Help! Name suggestions needed for Rationality-Inst!
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.
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Comments (297)
Update: The Rationality Institute
or maybe "Update yourself" might be a nice byline for whatever name is chosen.
I really like "Update yourself" as a byline. Especially in the context of pitching this to tech startups/software developer types. (It's reminiscent of updating your computer). It could combine well with james_edwards' suggestion above of Level Up into:
Level Up
byline: Update yourself
(Or: Update Your Self ? )
Better Decision Making
Might be an interesting brand for the rationality katas, but does it work as an organizational name?
There is an organization called BetterInvesting.
The Better Decision Making Academy.
I wonder whether it's a significant downside if the organization's name privileges one of epistemic and instrumental rationality over the other.
I got a positive reception for "Waterline" in my comment here.
I think it would need to have a byline to at least give outsiders some idea of what it was about. But that is a really good name.
"Practice Sanity"? "Expect the Likely"?
I like the former. Not really the latter.
I like the latter as a tagline for something.
The Waterline Institute for the Study and Practice of Critical Thinking
The Waterline Institute for the Study and Practice of Rationality, or WISPR.
Someone mentioned Bond villains? I can't tell if it's too silly/menacing, or if it's ridiculously awesome.
The name should be meaningful or at least not confusing to the general population.
Why?
If the goal is to promote rationality, it seems counterproductive to have an offputting name...
"Waterline" isn't off-putting, just opaque. So are things like "Oxfam".
I expect it to be slightly off-putting. I could be wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKk8w7HRyMg
Waterline makes me think of Landmark, seasteading, and Bond villains trying to drown the planet.
Don't forget Sea Org!
It isn't even the bad kind of opaque; it's the curiosity-generating kind.
Anyway, better to be interestingly opaque than boringly transparent (not that those are the only choices).
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.
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.
How about "Groundswell"?
It refers to a kind of wave, as well as a change in people's views or behaviour (usually viewed positively). "Grounds" also has a relevant meaning as in "grounds to believe", without being a blatantly distasteful pun.
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.
I predict this thread will turn into a bike shed brawl.
Totally obvious, but less likely with this preemptive comment.
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.)
Too long-winded and pompous.
Which one? All of them?
Edit: Shouldn't be any worries about having a long name where you can used an acronym. E.g., SETI (Search for extraterrestrial intelligence) institute.
The "The Whatever Institute" structure in general.
I got that structure from googling <* institute>... There's also The Institute for * structure
What would you name it if you could use German.
I didn't have any specific examples in mind, I was just referring to how easily and meaningfully you can combine words in German to form a new word. See Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz.
Less Wrong
The Modern Rationality Institute.
The institute for Bayesian Reasoning
Center for applied rationality.
The Applied Rationality Institute
Upvoted for "Center for Applied Rationality".
"The Eliezer Yudkowsky Center for Kids Who Can't Think Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too"
"The Eliezer Yudkowsky center for promoting rationality" actually sounds like a nice and honest name to me.
I hereby rescind my earlier comment.
If only it made a better acronym!
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.
I think that a good name should be somewhat arbitrary; it should not be a description of what organization does. It is easier to google, and also does lead to quick judgement "yeah, I totally can imagine what exactly they do; I don't need any more information".
It should be user friendly, not sound like some government institution or something very advanced scientifically or technically. It should not evoke "this is not for me" response.
Easy to remember and pronounce.
No strong associations. Bad associations are obviously bad, but also associations that are good for some people, are probably bad for some other people.
It's not just self-help, it's also other-help, like an educational institution.
Are we going for something academic-sounding or something self-improvement sounding?
Mostly we're just trying to brainstorm such that the more names the better, whether those are academic or self-improvement sounding.
The Center for Better Reasoning
The Center for Better Thinking
Best I've come up with so far:
The Institute for Advanced Sanity
I like this. Or more generally, I like having "Advanced Sanity" in the name.
Of course, I then wondered if anyone else was using the phrase "Advanced Sanity" (and if I'd taken it from somewhere). The first few hits were all Eliezer on LW, and other people only seem to put together those words accidentally.
I like that name in the abstract but worry about associations with mental health.
