Comments
Evidence-based Effective Altruists
[Question]
I doubt "Neartermist" is a monicker people want. What would you like to be called?
1 min readMay 25, 2022
17
Non-longtermists, what would you like to be called. It's a category that is going to get used so we might as well have a name for it. And now is the time to select one you like.
Evidence-based Effective Altruists
The founding premise of EA was that you need to weigh evidence. This distinction is saying the longtermists have abandoned the founding premise of the movement.
But many non-longtermists also care about future people, this hasn't seemed to stop longtermists from using a term that implies non-longtermists (used to be called short-termism!?) don't care about the future.
Yeah, one could say that I’m a longtermist (though the term doesn’t fit well), and one key thing that caused that was gradual disillusionment with evidence-based anything over the course of a few years – because of the low-quality standard metrics of many fields, the low external validity of RCTs, the difficulty with running controlled experiments on anything that matters, complex cluelessness, the allure of highly leveraged foundational and policy interventions, etc.
EA for me is about doing the most good. RCTs and such were just a tool that seemed promising to me at the time.
I think this is broadly a correct take. Longtermists care about expected value. Instead, classic EA is about following the evidence.
I reject the ideas that this needs a name. Bundling everything that is not longtermism under one category is not very sensical.
It's just not a good category. Like using "nant" as a word to describe everything that isn't a plant.
I prefer the term "non-longtermism" / "non-longtermist" if you must use a term for this concept.
"Not longtermist"
The difficulty is in the name "longtermist". It asserts ownership over concern for the future.
People who disagree with the ideas that carry this banner are also concerned for the future.
A general issue I see with the answers here is they assume opposition to longtermism necessarily need be philosophical. The case for actually doing anything different on longtermist grounds relies on a long chain of quasi-empirical speculation, and it seems perfectly coherent to me to just object to some induction along the way, and fall onto the side of (say) global health or economic development while still believing in something like aggregative utilitarianism.
So I feel like a term would need to be more general and/or more focused on actions. 'Pragmatist' comes to mind, though it would need some distinction from the existing philosophical school. 'Altruistic pragmatist'? Maybe 'pragmatermist' if you don't mind neologisms (and if it doesn't turn out to etymologically imply something like 'end of facts' )
I think another part of the problem is that, for the same reasons, 'longtermism' has substantial mission creep/motte-and-bailey-itis. Like if I say I'm not a longtermist in EA circles, supporters will probably hit me with an argument for a totalising population ethic . But if I say I am one it feels like I'm supporting a bunch of academic research projects about which I might be quite sceptical. So maybe 'longtermism' is the concept that should be under the microscope, rather than its negation.
Non-longtermists
Fine but sounds a bit like a pirate.
Doesn't capture all neartermists, but for me, person-affecting EA
"Not longtermist" ... this was my take
Maybe suggest it as an option.
I confess I’m not entirely sure how you got there after reading the link post. Not that I disagree (I’m personally fine w/ being called a neartermist, I think it sounds good, but open to p much anything)
“It seems to me a generally bad practice to take the positive part of the phrase a movement or philosophy uses to describe itself, and then negate that to describe people outside the movement” seems to imply that we shouldn’t be “not longtermist”s
I see what you mean. I guess my point is “neartermist” sounds like it’s a coherent ideology in opposition to longtermism. “Not longtermist” is not a banner to march behind or a team, it’s just a factual description (in lower case).
How well does this represent your views to people unfamiliar with it as a term in population ethics?
It might sound as if you're an EA only concerned about affecting persons (as in humans, or animals with personhood).
Very badly, probably, but I was assuming that most EAs will be familiar with the term.
This was discussed before. See here.
Yes, though I couldn't see too many suggested names nor broad agreement.
Non prophets
EA Classic.
Centurians/Centurist/Centurion
Only aim to impact the next hundred years/lifetime. Which is already optimistic. Limited to no more than 2-3 lifetimes. Maybe due to cluelessness/put your own oxygen mask before helping others for kinda thing
Realists
Keep-it-realists? (Sorry, for non serious comment)
Neartermists
Current Welfarists
Longdistancers (emphasizing neutrality wrt spatial distance from beneficiaries, vs temporal distance for longtermism)
I like evidence-based EA, but I’d also like to see some suggestions based on “feedback cycles.” I think the key thing that “neartermists” have that longtermists lack are informative feedback cycles.
Presentists
Immediates
Do current person-affecting ethicists become longtermist if we achieve negligible senescence? Will virtue-ethicists too if we can predict how their virtue will develop over time? Do development economists become longtermists if we develop Foundation-style Psychohistory? We don't have a singular term for "not a virtue ethicist" other than "non-virtue ethicist" and there's no commonality amongst nonlongtermists other than being the out-group to longtermists.
Neartermist = explicitly sets a high effective discount rate (either due to uncertainty or a pure rate of time preference) should not include non-consequentialists or people with types of person-affecting views resulting in a low concern for future generations.
Nowists
I'm not a neartermist myself, but I suggest the term "interpretable altruist". Interpretability is really important to how many people in this group carry out effective altruism, and it's important to me as well.
Global Wellbeing-ers
Discounters
Haha! I want to upvote because funny, but that would be unhelpful. xD
Stop saying longtermist. It doesn't map well into people's understanding.
Say catastrophic risk, animal welfare and global health.
I love this. Just talk about the specific area you are into, rather than using generalisations. I would never use words like "neartermist" or "longtermist" outside EA circles anyway, as they lack any real meaning at all.