Thanks for this post! Another reason not to take up “effective altruism” (or other commonly used phrases in this community like “effective”, “longtermist”, etc) as part of the name is that it might make it harder for others within the community or adjacent to the community to move into the space. For example, if you are an information security expert and there’s enough demand for your services for small EA nonprofits that it makes sense for you to be a company, you might be tempted to call your company “Effective Altruism Information Security” or even “Effective Altruism Computing Consultants.”
However, in addition to the problems mentioned in the post above, you might be (accidentally) taking up a larger sector of the space than necessary. For example, now people who are looking to do infosec for large AI safety or biosecurity companies, or cybersecurity graduate students thinking of getting EA careers, or people trying to apply infosec to work on AI alignment, might wrongfully believe that you have this space “covered.” This to me is a large cost, and often when I’m in a position of authority (e.g. as a funder or advisor to a project), I usually recommend that people drop “effective”, “effective altruism” etc in their name initially.
Thanks for commenting Linch, this is a great point. I agree on this viewpoint. There are likely many benefits to meta services like the one you describe being covered by more than one org, not least the diversification of skills, focus, specialisation and resource.
Thanks for this post! Another reason not to take up “effective altruism” (or other commonly used phrases in this community like “effective”, “longtermist”, etc) as part of the name is that it might make it harder for others within the community or adjacent to the community to move into the space. For example, if you are an information security expert and there’s enough demand for your services for small EA nonprofits that it makes sense for you to be a company, you might be tempted to call your company “Effective Altruism Information Security” or even “Effective Altruism Computing Consultants.”
However, in addition to the problems mentioned in the post above, you might be (accidentally) taking up a larger sector of the space than necessary. For example, now people who are looking to do infosec for large AI safety or biosecurity companies, or cybersecurity graduate students thinking of getting EA careers, or people trying to apply infosec to work on AI alignment, might wrongfully believe that you have this space “covered.” This to me is a large cost, and often when I’m in a position of authority (e.g. as a funder or advisor to a project), I usually recommend that people drop “effective”, “effective altruism” etc in their name initially.
Thanks for commenting Linch, this is a great point. I agree on this viewpoint. There are likely many benefits to meta services like the one you describe being covered by more than one org, not least the diversification of skills, focus, specialisation and resource.