2022 update: This is now superseded by a new version of the same open thread.
(I have no association with the EA Forum team or CEA, and this idea comes with no official mandate. I'm open to suggestions of totally different ways of doing this.)
Update: Aaron here. This has our official mandate now, and I'm subscribed to the post so that I'll be notified of every comment. Please suggest tags!
2021 update: Michael here again. The EA's tag system is now paired with the EA Wiki, and so proposals on this post are now for "entries", which can mean tags, EA Wiki articles, or (most often) pages that serve both roles.
The EA Forum now has tags, and users can now make tags themselves. I think this is really cool, and I've now made a bunch of tags.
But I find it hard to decide whether some tag ideas are worth including, vs being too fine-grained or too similar to existing tags. I also feel some hesitation about taking too much unilateral action. I imagine some other forum users might feel the same way about tag ideas they have, some of which might be really good! (See also this thread.)
So I propose that this post becomes a thread where people can comment with a tag idea there's somewhat unsure about, and then other people can upvote it or downvote it based on whether they think it should indeed be its own tag. Details:
- I am not saying you should always comment here before making a tag. I have neither the power nor the inclination to stop you just making tags you're fairly confident should exist!
- I suggest having a low bar for commenting here, such as "this is just a thought that occurred to me" or "5% chance this tag should exist". It's often good to be open to raising all sorts of ideas when brainstorming, and apply most of the screening pressure after the ideas are raised.
- The tag ideas I've commented about myself are all "just spitballing".
- Feel free to also propose alternative tag labels, propose a rough tag description, note what other tags are related to this one, note what you see as the arguments for and against that tag, and/or list some posts that would be included in this tag. (But also feel free to simply suggest a tag label.)
- Feel free to comment on other people's ideas to do any of the above things (propose alternative labels, etc.).
- Make a separate comment for each tag idea.
- Probably upvote or downvote just based on the tag idea itself; to address the extra ideas in the comment (e.g., the proposed description), leave a reply.
- Maybe try not to hold back with the downvotes. People commenting here would do so specifically because they want other people's honest input, and they never claimed their tag idea was definitely good so the downvote isn't really disagreeing with them.
Also feel free to use this as a thread to discuss (and upvote or downvote suggestions regarding) existing tags that might not be worth having, or might be worth renaming or tweaking the scope of, or what-have-you. For example, I created the tag Political Polarisation, but I've also left a comment here about whether it should be changed or removed.
Retreat or Retreats
I think there are a fair few EA Forum posts about why and how to run retreats (e.g., for community building, for remote orgs, or for increasing coordination among various orgs working in a given area). And I think there are a fair few people who'd find it useful to have these posts collected in one place.
Something like Crisis response
Posts that would get this tag:
Update: Someone else seemingly independently created a tag with basically the same scope: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/emergenc... (read more)
Quadratic voting or Uncommon voting methods or Approval voting or something like that or multiple of these
E.g., this post could get the first and/or second tag, and posts about CES could get the second and/or third tag
Heavy tailed distributions of cost-effectiveness, or some variant thereof, would probably be good. I seem to recall there was such an entry on the old EA Concepts page.
Some examples of pages that would get this tag:
Thanks. I'll take a look at the articles later today. My sense is that discussion of variation in performance across people is mostly of interest insofar as it bears on the question of distribution of cost-effectiveness, so I'd be tempted to use the distribution of cost-effectiveness tag for those articles, rather than create a dedicated entry.
Red teaming or red teams or red team or something like that
Examples of posts that would get this tag:
Uncertainti... (read more)
Alignment tax
Here I'm more interested in the Wiki entry than the tag, though the tag is probably also useful. Basically I primarily want a good go-to link that is solely focused on this and gives a clear definition and maybe some discussion.
This is probably an even better fit for LW or the Alignment Forum, but they don't seem to have it. We could make a version here anyway, and then we could copy it there or someone from those sites could.
Here are some posts that have relevant content, from a very quick search:
- https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/pau
... (read more)READI Research
https://www.readiresearch.org/
My guess is that this org/collective/group doesn't (yet) meet the EA Wiki's implicit notability or number-of-posts-that-would-be-tagged standards, but I'm not confident about that.
