Google has these things to say about naming organizations:
what makes a good organization name, how to name a business: short, sweet, easily pronounced, legal, alliterative if long, not prone to abbreviation, flexible, timeless, fits with other branding, not already in the dictionary with the same definition, contains a sticky consonant, surprising, seldom directly descriptive, melodious, "cool", distinct, fun to say, trademarkable, not redundant, not criminal or shady-sounding, not lurid, at most two words, not desperate, medieval, Spanish-sounding. visual element, positive connotation, associated with what you actually do, not numbered, not named for a person, not geographic, looks good printed, rememberable, no bad connotations, spellable, description of what you do in tagline rather than name, harder consonants.
OnStartups: How To Pick A Company Name:
...Customer Survey
Once we narrowed the names to around 10, we did a formal customer survey to give our users the final say. Our customers were a great help with choosing the name. We wanted the survey to be fast and simple.
The questions we asked were:
For the proposed company, rate the following names from 1 to 5 (where 1
One obvious question: when is the name most important? When first heard; Introductions.
Some common names take the form of "[identifier] [word for a group]" or similar, eg: [Rationality] [Institute]
Use online thesauruses to find synonyms for good words, make long lists of words to combine. http://thesaurus.com
Google how to come up with good names, skim chapters in marketing textbooks for meta-ideas.
Don't react fast/naturally (eg: "the name Waterline is a clever meaningful in-group signal and sounds pretty."), ask yourself how your target will react (eg: "what's that, whale environmentalists?").
Who are your targets? Intelligent ambitious young men or their uninterested 45 year old mothers? Academics? From which field? etc.
Common reaction to mention of the group will be to assume their arrogance (suggesting they can teach smartness, that they have smartness), behaving guarded but curious.
Suggestions: Insight House/ Bayesian House
Reaction: "what does bayesian mean?" it's the math (credibility+++) of how to decide (arrogance-) etc. Bring evidence into discussion if target identifies as being "logical" (young smart men).
Don't react naturally (eg: "Waterline is a clever meaningful in-group signal and sounds pretty"), ask yourself how your target will react (eg: "Oh, are they whale environmentalists?").
I think that consideration may be highly overestimated in the discussion here. Facebook isn't about faces, Twitter isn't about songbirds, google has little to do with the number "googol", The Apple Corporation isn't selling fruit... etc, etc.
A short pretty name to remember and be able to look up if you need to may be just as good as marketing. Something like "Waterline Institute" needs be clarified one ("they're talking about raising a metaphorical 'sanity waterline in the human population"), then it's a memorable enough name and visual alike.
But something like "Bayesian House" can only be clarified by making a long explanation about mathematical formulas... And it's not immediately memorable afterwards, because frankly it's just 'Bayes' is just a name, called after Thomas Bayes.
But honestly, I've never studied marketing or anything like that, so I may just be talking out of my ass here...
Another useful question is: which existing organizations do you want to differentiate yourself from?
For instance there are already companies out there monetizing the "train your brain" promise, such as Lumosity (a name which has some accidental Less Wrong annotations), Mind Sparke, etc.
Forget cleverness for its own sake, optimize for the consequences.
someone reads "InSight", their brain says "oh, I get it, they combined insight and in sight. Their name is a pun." imagines suited marketing man. Where do you want to go for lunch?
Capturing that first thought and directing it somewhere useful is crucial
Less Wrong
The Modern Rationality Institute.
The institute for Bayesian Reasoning
Center for applied rationality.
The Applied Rationality Institute
It wasn't a joke suggestion-- I actually like the name, and was thinking more in terms of drawing lines between this and the Human Genome Project when I originally wrote it. This comment was also highly upvoted before people pointed out the joke, though it may be that people were laughing in secret and there are more "funny upvotes" than "quality upvotes."
That being said, in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, there is something called the Human Instrumentality Project. The FAI Critical Failure Table result linked is a reference to the goal of this project, which is (in)famous amongst fans of the show; I can't really say more without spoilers. Googling should provide a more complete overview if you don't get it.
That really sounds like an unnecessary constraint. It's not as if the only thing people are going to hear about the organisation is the name; presumably they'd also hear something about what it does.
One friend of mine said that it was confusing not just because he didn't know why it was relevant, but because the word "Waterline" has no strong positive connotations.
