 posts could warrant the tag Improving Institutional Decision-Making. So I think even if the topics overlapped quite a bit (which I’m not sure they do), they could each warrant a tag due to being big enough that the non-overlapping part is quite big.
The post that prompted this, because it’s clearly relevant to IIDM but doesn’t seem very relevant to Policy Change: Should We Prioritize Long-Term Existential Risk?
(Update: I’ve now made this tag, with the name Epistemic Humility and a description noting it can be about other, broadly related things as well.)
Social Epistemology & Epistemic Humility or [just one of those terms] or [some other label]
Some posts that might fit this tag:
In defence of epistemic modesty
Some thoughts on deference and inside-view models
EA reading list: cluelessness and epistemic modesty
“Good judgement” and its components
Maybe some other posts tagged Rationality
I really like Social Epistemology except for the crucial flaw that I haven’t heard it called that before. Without the ability for people to recognize it, I think it’s worse than Epistemic Humility. (Normally I’d prefer the more general term, rather than a term for one strategy within the space.)
Do you mean you haven’t heard the term social epistemology, or that you haven’t heard epistemic humility specifically (or debates around that) referred to by the term social epistemology?
I’d envision this tag including not just things like “How epistemically humble should we be, and how should we update given other people’s statements/beliefs?”, but also things like when we should give just our conclusions vs also our reasoning if we’re concerned about information cascades, and to what extent publicly stating explicit estimates will cause anchoring by others. Those things could arguably be seen as about epistemic humility in that they’re about how to communicate given how other people might handle epistemic humility, but saying they’re about social epistemology (or something else) seems more natural to me.
(That said, I think I’m only familiar with the term social epistemology from how it’s occasionally used by EAs, and the Wikipedia article’s lead section makes me uncertain if they’re using the term in the standard way.)
Maybe the best tag label would be Epistemic Humility & Social Epistemology, to put the term that’s more common in EA first? That’s a longer label than average, though.
FWIW, both my suggestion of this tag and my suggestion of the term social epistemology for it were prompted by the following part of Owen Cotton-Barratt’s recent post:
I have now read the post that contains Social Epistemology.
I also wasn’t clear before, but I was biasing towards one shorter label or another.
Global priorities research and macrostrategy.
I wanted to use these tags when asking this question, but they don’t seem to exist.
There is a tag on cause prioritization. But I think it’d be more useful if that tag was focused on content that is directly relevant for prioritizing between causes, e.g. “here is why I think cause A is more tractable than cause B” or “here’s a framework for assessing the neglectedness of a cause”. Some global priorities or macrostrategy research has this property, but not all of it. E.g. I think it’d be a bit of a stretch to apply the cause prioritization label to this (amazing!) post on Quantifying anthropic effects on the Fermi paradox.
I’ve now made a tag for Global Priorities Research. I currently think that anything we would’ve wanted to give a Macrostrategy tag to can just be given a Global Priorities Research tag instead, such that we don’t need a Macrostrategy tag, but feel free to discuss that in the “Discussion” page attached to the GPR tag.
I’m tentatively in favour of Macrostrategy. A big issue is that I don’t have a crisp sense of what macrostrategy is meant to be about, and conversations I’ve had suggests that a lot of people who work on it feel the same. So I’d have a hard time deciding what to give that tag to. But I do think it’s a useful concept, and the example post you mention does seem to me a good example of something that is macrostrategy and isn’t cause prioritisation.
I feel like a tag for Global Priorities Research is probably unnecessary once we have tags for both Cause Prioritisation and Macrostrategy? But I could be wrong. (Also I’m just offering my views as inputs; I have no gate-keeping role and anyone can make whatever tags they want.)
(Update: I’ve now made this tag.)
Moral Uncertainty
Argument against:
Arguably a subset of Moral Philosophy
Overlaps with Meta-Ethics
Argument for:
Arguably an important subset of Moral Philosophy
I’d estimate there’s at least 10 posts on the topic
I’d be in favor.
What’s the intended difference between Meta-Ethics and Moral Philosophy?
As I understand it, ethics is often split into the branches meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. I’m guessing the Moral Philosophy tag is meant to cover all of those branches, or maybe just the latter two. Meta-Ethics would just cover questions about “the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment” (Wikipedia).
