DjangoCorte comments on 2014 Survey of Effective Altruists - Less Wrong

27 Post author: tog 05 May 2014 02:32AM

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Comment author: DjangoCorte 01 May 2014 05:55:18PM 3 points [-]

This 'official' account gives the impression that no term had much common currency, apart from the jokey 'super-hardcore do-gooder' before the end of 2011. I can't comment about whether other branches of the community used terms in a similar way- I've never heard of felicifia. http://www.effective-altruism.com/the-history-of-the-term-effective-altruism/

Comment author: Drayin 03 May 2014 07:27:15PM 5 points [-]

lukeprog (Luke Muehlhauser) objects to CEA's claim that EA grew primarily out of Giving What We Can at http://www.effectivealtruism.org/#comments :

This was a pretty surprising sentence. Weren’t LessWrong & GiveWell growing large, important parts of the community before GWWC existed? It wasn’t called “effective altruism” at the time, but it was largely the same ideas and people.

Comment author: thebestwecan 06 May 2014 11:49:17PM 6 points [-]

I agree with Luke here. CEA seems to often overstate its role in the EA movement (another example at http://centreforeffectivealtruism.org/).

Comment author: DjangoCorte 04 May 2014 09:04:29AM 3 points [-]

I certainly agree that effective altruism existed long before GWWC.

The discussion I'm addressing though is about the origin of the term "effective altruist."