Here are some posts that would be given this tag if the tag was worth making:
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RhkbNcA729QiZPm5W/phd-scholarships-for-ea-projects-in-psychology-health-iidm
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LSbpgFbhRtsfaBDrL/announcing-and-seeking-feedback-on-the-readi-philanthropy
- ht
... (read more)Tags for some local groups / university groups
I'd guess it would in theory be worth having tags for EA Cambridge and maybe some other uni/local groups like EA Oxford or Stanford EA. I have in mind groups that are especially "notable" in terms of level and impact of their activities and whether their activities are distinct/novel and potentially worth replicating. E.g., EA Cambridge's seminar programs seem to me like an innovation other groups should perhaps consider adopting a version of, and with more confidence they seem like a good example of a certain ... (read more)
Biosurveillance
A central pillar for biodefense against GCBRs and an increasingly feasible intervention with several EAs working on it and potentially cool projects emerging in the near future. Possibly too granular as a tag since there's not a high volume of biosecurity posts which would warrant the granular distinction. But perhaps valuable from a Wiki standpoint with a definition and a few references. I can create an entry, if the mods are okay with it.
Example posts:
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/NzqaiopAJuJ37tpJz/project-ideas-in-biosecurity-
... (read more)Megaprojects
Would want to have a decent definition. I feel like the term is currently being used in a slippery / under-defined / unnecessary-jargon way, but also that there's some value in it.
Example posts:
Related entries:
Constraints on effective altruism
Scalably using labour
ETA: Now created
Corporate governance
Example of a relevant post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5MZpxbJJ5pkEBpAAR/the-case-for-long-term-corporate-governance-of-ai
I've mostly thought about this in relation to AI governance, but I think it's also important for space governance and presumably various other EA issues.
I haven't thought hard about whether this really warrants an entry, nor scanned for related entries - just throwing an idea out there.
Brain-computer interfaces
See also the LW wiki entry / tag, which should be linked to from the Forum entry if we make one: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/brain-computer-interfaces
Relevant posts:
Time-money tradeoffs or Buying time or something like that
For posts like https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/g86DhzTNQmzo3nhLE/what-are-your-favourite-ways-to-buy-time and maybe a bunch of other posts tagged Personal development
Criticism of the EA community
For posts about what the EA community is like, as opposed to the core ideas of EA themselves. Currently, these posts get filed under Criticism of effective altruism even though it doesn't quite fit.
Arms race or Technology race or Arms/technology race something like that
Related entries
AI governance | AI forecasting | armed conflict | existential risk | nuclear warfare | Russell-Einstein Manifesto
--
I think such an entry/tag would be at least somewhat attention hazardous, so I'm genuinely unsure whether it's worth creating it. Though I think it'd also have some benefits, the cat is somewhat out of the bag attention-hazard-wise (at least among EAs, who are presumably the main readers of this site), and LessWrong have apparently opted for such a tag (focu... (read more)
Survey or Surveys
For posts that:
I care more about the first and third of those things, but it seems like in practice the tag would be used for the second. I guess we could discourage that, but it doesn't seem important.
"Survey" seems more appropriate... (read more)
Diplomacy
Might overlap too much with things like international relations and international organizations?
Would partly be about diplomacy as a career path.
Coaching or Coaching & therapy or something like that
Basically I think it'd be useful to have a way to collect all posts relevant to coaching and/or therapy as ways to increase people's lifetime impact - so as meta interventions/cause areas, rather than as candidates for the best way to directly improve global wellbeing (or whatever). So this would include things like Lynette Bye's work but exclude things like Canopie.
In my experience, it tends to make sense to think of coaching and therapy together in this context, as many people offer both services, ... (read more)
Independent impressions or something like that
We already have Discussion norms and Epistemic deference, so I think there's probably no real need for this as a tag. But I think a wiki entry outlining the concept could be good. The content could be closely based on my post of the same name and/or the things linked to at the bottom of that post.
Management/mentoring, or just one of those terms, or People management, or something like that
This tag could be applied to many posts currently tagged Org strategy, Scalably using labour, Operations, research training programs, Constraints in effective altruism, WANBAM, and effective altruism hiring. But this topic seems sufficiently distinct from those topics and sufficiently important to warrant its own entry.