So some questions that wouldn’t fit in Meta-Ethics, but would fit in Moral Philosophy, include:
Should we be deontologists or consequentialists?
What should be considered intrinsically valuable (e.g., suffering, pleasure, preference satisfaction, achievement, etc.)?
What beings should be in our moral circles?
Whereas Meta-Ethics could include posts on things like arguments for moral realism vs moral antirealism. (I’m not sure whether those posts should also go in Moral Philosophy.)
I noticed there’s no Consciousness tag, so I was going to create one, but then I saw the Sentience tag. Perhaps that should be renamed “Sentience / Consciousness”, and/or its description should be tweaked to mention consciousness?
(I’m putting this here so it can be up- or down-voted to inform whether this change should be made. I think the tag pages will later have the equivalent of Wikipedia’s “Talk” pages, at which point I’d put comments like this there instead.)
(Update: This got 2 upvotes, and continues to seem to me like a good idea, so I updated the name and description of this tag accordingly.)
I’ve edited this post to include our official mandate at the top. Thanks for creating it, MichaelA!
[Any 80,000 problem areas and career paths—or the additional problem areas and career ideas they mention—that are not directly covered by existing tags]
I haven’t yet looked through these problem areas and career paths/ideas with this in mind, to see what’s not covered by existing tags and what the arguments for and against creating new tags for these things would be.
(Feel free to comment yourself with specific tag ideas drawn from the 80k problem areas and career paths, or the additional ones they mention.)
(Update: I’ve now made this tag.)
Nanotechnology or Atomically Precise Manufacturing
Arguments against:
Maybe a little niche?
Somewhat well-covered by Existential Risk?
Arguments for:
Not super niche
80k highlight this a potentially important area (though it’s not one of their top priorities)
The small set of (maybe-not-trustworthy) estimates we have suggest nanotech/APM is decently likely to be among the top 10 largest existential risks we know of (given usual ways of classifying things), and perhaps smaller only than AI and bio
(Update: I’ve now made this tag.)
Space (or maybe Space Governance, or Space Governance & Colonisation, or something along those lines)
“Governance of outer space” is mentioned by 80k here.
Would perhaps just be a subset of Long-Term Future. But perhaps a sufficiently large and important subset to warrant its own tag.
Some posts this should include:
Will we eventually be able to colonize other stars? Notes from a preliminary review
Space governance is important, tractable and neglected
Off-Earth Governance
An Informal Review of Space Exploration
Maybe Lunar Colony
Maybe Does Utilitarian Longtermism Imply Directed Panspermia?
(Update: I’ve now created this tag.)
Meta-Ethics
Argument against: This is arguably a subset of the tag Moral Philosophy.
Arguments for: This seems like an important subset, which there are several Forum posts about, and which some people might appreciate a specific tag about (e.g., if they’re beginning to grapple with meta-ethics and are less focused on moral philosophy as a whole right now).
Some posts this should include:
All posts in the sequence commencing with this one: Moral Anti-Realism Sequence #1: What Is Moral Realism?
Morality vs related concepts
Maybe Hi, I’m Luke Muehlhauser. AMA about Open Philanthropy’s new report on consciousness and moral patienthood (due to some comments there and some parts of the report)
Maybe a bunch of stuff on AI alignment, cause prioritisation, and/or moral uncertainty?
Maybe Principia Qualia: blueprint for a new cause area, consciousness research with an eye toward ethics and x-risk
Change My View!
I found r/ChangeMyView recently and I think it’s the bee’s knees. “A place to post an opinion you accept may be flawed, in an effort to understand other perspectives on the issue.”
There are already a good deal of questions and posts inviting criticism on this forum, and this tag could organize them all for the people who enjoy a good, clean disagreement/discussion. It could be used especially (or only) for ideas with <50% certainty.
The subreddit itself is a cool place to go, but many issues are more fruitfully discussed among fellow EAs, or would just work better on the EA Forum.
I’m happy to learn if Change My View is actually not a good format for discussion—I just found out about it, so no harm done.
(Update: I’ve now made this tag.)
Law
Some posts this could cover:
Introducing the Legal Priorities Project
Various posts tagged International Relations, Global Governance, AI Governance (e.g., posts by GovAI and/or Cullen O’Keefe), Policy Change, Improving Institutional Decision-Making, or European Union
Arguments for:
I have a sense it could be useful to have a tag for each major field/discipline that many EAs are from and/or that is relevant to many EA areas.
