The history of the term 'effective altruism' — EA Forum
forum.effectivealtruism.org
Comment by Dale - Interesting history! However, I think you are being unfair to MIRI. Eliezer was using the term as as far back as 2007, four years before you mention it first being used in Oxford. So it wasn't originated in Oxford. And given that many CEA members have read LessWrong, including Toby Ord, it's seems a stretch to even say it was independently re-invented.

I was wondering if someone here has a better idea of how EA developed in its early days than I do.

Judging by the link I posted, it seems like Yudkowsky used the term “effective altruist” years before Will MacAskill or Peter Singer adopted it. The link doesn’t mention this explicitly, but Will MacAskill was also a lesswrong user, so it seems at least plausible that Yudkowsky is the true father of the movement.

I want to sort this out because I’ve noticed that a recently lot of EAs have been downplaying the AI and longtermist elements within the movement and talking more about Peter Singer as the movement’s founder. By contrast the impression I get about EA’s founding based on what I know is that EA started with Yudkowsky and then MacAskill, with Peter Singer only getting involved later. Is my impression mistaken?

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsMEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    yeah, he totally did. EAs claiming otherwise are just incorrect.

    remember that the original Roko’s Basilisk post talked about the dilemma of being an “altruist”, i.e. how to donate as much money as possible to MIRI (or SIAI as it was in 2010).

    the terms were in extremely heavy use back then.

    a bunch of the various Singer-inspired groups tried to work out a name for the whole thing, and they picked Yudkowsky’s coinage.

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsMEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    downplaying the AI and longtermist elements within the movement

    and this has always been an issue - they’re a fucking embarrassment, but they also do a lot of the organisational work so it’s hard to get rid of them

  • elmtonic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Eh, the impression that I get here is that Eliezer happened to put “effective” and “altruist” together without intending to use them as a new term. This is Yud we’re talking about - he’s written roughly 500,000 more words about Harry Potter than the average person does in their lifetime.

    Even if he had invented the term, I wouldn’t say this is a smoking gun of how intertwined EAs are with the LW rats - there’s much better evidence out there.