Even actual mental health gets "who are they to tell us what's sane and what isn't" reactions every now and then. An organization that doesn't start out with a massive positive reputation might fare worse.
"Advanced Sanity" matches a strong comparative qualifier to a basic trait. While "sanity" has problems, as mentioned below, I think the phrase derives much of its power from its underlying pattern, which can be used in other suggestions.
I like the bonus for people who know their Princeton. Maybe not as effective with average audiences, though - slightly weird, several syllables.
I think that's a problem actually. We don't want to imply affiliation with them when that isn't the case.
too cute IMO
Don't know if the pun is intended, but I suspect that some people - not familiar with LW - will take it for a sanitation initiative.
These aren't very good:
Alliance for Accuracy. Be Right Club. Make No Mistake. Better Believe. Untangle. Second Thought. Judgewell. Sanity Plus.
Map Masters. Sanity Sharpeners. Reality Reflecters. Truth Trackers. Bayesbound.
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.)
Center for Correct Contrarianism. Unbounded Rationality Institute. All Your Bayes Are Belong To Us Foundation, Inc.
If any LW meetup groups become university-affiliated organizations, this is what they should be called.
The "Fight Club" allusion is good, though. Instant recognition if you can manage to activate that node, and it ties in well with the idea of a rationality dojo.
Combining that with other ideas you'd get "Insight Club".
"Rationality Dojo" hasn't been suggested.
Only in plural. :)
Query Huggers. Oops Masters. Belief Rentiers. Belief Landlords. Level Up Artists.
awesome.
It took me a second to get that.
I beg to differ. Think about what someone who doesn't get the reference will think.
Good point.
Utilon. The Weirdtopia Group.
Jugewell sound a lot like Givewell (obviously) but I like it! Sanity plus sounds a bit like franchise of Humanity Plus but that might be a good thing (?).
Practical Anticipation (Institute/Project/Center/etc.)
The Human Rationality Project.
Connotations:
-from the Friendly AI Critical Failure Table
More like it dissolves the question of identity in this case, amirite?
Snerk. I hadn't even thought of that connotation. I can't decide if I like the name more or less now!
Definitely more for me, and its a good name anyway.
"Fuck, this doesn't look good for our species..."
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).
I like "Insight". It alludes to "Incite", which is an exciting word that is related to the organization (definition- to give rise to, to urge into action, to stir up, etc). And it also can be broken into "in sight", which can be related to having your goals in sight, striving to reach for an attainable goal, etc.
So it's one word, with 3 positive connotations (Insight, Incite, and In Sight)
How about:
Sanity Insight
Rationality Insight
<Insert Postive Word Here> Insight
Insight Institute
Edited: Changed all "InSight" suggestions to "Insight", because I agree with markette's critique below.
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
I think you're right.
Good word, bad capital "S".
I edited my suggestions to fix it.
I like "Insight" too, but probably not "InSight" as part of the name, feels a bit gimmicky, as markette says.
"Insight Institute" has nice alliteration.
"Applied Insight" has good connotations for caring about effectiveness, as opposed to mere philosophizing. It also has the same initials as "Artificial Intelligence" which I'm not sure if it's a minus or a plus.
Can you imagine anyone's opinion being altered by such a thing? Its value rounds to zero (It's nonzero, but the smallest credit the human mind could give it is, I suspect, too much).
I get your point -- but still: If something's initials mean something different, this means it effectively can't be referenced or googled by those initials.
Yeah, this is a minor point if the name is just two words, but still something to consider if someone has name ideas that include "Figuring Better Ideas", "Cognitive Insight Applications" or for that matter "Neural Augmentation and Methodical Bettering of Life Alliance" . :-)
Then they could use old "SIAI" headed notepaper to refer to the union of SI and AI!
Inciting Insight Inside is In Sight!
(Sorry, couldn't help myself...)
"Insight" reminds me first of Consensus Buddhism. I'd think of anyone speaking of insight in general as selling some form of vipassana. See for example the very influential Insight Meditation Society.
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...
Can't assume google/facebook/twitter were successful because of a master plan that hinged on their name; their success doesn't strongly imply they were named well. Anecdotally, facebook was originally "The Facebook", google was originally "Googol", Twitter was once "twttr", and Apple was named on a whim when nothing could be decided on.