The key reason is that this could maybe help people find posts relevant to their backgrounds, and think about ways they can use their backgrounds to advance EA causes.
I think Law would qualify here
I think this is the same reason why there are Facebook groups for the intersections of EA and various disciplines
And there is indeed a decently sized (153 people) FB group for Effective Altruism & Law
There’s already a tag for History, EA Psychology, EA Philosophy, and probably a few other areas
And somewhat analogously, Operations, Entrepreneurship, and Earning to Give
I also suggested a tag for Economics but haven’t made it yet.
I expect there are at least 10 highly relevant posts, and that they could be readily found by going through the tags mentioned above
Arguments against:
Overlaps with the tags mentioned above
Economics
The Economics tag would be for posts focusing on topics in the domain of economics, making particularly heavy use of concepts or tools from economics, or highlighting ways for people with economics backgrounds to do good.
Some posts that would fit:
An introduction to global priorities research for economists
Posts with the Economic Growth tag
Maybe some posts wth the Global Health and Development and Statistical Methods tags
Probably a lot of other posts, but not merely any post that uses terms like “externalities”—hence “particularly heavy use of concepts or tools from economics”
Arguments against this tag:
Overlaps/subsumes with Economic Growth
Overlaps a bit with Global Health and Development and maybe Statistical Methods
Maybe too broad a category, as economics concepts and tools are used at least a bit in a lot of EA stuff
Maybe it wouldn’t make sense to have this tag without having a tag for each of a large array of other fields/professions (e.g., Biology)
But maybe we should have a tag for each of a large array of other fields/professions?
And we already have tags for some, e.g. EA Psychology
Arguments for:
I imagine it could be nice for someone with an economics background to have an easily accessible collection of posts that are especially relevant to their background and that highlight ways for them to contribute
Analogy to the History tag, the Economics of Doing Good (Effective Altruism) Facebook group, the History and Effective Altruism Facebook group, and various other groups
Yeah, this would work. A general econ tag could focus on values other than economic growth, including equity and preventing hyperinflation.
How about a tag for global governance and/or providing global public goods? This is arguably one of the most pressing problems there is, because many of the problems EA works on are global coordination problems, including existential risk (since existential security is a global public good).
I’d agree that a tag for Global Governance would be good (thanks for suggesting it!). This could cover things like:
how much various moves towards more global governance would help with existential risks and other global and/or transgenerational public goods issues
E.g., these two posts
how much various moves towards more global governance could increase risks of totalitarianism
how to best implement or prevent various moves towards global governance
etc.
Personally, I don’t see much value in a tag for something like providing global public goods. This is partly because that matter is common to so many different EA issues. Relatedly, I don’t think many posts are especially focused on global public goods provision, relative to a huge portion of other posts. But that’s just my tentative two cents.
If no one suggests otherwise or does it themselves, I’ll probably create a Global Governance tag in a couple days.
Update: I’ve now made this tag.
Please separate global development from global health.
Global health is one part of global development, which can include political, economic and humanitarian interventions. I write on politics in developing countries, but I’m probably the only one on the forum so I don’t need my own tag.
Cluelessness
Arguments against:
Perhaps somewhat niche?
My current independent impression is that cluelessness, or some of the ideas or implications that people associate with it, is a confused and not especially useful idea, and that we shouldn’t really worry about it
(I definitely think we’re very uncertain about a lot of things and should take that very seriously, but that doesn’t require the term “cluelessness”)
(See also)
Arguments for:
Many smart longtermist and/or philosophically minded EAs seem to think cluelessness is a really important idea, and I think some non-EA philosophers write about the idea as well. The outside view says there’s a good chance that they’re right and I’m wrong.
In any case, given that many people talk and think about cluelessness, it might be useful to make it easier for people to find posts about the idea, and then ideally those posts would help their beliefs converge on the truth (which may or may not be that the concept isn’t useful).
Demandingness objection
I’d guess there are at least a few Forum posts quite relevant to this, and having a place to collect them seems nice, but I could be wrong about either of those points.
I agree it’s relevant. But we already have an article: demandingness of morality.
