The value in discussing the meaning of a word is pretty limited, and I recognize that this usage is standard in EA.
Still, I’ve done a pretty bad job explaining why I find it confusing. I’ll try again:
Suppose we had an organization with a mission statement like “improve the United States through better government.” And suppose they had decided that the best way to do that was to recommend that their members vote Republican and donate to the Republican Party. The mission is politically neutral, but it’d be pretty weird for the organization to call itself “politically neutral”.
This isn’t a criticism of Michelle’s post or GWWC, since their usage of the phrase is (as I now know) standard in EA. (Initially I was criticizing this post, but I was confused. Sorry!) Instead, it’s a criticism of how EA uses the term generally. The “EA definition” is different from a common-sense definition.
As I see it now, “X-neutral” is implicitly “X-neutral for some purpose Y”. The way EAs use “cause-neutral”, Y is basically “cause selection”. It means that EAs haven’t committed to a cause before they select a cause. That’s a good and useful part of EA, but it’s also pretty narrow and (I claim) not the most natural meaning of “cause-neutral” in all contexts.
“Cause-neutral” sounds like a phrase whose meaning you could understand based on a small amount of context, but really you need the special EA definition. This makes it jargon. Jargon can be helpful, but in this case I think it’s not.
The value in discussing the meaning of a word is pretty limited, and I recognize that this usage is standard in EA.
Still, I’ve done a pretty bad job explaining why I find it confusing. I’ll try again:
Suppose we had an organization with a mission statement like “improve the United States through better government.” And suppose they had decided that the best way to do that was to recommend that their members vote Republican and donate to the Republican Party. The mission is politically neutral, but it’d be pretty weird for the organization to call itself “politically neutral”.
This isn’t a criticism of Michelle’s post or GWWC, since their usage of the phrase is (as I now know) standard in EA. (Initially I was criticizing this post, but I was confused. Sorry!) Instead, it’s a criticism of how EA uses the term generally. The “EA definition” is different from a common-sense definition.
As I see it now, “X-neutral” is implicitly “X-neutral for some purpose Y”. The way EAs use “cause-neutral”, Y is basically “cause selection”. It means that EAs haven’t committed to a cause before they select a cause. That’s a good and useful part of EA, but it’s also pretty narrow and (I claim) not the most natural meaning of “cause-neutral” in all contexts.
“Cause-neutral” sounds like a phrase whose meaning you could understand based on a small amount of context, but really you need the special EA definition. This makes it jargon. Jargon can be helpful, but in this case I think it’s not.