Bayesian is an alien word, I still remember wondering what it was when I first saw it. Repeating a word/name aloud is the recommended way to remember them on first impression, and memorability matters, but encouraging that kind of memorability is a small factor anyway, just for the record.
Edit: Whether or not my ideas are good, I disagree that the importance of immediate reaction is overrated. It's hard to say precisely how it has been "rated" in the conversation, but I think it matters a lot in framing the ensuing seconds of conversation.
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.
Rationality Dojos
ThinkRight
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
BTW our best current suggestion came from these comments, so keep it up!
PM me if you want my opinion without revealing the name in public.
You could name it after a statistician. Laplace is taken, but Bayes, Jaynes, Jeffreys, and others are free.
Bell?
Truthseekers United
People for Clear thought
Practical Rationality
<pedant mode> Its Truthseekers United, no apostrophe. You're suggesting names for an organization, and I like that one, so spelling it right is important.</pedant>
Fixed
Clarity.
Say it out loud.
Cla-ri-tee.
Non-googleability is a minus.
Here's a lightly-edited brainstorm:
My best tries:
Simple but boring
Too fancy
Could trigger the knee-jerk reaction to "The ends always justify the means, stupid rabbit, durr!" and all such Rand-like screed that's even now floating around in contrarian circles.
How you came up with "The ends always justify the means" as being "Rand-like" is beyond me.
It's a stereotype of her thinking in America, no?
Selfishness (which is the American stereotype) != ends justify means.
Oh. Got it.
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.
Yes, I recall being very confused when I first saw that phrase in Three Worlds Collide. To this day I don't know why people use "multiply" instead of "calculate".
Shut Up and Calculate's Katas would SUCK.
I have always assumed it derived from modeling expected-value calculations as the product of likelihood-of-scenario and value-of-scenario.
Think to win
I was trying to think of a way to put "win" in there. It's too bad "Winning the Future" is already taken.
Wrote a list of 100 ideas, here are the highlights:
A few more:
I'm on a phone, apologies for terse commenting.
I quite like Good Reason
"Tactical Reasoning" sounds cool, but also slightly militaristic. Maybe not the best message to send. Maybe a really cool name for a book or group of rationality katas, though.
but that unknown enough that something with Good Reason in it, but with a little more, ex. "The Good Reason Group" should work.
I upvoted, but I'll clarify why, as this is a list: the only name I like on this list is Level Up, but I strongly like it.
A worthy clarification! I considered making one comment per idea, but I'm not sure they are all up to that level of scrutiny.
I also REALLY like Level Up. It solidified pretty quickly in my brain. The name expands pretty easily to "Level Up Enterprises" or somesuch, if preferred. And I can easily envision the second prong on the letter "U" being an up-arrow.
I originally liked Insight Out, but when I reflected on it, I think I am being influenced by consistency bias, because I already threw my hat in with the word "Insight" earlier. I still think it's a really good one, I just like Level Up better!
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:
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 you do] sounds like [who you are]. If direct description of rationality doesn't test well, a less literal alternative that still has good overlap is [nice-sounding word, relatedness open or coded] [word for a group].
Some top [word for a group] entries: Institute, Association, Foundation, Center, Group, Council.
Smarten Up
Train Your Brain
Think Smarter
Either Waterline or turn the Less Wrong name into a brand. There isn't another suggestion in this thread that comes remotely close to being as good.
Other suggestions in the opaque-but-meaningful-to-the-ingroup category might include "Tsuyoku Naritai" and "Algernon".
Any name optimized for ingroup recognition is likely to suffer the same issues as "Waterline" or "Less Wrong", i.e. won't mean much to outsiders.
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.
And "ratio", which also turns up in "likelihood ratio". If we're going ugly corporate neologism, we could do Accuratio (ETA: which turns out to be a company in Latvia).
The Bayes Factor?
BayesCamp would be just one thing that the [insert rationality inst name] provides, I think.
Speaking of which, I wonder what possibilities could arise of coordinating BayesCamp Kids with Camp Quest...
Practical Epistemics Institute.
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).
I'm slightly worried about this association: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_(Scientology)
That did not occur to me. Good point.