(It’s likely you haven’t seen it because many of these articles were Wiki-only until very recently.)
Yeah, I just spotted that and the fact I had a new notification at the same time, and hoped it was anything other than a reply here so I could delete my shamefully redundant suggestion before anyone spotted it :D
(I think what happened is that I used command+f on the tags portal before the page had properly loaded, or something.)
Antimicrobial resistance
Not sure enough EAs care about this and/or have written about this on the Forum for it to warrant an entry/tag?
(I don’t personally have much interest in this topic, but I’m just one person.)
Something like Bayesianism
Arguments against having this entry/tag:
Maybe the topic is sufficiently covered by the entries on Epistemology and on Decision theory?
Yeah, perhaps name it Bayesian reasoning or Bayesian epistemology?
Cognitive biases/Cognitive bias, and/or entries for various specific cognitive biases (e.g. Scope neglect)
I feel unsure whether we should aim to have just a handful of entries for large categories of biases, vs one entry for each of the most relevant biases (even if this means having 5+ or 10+ entries of this type)
Nonlinear Fund
Maybe it’s too early to make a tag for that org?
Instrumental vs. epistemic rationality
Some brief discussion here.
These terms may basically only be used on the LessWrong community, and may not be prominent or useful enough to warrant an entry here. Not sure.
Metaethical uncertainty and/or Metanormative uncertainty
These concepts are explained here.
I think it’s probably best to instead have an entry on “Normative uncertainty” in general that has sections for each of those concepts, as well as sections that briefly describe (regular) Moral uncertainty and Decision-theoretic uncertainty and link to the existing tags on those concepts. (Also, the entry on Moral uncertainty could discuss the question of how to behave when uncertain what approach to moral uncertainty is best, which is metanormative uncertainty.) This is because I think there are relatively few posts specifically on Metaethical and Metanormative uncertainty, and some of those that there are are also relevant to other types of normative uncertainty in a broad sense.
But it’s possible that “Normative uncertainty” is best defined as uncertainty just about regular normative ethics, such that it shouldn’t be seen as covering metaethical and metanormative uncertainty. And it’s also possible that, in any case, those concepts are important enough to warrant their own entries.
Subjective vs. objective normativity
See here and here
Disentanglement research
Defined here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RCvetzfDnBNFX7pLH/personal-thoughts-on-careers-in-ai-policy-and-strategy
Off the top of my head, I’m not sure how many posts would get this tag. But I know at least that one would, and I’d guess we’d find several more if we looked.
And in any case, this seems to be a useful concept that’s frequently invoked in the EA community, so having a short wiki entry on it might be good (even ignoring tagging).
Related entries:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/scalably-involving-people https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/research-methods
ETA: I’ve just seen this post: How would you define “disentanglement research”? The existence of that post updates me towards slightly more confidence that this entry would be worth having. And the content in that post could be useful for this entry.
Another suggestion: Research distillation or Research debt or similar
We could have:
an entry for this and another for disentanglement research (with links between them)
one entry covering both
one entry that’s mainly on one topic but briefly mentions/links to the other
neither
What I have in mind is what’s discussed here: https://distill.pub/2017/research-debt/
Off the top of my head, I’m not sure how many posts would get this tag. But maybe some would?
And in any case, this seems to me to be a useful concept that’s sometimes invoked in the EA community, so having a short wiki entry on it might be good (even ignoring tagging). But I’m less confident I’ve heard this mentioned a lot in EA than I am with disentanglement research.
This is obviously very similar to the idea of a research summary. But I think that these terms and the Distill article add some value. And the research summary tag is currently only for research summaries, not for discussion of the value of or best practices for distilling research or making summaries.
Related entries:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/scalably-involving-people https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/research-methods
Tag portal question/suggestion:
Many tags are probably relevant for more than one of the categories/clusters used on the tag portal. For example, Economic growth is currently listed under global health & development, but it’s also relevant to Long-Term Risk and Flourishing and to Economics & Finance and probably some other things.
Currently, I think each tag is only shown in one place on the portal. That might be the best move.
But maybe they should instead be mentioned in every place where they’re (highly) relevant, and where people might expect to find them? E.g., if I checked Economics & Finance and saw no tag for Economic growth, I might assume that that tag doesn’t exist and so try to make it.
Maybe there’s some elegant third option to handle this?
