In a conversation about other things, Julia Galef of the Center For Applied Rationality mentioned as an aside she doesn't identify as an 'EA'. Of course, this is presumed by all to be shorthand for 'effective altruist'. I've been reading for a while these undercurrents that the identity of 'effective altruist', as a noun, as a personal label anyone can freely choose for themselves rather than a category they may or may not match, waters down what 'EA' really means, or could mean, and is becoming problematic. Of course, there are those who would say building this into some sort of ingroup-y, tribe-like identity has always been a problem, perhaps since its conception. It's a lot of the same problem many express with just about anyone identifying with the term 'rationalist', and that profession being accepted as long as that person can send the right signals, i.e., a surface-level understanding of the relevant memes, to the rest of the self-identified 'rationalist' community.
I know Rob Bensinger has for a long time expressed a preference for people referring to themselves as 'aspiring rationalists', or 'aspiring effective altruists'. I think this won't work, as that's so long a phrase as to strike most as unwieldy in casual parlance. At best, I think people will shrug, assume others will know the 'aspiring' is implied and implicitly tacked onto the use of the terms 'EA', 'effective altruists', and/or 'rationalists'. Of course, others *won't* or *don't* assume that, and then somewhere in each of our minds we assume we're 'bona fide' EAs, or rationalists, that we're the real deal, whatever that is supposed to mean. I think this has already happened. I don't perceive a way to enforce this norm of thinking of ourselves, not only as individuals, but as a collective, as constantly aspiring to these ideals as an asymptote to be approached but never achieved, us being the limited and epistemically humble humans we are, unless someone like Will MacAskill and/or Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote repeated implied injunctions against anyone referring to themselves as anything but 'aspiring', when relevant.
Ryan Carey once expressed a sentiment that 'effective altruist' is something, as the movement grows, will become a shorthand for those who are involved with the global community, the 'intellectual and social movement', that call itself "effective altruism". He predicted the term 'effective altruist' will come to refer to people who identify with it, without being especially problematic. This will happen in the same way 'Democrat' or 'Republicans' refers to Americans who identify with particular political parties, without anyone assuming someone affiliated with one party or the other being for democracy and against republics, or visa-versa. I rule this prediction is correct, and has already come to pass. I thus recommend people stop making as big a deal about how the term 'effective altruist' is used. I'm not as enmeshed with the rationality community, but for policy on what to think of and how to use the label and personal identity of 'rationalist', I defer to Scott Alexander's essay 'Why I Am Not Rene Descartes'.
Most people probably haven't noticed this, but I have stopped tending to use the term 'effective altruist'. Sometimes, in discourse when everyone else is using it, I feel forced to use the shorthand 'EA', or 'EAs'. It's just convenient and I don't want to break my or anyone else's flow. However, I mentally think of this as meaning a 'community member'. That is, an 'EA' is, to me, someone who has chosen to in some capacity be involved with the body of other people known as 'effective altruism'. The extent to which one is an 'EA' is the extent to which one involves themselves in this community. A 'hardcore EA' is someone who has perhaps made their involvement in effective altruism their primary community, as opposed to some other social category, subculture, social movement, etc. The abbreviation composed of two letters, 'EA', implies this, without implying one is necessarily someone is particularly effective, altruistic, or effectively altruistic. Some people who identify as EAs will not be particularly effective or as altruistic as they ought to be, and some who explicitly eschew the label will match in their actions the ideals of effective altruism better than most. In this sense I pragmatically accept 'EA'-as-community-member, while banishing from my personal lexicon thinking of some people as truly or real 'effective altruists', and others not being so. There are just individual humans who take actions, and ever bigger groups of them, be them subcultures, companies, or nations, who coordinate some of their actions or beliefs towards common goals. When there is greater coordination among greater number of peoples, it's to varying extents useful and efficient to think of them as a unified, cohesive, atomic agent.
I know this puts me in a position which may strike most as odd. I'm just putting my thoughts down for reference. However, I hope people will remove from the marker in their brain labelled 'EA' or 'effective altruist' that there's a strong correlation or implication that anyone who uses that term to refer to themselves as automatically way more effective, more altruistic, more rational, or otherwise better than anyone else they meet in life. There may be a weak correlation there, but to the extent you interact with individuals, EA, rationalist, or otherwise, get to know them first.
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