The Thomas Bayes Institute for Human Thought
Short: The Bayes Institute for Human Thought
Shorter: The Bayes Institute
The Bayes Center for the Advancement of Human Reason
The Center for Improving Human Thought
"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.
Why not just call it Less Wrong, or some variation on that?
Have we heard a reason not to do so? It would help to piggyback off the SEO already done.
The Center for the Advancement of Human Thought
Improving Rationality Institute.
Better Reasoning Institute.
The Anti-Zombie Conspiracy
The Bayesian Conspiracy!
We will need better robes.
That is my favorite name so far.
It is an advantage for a name to include a word that has "juicy" connotations, in contrast with words like rationality, institute, decision, making, water, line, study, practical, critical, insight.
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!".
Thoughtfront.
The Thought Academy.
The Thought Institute.
The Outthink Center.
The Society for Enhanced Reasoning
The Institute for Enhanced Reasoning
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.
Tangent on the 100 idea list: I think this may be one of the most useful little tidbits I've ever come across. It's a perfectly natural complement to the -think about it for five minutes- and -hold off on proposing solutions- ideas, spectacular for solo problem solving. It's so obvious I feel dumb for not having tried it earlier.
Why we're spending our time speculating on stuff like directed marijuana highs (Not that I don't like that post. I do.) when we've barely even got our basic katas down I'll never understand. Unless everyone here is secretly halfway to beisutsukai mastery already and I've been left out of the loop. Wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened.
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.
Center for Excellence in Thinking and Deciding
Less Wrong Foundation
Institute for the Advancement of Human Rationality
Yes. The addition of "Foundation" really nails it.
Not really, "foundations" are usually funds that redirect money to other worthy causes, while the organization in question will be generating its own content and services. On the other hand, there is Wikimedia Foundation, which was the example that established the analogy for me.
I just mean it sounds cooler than the other examples of Less Wrong __.
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.
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:
Thinkwell
Damn, it's taken!
www.thinkwell.com - Effective online videos and online courses for high school and college students in math, science, and social science. Achieve success where traditional ...
Better Knowing.
Thinkbetter
and for the sake of completeness:
Thinkbest
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.
Also, how about "Cogito"? Sounds related to thinking, but otherwise vague and non-threatening.
Reality Seekers
Looking for Reality
Fountains of Light
The Optimizers
Wisdom
The Sanity Institute for Human Intelligence? (Haha, I'm joking.)
"Bayesian Illuminati" would likely pique my interest.
Noojo. (from nous + dojo)
Looks like No Jo.
Decision Making Seminars
Mind The Mind
Calibrating Cognition
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.
Edit: Lol, these were all horrible, not just the culty ones. Organization names should be boring, not cute.
Belief Academy immediately pinged my "cult-dar", although I'm not sure why.
Anything with "belief" in it would set up associations with religious beliefs of the "you just need to have faith" category.
The Meta Foundation
The Metafoundation
Institute for Applied Meta
Decision Techniques
Applied Insight Institute (or just Insight Institute).
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.
Not sure if the're good ideas, but the following appear to be free.
The Practical Philosophical Society
The Modern Philosophical Society
The Empirical Philosophical Society.
If anyone on LW happens to be surprisingly well connected "The Royal Rationality Society" would be great.
Not saying that a lot of the stuff on Less Wrong is philosophy, but you don't think it's a bit risky going for "Philosoph-" something? A potential improvement would be something more along the lines of Neurophilosphy. (?) New branding that is.
Edit: Oops, suppose to say "[...] is not philosophy [...]"
(Thomas) Bayes Institute
More Right Institute
Right has political connotation in at least America, and I think most other english speaking countries as well.
I did not notice that as I thought of "More Right" as the synonym to "Less Wrong". Do you have any viable alternative?
I considered "More Correct" but that doesn't seem to work.
Neither "More Right" nor "More Correct" really work with the same connotations as "Less Wrong."
"The Bayes-Jitsu Project"
Ok so you don't like my name suggestion, but is it really bad enough to downvote in a thread specifically for wildly brainstorming random names?
Afterthought
Decision Tree
Decision Tree Foundation.
I like these almost as much as like "Waterline".