Crypto or something like that
Some EAs are working on or interested in things like crypto and blockchain, either as investment opportunities or as tools that might be useful for accomplishing things EAs care about (e.g., mechanism design, solving coordination problems). Maybe there should be a tag for posts relevant to such things. I’d guess that there are at least 3 relevant Forum posts, though I haven’t checked.
There are also at least two 80,000 Hours episodes that I think are relevant:
Vitalik Buterin on better ways to fund public goods, the blockchain’s failures so far, & how it could yet change the world
Radical institutional reforms that make capitalism & democracy work better, and how to get them
I would prefer Blockchain, as it is more general than cryptocurrency and doesn’t confuse people with the field of cryptology
Good points. I’ve now created the tag and used the name Blockchain.
Reasonable because the generality, though I think the cryptography ship has long, long since sailed.
ὢ2
Seems good. Maybe we should crosspost one of the recent articles on Sam Bankman-Freid.
I’ve now created the tag. Feel free to make those crossposts and give them the tag, of course :)
(I won’t do it myself, as I have little knowledge about or personal interest in blockchain stuff myself.)
Update: I’ve now made this entry
Non-Humans and the Long-Term Future
Why I propose this:
The following sorts of topics come up decently often:
Is longtermism focused only on humans?
Should longtermists focus on improving wellbeing for animals?
Should longtermists focus on improving wellbeing for artificial sentiences?
Are existential risks just about humans?
Topics like “Will most moral patients in the long-term future be humans? Other animals? Something else? By how large a margin?” also come up sometimes (though less often)
I think it’d be good to collect posts relevant to those things
Examples of posts that would warrant this tag:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/W5AGTHm4pTd6TeEP3/should-longtermists-mostly-think-about-animals
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XrRGKSvntGCZAajGk/longtermism-and-animal-advocacy
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cEqBEeNrhKzDp25fH/the-importance-of-artificial-sentience
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ocmEFL2uDSMzvwL8P/possible-misconceptions-about-strong-longtermism
Alternative tag name options:
Non-Humans and the Far Future
Longtermism and Non-Humans
Update: I’ve now made this entry
Positive futures (or Utopias, or Ideal futures, or something like that)
Proposed description:
Or maybe the “reasons to care about this topic” part is too long/my-own-opinion-y to include in a tag description?
Here’s an example of a post that would warrant this tag: Characterising utopia. I think many/most posts tagged Fun Theory on LessWrong would also fit this tag.
There are two people I would’ve sent this tag page to this week, if it existed and was populated with a few posts, and I think their upcoming work may warrant this tag. This is what prompts me to suggest this.
A bit more on my thinking on this, from a shortform post of mine:
Fermi Paradox
Arguments for having this tag:
Seems a potentially very important macrostrategy question
There are at least some posts relevant to it
Arguments against:
Not sure if there are more than a few posts highly relevant to this
Maybe this is not a prominent enough topic to get its own tag, rather than just being subsumed under the Space and Global Priorities Research tags
This is currently a wiki-only tag. I doubt many posts are relevant to this, and I suspect that “Space” should work for all of them, but we’re still in the process of figuring out how useful a tag has to be to be worth adding to the tagging menu.
Simulation Argument
Arguments for having this tag:
Seems a potentially very important macrostrategy question
There are at least some posts relevant to it
Arguments against:
Not sure if there are more than a couple posts highly relevant to this
Maybe this is not a prominent enough topic to get its own tag, rather than just being subsumed under the Global Priorities Research tag
This is currently a wiki-only tag. I doubt many posts are relevant to this, but we might make it usable again — we’re still in the process of figuring out how useful a tag has to be to be worth adding to the tagging menu.
EA fellowships
I think it might be useful to have a post on EA fellowships, meaning things like the EA Virtual Programs, which “are opportunities to engage intensively with the ideas of effective altruism through weekly readings and small group discussions over the course of eight weeks. These programs are open to anyone regardless of timezone, career stage, or anything else.” (And not meaning things like summer research fellowships, for which there’s the Research Training Programs tag.)
I think this’d be a subset of the Event strategy tag.
But I’m not sure if there are enough posts that are highly relevant to EA fellowships for it to be worth having this tag in addition to the Event strategy tag. And maybe a somewhat different scope would be better (i.e., maybe something else should be bundled in with this).