What do current notable-ish think tanks, seminar runners, and organized social groups call themselves? (Following markette's notation)
Think tanks:
[name of notable public figure or thinker] [word for group]
Hoover Institution
Cato Institute
[positive word with coded meaning] [word for group, can come first]
Center for American Progress
Heritage Foundation
[acronym] [not even a whole word]
RAND Corp
[word for group] [thing you do]
Council on Foreign Relations
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Seminar runner names:
[modifier, optional] [thing you do] [word for a group]
National Seminars Group
[related word or phrase, spelling optional]
Career Potential
Construx
[broader group description] [word for group]
American Management Association
Organized social stuff:
[descriptive word or phrase]
Toastmasters
[who you are] [word for a group]
Atheist Foundation
[nice-sounding word, relatedness optional] [word for a group, optional]
Mensa
Lions, Kiwanis, Rotary, etc. Club
[in-group signalling word or phrase]
Penny Arcade
-
If we go for a name template that has a lot of overlap between the three groups, I think the clear favorite is the prosaic [thing you do] [word for a group], bonus points if [thing yo...
By the way, hope you are not trying to do branding by discussing it internally only. None of you are typical minds, so you may want to collect top 10 or top 100 best names and run it by your target audience, see what their impression is. Beta-test it, so to speak. (This forum barely counts as alpha-testing.)
Having "Rationality" in the name would probably be a bad thing. (Straw Vulcan stereotypes and all that.) "Bayesian" is a much better choice IMO.
Why not call it something like BayesWay?
Or how about that old Japanese cliche... "Better than Yesterday"? That would go well with Stabilizer's "Update Yourself" byline.
On the other hand, "Bayes" could make people say: "It is about some advanced statistics, that's not for me."
I guess the goal is to provide rationality to everyone who cares, not to appear like something for-specialists-only.
Wrote a list of 100 ideas, here are the highlights:
Center for Excellence in Thinking and Deciding
Less Wrong Foundation
Institute for the Advancement of Human Rationality
It would help if we knew more about what the point of the name is. Most importantly what do you want the name to signal about the organization? Hip and edgy or dignified and respectible? Hardcore or something anyone could be apart of? That sort of thing. Also do you want to embrace or shy away from the fact that you are technically in the self help business.
Not seen anyone suggest this yet, but the simple things are always good:
Rationality Institute
Derive something from Latin? You've got callidus for clever, sapio for wise, subtilis for precise, veri for truth...
So maybe the Callida Council, or Veri Institute, or the Verus Foundation.
The Less Wrong Institution, for the refinement of human rationality.
Sapiet House.
Fuck it, go with BayesCamp.
These aren't very good:
Alliance for Accuracy. Be Right Club. Make No Mistake. Better Believe. Untangle. Second Thought. Judgewell. Sanity Plus.
The Disciples of Laplace. The Bayesheviks. The Accurati. The Order of the Urn. Sanity Streamlining. Sanetuary. Decision Division. Madness Mitigation. Consequence Captains. Consequence Institute. Outcome Institute. Veracity Institute. Cooler Cognition Council. Campus Crusade for Correct Cognition. Answers In Sequences. Church of Probabilitology. (Obviously some of these are unviable. Just brainstorming.)
"Grey Belt" - combines the "we are all aspiring rationalists" notion (white belt, also activates the dojo node) with a significant color word - grey matter.
"Possible Minds" - because that's an Eliezer catchphrase, but also a succinct statement of the intent: to explore the space of possible minds, although only in a tiny region to start with. (You may view the link with SI - exploring the same space much farther out - as a bonus or as a problem.)
"Hedgefox". Not 100% original, but combines a prediction reference (cover of Tetlock's book), references to thinking styles, and the notion of cognitive diversity.
The gold standard of such institutions is The Royal Philosophical Society.
Perhaps some form of The __ Philosophical Society.
What goes in the blank I am drawing a blank on. The California or Silicon Valley P.S. would be fine. The opposite of Royal is Commoner so the Common P. S. might be OK. Or Common Sense P.S. Or Real or Reality P. S. I would not use Bayes as a bunch of physical scientists whose attention you might want to attract are nigh-dogmatic frequentists right now but could presumably be weaned from their dogma.
Maybe it would be wise to make sure people do not confuse rationality with Hollywood rationality or rationalism?
