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John_Maxwell_IV comments on Help! Name suggestions needed for Rationality-Inst! - Less Wrong
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Comments (297)
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).
Based on my research, "foundation", "Institute" and "center" are the most common nouns that are used in the names of nonprofits in approximately that order. "Center" might be inappropriate because the organization in question will probably not be based out of a single building.
In my view, the most important things are that the name should clearly communicate what the organization does, should not sound cultish, and should sound good in the same sentence as "the singularity Institute". (This may rule out "Institute" as well.)
Here are some names of mine. Many suggest the emphasis of System 2 over System 1. Others suggest improvements to the process of thinking itself, as opposed to being more correct than others about something.
And some clever and probably bad names:
If we take this--"One obvious question: when is the name most important? When first heard; Introductions."--seriously, then the simpler the better.
Hence, more descriptive names with a higher syllable count, like "deliberative thought foundation" or "foundation for improved decision-making" are inferior to names like "the better decisions foundation".
Another consideration: don't pick something obviously pretentious, like "the primate debugging group", nor something less obviously pretentious, like "the careful thinking foundation"---so what, that implies that I, let's say I'm an outsider, am not a careful thinker? On the other hand, "the better decisions foundation" isn't as pretentious. Or if it is, it's more acceptable because businesses are interested in better decisions (it's specific enough that the first thought isn't merely indignation).
Therefore, I upvoted for "The Better Decisions Foundation"
"The Better Decisions Foundation" is my favorite of the names I suggested as well; that was why I put it first. I put the others mostly to give an idea of the possibilities that were out there, especially if someone wanted to do further brainstorming along the lines I did.