Update: I’ve now made this tag.
ITN
Proposed description:
I think this post would entirely be a subset of Cause Prioritization, but it seems like an important subset with a bunch of posts in it, and which people might sometimes want to seek out specifically.
Two posts that would fit in this tag, and that contain links to a bunch of other posts that’d fit, are [WIP] Summary Review of ITN Critiques and Factors other than ITN?
These posts would also fit:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Eav7tedvX96Gk2uKE/the-itn-framework-cost-effectiveness-and-cause
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fR55cjoph2wwiSk8R/formalizing-the-cause-prioritization-framework
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9CWNenpN3xGoMZpoN/understanding-and-evaluating-ea-s-cause-prioritisation
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5zSeorTbiKxdmzJq4/introducing-the-stock-issues-framework-the-int-framework-s
Advanced Military Technology (or some other related name)
Proposed description:
Other tags that this overlaps with include: AI Governance, Atomically Precise Manufacturing, Biosecurity, Space, Scientific Progress, Nuclear Weapons, and Biosecurity.
I think that this tag would be entirely a subset of Armed Conflict, but in my view an important subset. I think it would be a superset of Autonomous Weapons. I don’t think it would be a subset or superset of any of the other tags I mentioned (as each of those areas can but won’t always be about advanced military technologies).
One post that would fit here but might not fit any of the others of those tags except Armed Conflict is What’s the big deal about hypersonic missiles?
I agree with whoever upvoted the other of the two tags you made this day but not this one. I would want to see more posts that formed a natural cluster around this concept. The one example is good, but I can’t recall any others.
Yeah, that makes sense. I’ll hold off unless I encounter additional relevant posts.
(Update: I’ve now made this tag.)
Impact Assessment (or maybe something like Impact Measurement or Measuring Impact)
Proposed rough description:
A handful of the many posts that this tag would fit:
Rethink Priorities Impact Survey
Should surveys about the quality/impact of research outputs be more common?
Rethink Priorities 2019 Impact and Strategy
2017 LEAN Impact Assessment: Qualitative Findings and other posts in that series
Lessons from a full-time community builder. Part 1 of 4. Impact assessment
How the Giving Games Project Tracks Its Impact
Maybe Asking for advice
Maybe Do research organisations make theory of change diagrams? Should they?
Maybe Effective Altruism Foundation: Plans for 2020 for the section on “Review of 2019”
In addition to the three tags mentioned as “See also”, this tag would perhaps overlap a bit with the tags:
Forecasting
Org Update
Cause Prioritization
Community Projects
Criticism (EA Cause Areas)
Criticism (EA Movement)
Criticism (EA Orgs)
Data (EA Community)
EA Funding
Maybe some of the existing tags related to politics & policy should be deleted, and a tag for Politics & Policy should replace them?
Some relevant tags that might be on the chopping block: Improving Institutional Decision-Making, Policy Change, Political Polarisation, International Relations, Direct Democracy, and Global Governance.
I think I’m moderately against this idea, as I think the sub-topics are large/important enough to warrant their own tags, even if there’s a lot of overlap. But I thought I’d throw this idea out there anyway.
(If you hate the above idea but also hate disrupting my delicious karma, feel free to downvote that comment and upvote this one to keep the universe in order.
Or vice versa, I guess, if you’re a maverick.)
Global Catastrophic Risk
Argument against:
Obviously very related to Existential Risk, and to various other tags like Civilizational Collapse & Recovery and Nuclear Weapons
Argument for:
Conceptually distinct from all of those other tags (but it’s still possible that, in practice, posts that are partly about GCRs specifically will always partly be about one of the related tag topics as well)
Very important topic in itself, in my view
Some posts that might fit this tag but not the Existential Risk tag:
Food Crisis—Cascading Events from COVID-19 & Locusts
*updated* CTA: Food Systems Handbook launch event
“Economic Policy” or “Macroeconomic Stabilization”
Pros:
Macroeconomic stabilization is one of the areas that Open Phil works on, but it’s not frequently discussed in the EA community. This tag could be specific to macro stabilization or it could encompass all areas of economic policy (aside from economic growth, which already has a tag).
Land use reform already has a tag.
Cons:
Could already be encompassed by Policy Change or Less-discussed causes.