Wise Decision Institute.
Thorough Thought.
Thorough Thinking
EDIT: I guess one could add Foundation.
MBlume's analogy (way back) of how we're cartographers has struck me as a cool one. Cartographer to me carries the same kind of weight as Alchemist would. Here are some names based on that trope.
I hope someone does better than I can at using this theme.
I like how SIAI's name references both the event you're working toward and method of achieving it. Is there a single word that describes a watershed event that would indicate the rationality institute's direct success like "Singularity" does an intelligence explosion? That supporters could rally around and label themselves by (singularitarian)? A word for approximating the ideal Bayesian updater, for felling akrasia, for actually changing one's mind? Can we create or annex one?
Exaltation, Transcendence, Apotheosis, Enlightenment, Upload, Elevatio...
More ideas below. Incidentally, I am not really aiming to win the thread here. I just learned the cool technique of writing lists of 100 ideas, the idea being that quantity leads to quality. Apparently it's most effective to have some people generate ideas, and others critique them. By now I'm firmly in the first camp on this task.
The latest ideas:
Edit: Fixed links.
PhronEasy, with the tagline "Making practical wisdom simple". No, wait, that's terrible.
My brother does some work for a professional naming company. Their prices are high, but they sound very professional (some of the stuff he talks about is a lot like what was mentioned here. If everything else fails, do be aware that such people exist.
Here's a lightly-edited brainstorm:
Update: The Rationality Institute
or maybe "Update yourself" might be a nice byline for whatever name is chosen.
Not sure if this discussion is still ongoing, but...
It seems to me that something that means "rationality" should be in there, and probably a word that means "institute".
Some words are to be avoided, like 'belief', which carry weird connotations. Weird-sounding is probably bad ("Mensa" sounds too weird to lots of people). English words are probably best. Being tied to a person's name is hardly ever a good idea.
The Institute for Intelligence Utilization
Make Humanity Smarter
Sanity Academy
League of Extraordinary Thinkers
The Br...
"The Rationalist Society"
(Possibly its a British thing, but society sounds far better/more benevolent than Institute or similar.)
Either Clarity Workshops (we offer them) or Clarity Workshop (we work on clarity instead of cars). Depends on how much you want to focus on running things-you-can-call-workshops (ie seminars, lectures, group training sessions, and so on).
Shut Up and Multiply (SUM)
Unfortunately that's not even a very good phrase to begin with, let alone as a name for an organization. People hearing it for the first time without context mostly seem to assume that refers to reproduction, presumably by comparison to the phrase "be fruitful and multiply", or at least have that come to mind and are confused about what it has to do with rationality.
reasonable minds
untypicality*
rationality brigade
reason (insert word for group)
raison d'être
*(yes, I know, it is not technically a word)
Foundation for Human Sapience (or Foundation for Advanced Sapience)
Reality Transplantation Center
Thoughtful Organization
CORTEX - Center for Organized Rational Thinking and EXperimentation
OOPS - Organization for Optimal Perception Seekers
BAYES - Bureau for Advancing Yudkowsky's Experiments in Sanity
How broad of a market are we aiming for? Is this intended to appeal mostly to people who know about and like "traditional rationality," or to random corporations?
Suggestions:
Project Sanity
Center/Institute/Foundation for Applied Epistemology
Center/Institute/Foundation for Applied Sanity
Center/Institute/Foundation for Applied Thinking
Center/Institute/Foundation for Applied Thought
Meta-suggestion: I would really like if the word "Applied" was in there somewhere.
My best tries:
Simple but boring
Too fancy
The Illuminated Reason Institute
The Development of Reason and Rationality (DORR) Institute (it's pleonastic but it sounds nice; could just use one of the Rs)
The Course Corrective Institute
The Moreright Institute
The Better Life Institute
(It'd be so much easier if it could have a German name.)
:: Mind Chess ::
That's the name that I've always called a manner of looking through the mind for routes that one has taken and routes that one may potentially take. We must be able to look ahead to see what all the myriad potentials of outcomes are before we make a decision. And a positively configured move will bring us closer to the position of our goal. It is a puzzle, it is a game, it is the outcome of success we seek. We all can do it! New manners of programming our minds simply and easily is the future, and it is what we need to breed harmonious creations, yeah!