Can I create a tag called “EA Philippines”, for posts by people related to EA Philippines, such as about our progress or research? I’d like to easily see a page compiling posts related to EA Philippines. I could create a sequence for this, but a sequence usually implies things are in a sequential order and more related to each other. But our posts will likely be not that related to each other, so a tag would likely be better.
A counterargument is I currently don’t see any tags for any EA chapter, except for EA London updates, But these aren’t about EA London specifically—they’re just the updates they compile on the EA movement. Adding in one tag for one chapter seems harmless, but if eventually 50-100 chapters do this, things might get disorganized. Curious to hear others’ thoughts on this!
Quick thoughts:
There’s been some discussion of “country-specific tags” (and region-specific tags) here
I think perhaps decisions about general principles for country-specific tags and general principles for EA-chapter-specific tags should be made in tandem
E.g., because it’d be a bit weird to have both a tag for the Philippines as a country (e.g., about the relevance of that country for EA cause areas) and a tag for EA Philippines
Maybe the best option would be to just have country- or region-specific tags that also serve sort-of like EA-chapter-specific tags, unless there are e.g. more than 10 posts relevant to that EA chapter specifically, or more than 20 posts that’d be in the whole tag?
(This is just one possible, quickly thought up principle)
But I’m not actually sure what the principles should be
E.g., if something like the above principle is adopted, I’m not sure what numbers should be used (I chose 10 and 20 pretty randomly)
And I’m not sure how that sort of principle should interact with the option of region-specific tags
E.g., maybe it’d be best to just have a tag like Southeast Asia, and let that play roles similar to that that would be played by country-specific and EA-chapter-specific tags for each country in that region?
Or maybe if there’s a tag for Southeast Asia, that’s so broad that it then becomes useful to have an EA Philippines tag (but without there being need for a Philippines tag)?
I think it’s a good idea to go with a Philippines tag rather than an EA Philippines tag. Both are quite interchangeable because 100% of past posts (there’s 5 of them) related to the Philippines are also written by people in EA Philippines, and 100% of past posts by EA Philippines are related to the Philippines.
I think this will continue for quite a few years for ~80-100% of posts, since we expect only a few people to not be affiliated with EA Philippines but still be writing about the Philippines. I think that 90-100% of posts by EA Philippines will relate to the Philippines.
I also agree that for national EA groups, rather than have an EA-chapter-specific tag as well as a country-specific tag, we should just have the country-specific tag.
I don’t understand how a post related specifically to an EA chapter wouldn’t also be related to the country, so I think one country tag (rather than a country and a chapter tag) is enough.
I would prefer to just have a Philippines tag already rather than a Southeast Asia tag. This is because:
I think we’ll hit 10 posts soon, i.e. by the midpoint of 2021
We already have 5 past posts that could be tagged under Philippines
I have ~3 more posts coming up (likely this month) that would also be tagged under Philippines
Therefore rather than tagging these posts as under Southeast Asia, then having to move them to Philippines after we hit 10 posts, I’d rather we just have them tagged as under the Philippines already.
I think the principle should be like “If there are 5 or more posts already for a specific country or EA national chapter, and if you would want to create a tag for easier visibility of posts related to that country/chapter, then you should create a tag for that specific country already.” Let me know what you think of this principle!
That sounds good to me :)
(Though of course this is just one person’s thoughts—I have no official role in the EA Forum; I’m just a nerd for tags.)
Alright. I’ve gone ahead and made the Philippines tag here, along with a description for it. I’ve also tagged all 5 pasts posts on this topic already. The description I wrote could be a template for how other country-specific tags should be like. I felt that the description you wrote for China didn’t apply as much to the Philippines tag.
If you or anyone else wants to let me know if the description is alright, or if I should change anything, let me know!
The description looks good to me!
And I agree that it seems like it could be a useful example/template for other country-specific tags to draw on.
Country-specific tags
I just saw “creation of country specific content”as an example among the higher rated meta EA areas in the recent article What areas are the most promising to start new EA meta charities—A survey of 40 EAs. What do you think about introducing tags for specific countries? E.g. I’d already have a couple of articles in mind that would be specifically interesting for members of German/Austrian/Swiss communities.
Personally, I think:
it probably makes sense to have at least some tags to mark that posts are relevant to particular countries/regions
but that this should probably be something like 2-20 tags, just in the cases where there are several posts for which the tag would be useful
Rather than e.g. a tag for every country (which I’m not saying you proposed!)
Relevant prior tags and discussion
There are already tags for China and the European Union. The tag description for the China one (which I wrote) could perhaps be used as a model/starting point for other such tags:
And when I proposed the China tag, I wrote:
Yes, I also had something like 5-15 tags in mind. Your proposal for China makes sense to me, though I had a more “internal” perspective in mind, where EAs from the US/UK/Australia/Germany/Canada/etc. could get an overview of articles that are relevant for their specific country and are maybe indirectly encouraged to add something. So I’d write it as
Looking at the EA Survey results on geographic distribution, I’d maybe do
US
UK
Austria-NZ
Germany-Austria-Switzerland
Canada
Netherlands
France
Scandinavia
Southeast Asia
Latin America
Should we have a tag for “Feedback Request”?
We in EA Philippines have made 2 posts (and have another upcoming one) already that were specifically for requesting feedback from the global EA community on an external document we wrote, before we post this document for the general public. See here and here as examples from EA PH, and this other example from a different author.
I think it happens quite often that EAs or EA orgs ask for feedback on an external document or on a writeup they have rough thoughts on, so I think it’s worth having this tag.
A potential counterargument to this being a tag is that lots of authors (or most authors) would want feedback on their posts anyway, and it’s hard separating which ones are feedback requests and which ones aren’t. I guess the use of this tag is ideally for posts that authors specifically want answers to a few questions for, or if they want feedback on an external document, rather than just getting general feedback on their article. Would appreciate any thoughts on this!
Another potential argument in favor of having a tag for Feedback Request is it might encourage EAs to share work with each other and get feedback more often, which is likely a good thing.
In my workplace at First Circle, we have a process called “Request for Comment” or “RFC” where we write documents in a specific format and share them on an #rfc slack channel, so that people know we want feedback on a proposal or writeup in order to move forward with our work. This was very effective in getting people to share work, get feedback on work asynchronously rather than via a synchronous meeting, and to streamline and house one place for feedback requests. Maybe a tag for “Feedback Request” could also streamline things?
For example, if an EA wants to see what they could give feedback on, they could click this tag to check out things they could give feedback on.
It could also be good practice for authors of feedback requests to put a deadline on when they need feedback on something by. This is so people backreading know if they should still give feedback if a deadline has passed.
I made a tag for requests, which I think applies here if there is a specific request for feedback with timeframe. I’ll write a short post about it now.
Yeah, I think I’d personally lean towards letting the thing Brian is describing be covered by the Requests (Open) tag. This is partly because, as Brian notes, “lots of authors (or most authors) would want feedback on their posts anyway, and it’s hard separating which ones are feedback requests and which ones aren’t.”
I’m also not really sure I understand the distinction, or the significance of the distinction, between that wanting feedback on an external doc before sharing it more beyond the EA community and wanting feedback on a post before that, or an adapted form of that, is shared beyond the EA community. (One part of my thoughts here is that I think a decent portion of posts may ultimately make their way into things shared beyond the EA community, and sometimes the authors won’t be sure in advance which posts those are. E.g., MacAskill’s hinge of history post is now an academic working paper.)
That said, I’ve also appreciated the existence of Slack channels where people can solicit feedback from colleagues. (I’ve appreciated that both as an author and as a person who enjoys being helpful by giving feedback.) And the EA Editing & Review facebook group seems to demonstrate some degree of demand for this sort of thing in EA. So maybe there’s a stronger case for the tag than I’m currently seeing.
(OTOH, maybe the need could be well-met just by using the Requests (Open) tag and posting in EA Editing & Review?)
If a Feedback Request tag is made, perhaps it’d be worth linking in the tag description to Giving and receiving feedback, Asking for advice, and/or Discussion Norms?
Oh cool, yeah I guess this works!
Sorry if offtopic but how do I remove a tag after wrongly using it?
If you mean un-tagging a page, you vote down its relevance by hovering over the tag on the page and clicking the < arrow. If the relevance score gets to or below 0, the tag is removed.
If you mean deleting a tag entirely (not just from one page), I think you’d have to message the EA Forum team?
More info on tags here and here.