A good first step in optimizing the world according to your wishes is noticing and acknowledging that you've got a problem.
With that in mind, why should the rational community frame its core activities — development of epistemic and acquisition of instrumental rationality, plus public advocacy of sanity — simply as another fun game to engage in, with an added benefit of warm fuzzies and making oneself feel smart?
Wouldn't it be better to provoke a question, or, better yet, an acknowledgement — yes, I am (neurotypical) human, I am fallible (irrational), I wi...
Has anyone tried doing a mind map? They're simple procedures that (specifically graphic) designers use to upstart creative thinking. You start with any word in the center relating to the problem you want solved (and all design is, is problem solving, mind) and then write out every term that you think of without self doubt. Though this link is referring more to the visual design applications of the method, it's still really useful and is how my professor taught me. http://www.logodesignlove.com/images/books/Logo_Design_Love_free_chapter.pdf
On the other hand...
The Thomas Bayes Institute for Human Thought
Short: The Bayes Institute for Human Thought
Shorter: The Bayes Institute
I came here to post Thought Corrective but as I did I simultaneously wanted to shorten it to just Corrective and also realised that prisons are called corrective institutions, so I guess maybe not.
Edit: Lol, these were all horrible, not just the culty ones. Organization names should be boring, not cute.
Next idea: take some phrases, translate them into Greek/Latin/both, fiddle around until we find something that sounds good as (all or part of) a name.
It could be worthwhile trying out the matrix of possibilities across languages given by pairing two nouns from the set {art, rationality, virtue, science, knowledge, practice, thinking, etc.}
Poor examples:
I like the concept of "to be rather than to seem" but am having trouble thinking of a name to convey it.
With reservation, here's some suggestions:
Applied Coherence
Tangible Actualization
The Sanity Institute for Human Intelligence? (Haha, I'm joking.)
"Bayesian Illuminati" would likely pique my interest.
I noticed that I almost upvoted your post because it was an in-group thing to say and not because of its actual merit in this conversation. Having the word 'conspiracy' anywhere near the name of this organization would be a downright awful idea in practice. I'd as soon suggest changing the official LessWrong slogan to "We're Not A Cult!".
From the "Rationalists Dojo" meme:
One Boxing Gym
One Boxing (Has the rationality dojo feel. People can call themselves One Boxers. Tagline can be something like "The Sweeter Science.")
Min, Max, Act. (again MMA has martial arts connection)
Mixed Mental Arts
Judge, Know, Do (JKD, same as Jeet Kune Do. If said fast it sounds a bit like an East Asian word.)
Think, Know, Decide (TKD Taekwondo)
The Mental Institute
or
The Eliezer Yudkowsky Mental Institute for Criminally Insane Artificial Intelligence Researchers
Funny. But useless. Don't clog the thread with cutesy proposals. To avoid being unfair I'm going to go through the entire thread now and down-vote every single post with a cutesy/non-serious proposal.
Not sure about LW in general, but I don't want to see humor on LW unless maybe if it's exceptionally good. Humor seems to be toxic to thoughtful discussion. It's not about Eliezer as a high value target, I feel the same way about humor aimed at anyone or anything else. A quote from Paul Graham discussing the deterioration of Reddit, among other things:
...The most dangerous form of stupid comment is not the long but mistaken argument, but the dumb joke. Long but mistaken arguments are actually quite rare. There is a strong correlation between comment quality and length; if you wanted to compare the quality of comments on community sites, average length would be a good predictor. Probably the cause is human nature rather than anything specific to comment threads. Probably it's simply that stupidity more often takes the form of having few ideas than wrong ones.
Whatever the cause, stupid comments tend to be short. And since it's hard to write a short comment that's distinguished for the amount of information it conveys, people try to distinguish them instead by being funny. The most tempting format for stupid comments is the supposedly witty put-down, probably because put-downs are the
The Singularity Institute wants to spin off a separate rationality-related organization. (If it's not obvious what this would do, it would e.g. develop things like the rationality katas as material for local meetups, high schools and colleges, bootcamps and seminars, have an annual conference and sessions in different cities and so on and so on.)
We can't think of a name for this organization.
We can't think of any names that seem good enough to be audience-tested.
We don't have any ideas good enough that we'd want to mention them in this post.
Help.