United Kingdom policy & politics (or something like that)
This would be akin to the entry/tag on United States politics. An example of a post it'd cover is https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yKoYqxYxo8ZnaFcwh/risks-from-the-uk-s-planned-increase-in-nuclear-warheads
But I wrote on the United States politics entry's discussion page a few months ago:
... (read more)We've now redirected almost all of EA Concepts to Wiki entries. A few of the remaining concepts (e.g. "beliefs") don't seem like good wiki entries here, so we won't touch them.
However, there are a couple of entries I think could be good tags, or good additions to existing tags:
It seems good to have wiki entries that contain links to a bunch of lists of charity and/or focus area recommendations. Maybe these are worked into tags like "Donation Choice"/"Donation Writeup", or maybe they're separate.
(Wherever the... (read more)
Adjacent communities or something like that is a potential entry/tag (though not very high priority).
Some posts on that theme:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XHHwTu2PCr9CGpLpa/what-is-the-closest-thing-you-know-to-ea-that-isn-t-ea
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zA9Hr2xb7HszjtmMx/name-for-the-larger-ea-adjacent-ecosystem
Open society
The ideal of an open society - a society with high levels of democracy and openness - is related to many EA causes and policy goals. For example, open societies are associated with long-run economic growth, and an open society is conducive to the "long reflection." This tag could host discussion about the value of open societies, the meaning of openness, and how to protect and expand open societies.
Career profiles (or maybe something like "job posts"?)
Basically, writeups of specific jobs people have, and how to get those jobs. Seems like a useful subset of the "Career Choice" tag to cover posts like "How I got an entry-level role in Congress", and all the posts that people will (hopefully) write in response to this.
Update: I've now made this entry.
Requests for proposals or something like that
To cover posts like https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EEtTQkFKRwLniXkQm/open-philanthropy-is-seeking-proposals-for-outreach-projects
This would be analogous to the Job listings tags, and sort of the inverse of the Funding requests tag.
This overlaps in some ways with Get involved and Requests (open), but seems like a sufficiently distinct thing that might be sufficiently useful to collect in one place that it's worth having a tag for this.
This could also be an entry t... (read more)
Update: I've now made this entry.
Defense in depth
Relevant links/tags:
Seems like a useful concept for risk analysis and mitigating in general.
Update: I've now made this entry.
Semiconductors or Microchips or Integrated circuit or something like that
The main way this is relevant to EA is as a subset of AI governance / AI risk issues, which could push against having an entry just for this.
That said, my understanding is that a bunch of well-informed people see this as a fairly key variable for forecasting AI risks and intervening to reduce those risks, to the point where I'd say an entry seems warranted.
Update: I've now made this entry.
Consultancy (or maybe Consulting or Consultants or Consultancies)
Things this would cover:
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CwFyTacABbWuzdYwB/ea-needs-consultancies
- Other posts relevant to the idea of EAs acting as consultants to other EAs
- E.g., this shortform of mine and maybe some links provided in it would warrant this tag if they were top-level Forum posts
- Posts about pros and cons of EAs doing non-EA consultancy work (e.g. management consultancy), tips for doing that, etc.
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/R
... (read more)Update: I've now made this entry.
Alternative foods or resilient foods or something like that
A paragraph explaining what I mean (from Baum et al., 2016):
... (read more)I now feel that a number of unresolved issues related to the Wiki ultimately derive from the fact that tags and encyclopedia articles should not both be created in accordance with the same criterion. Specifically, it seems to me that a topic that is suitable for a tag is sometimes too specific to be a suitable topic for an article.
I wonder if this problem could be solved, or at least reduced, by allowing article section headings to also serve as tags. I think this would probably be most helpful for articles that cover particular disciplines, such as psycho... (read more)
Update: I've now made this entry.
Surveillance
Some relevant posts:
Meta: perhaps this entry should be renamed 'Propose and vote on potential entries' or 'Propose and vote on potential tags/Wiki articles'? We generally use the catch-all term 'entries' for what may be described as either a tag or a Wiki article.
I am considering turning a bunch of relevant lists into Wiki entries. Wikipedia allows for lists of this sort (see e.g. the list of utilitarians) and some (e.g. Julia Wise) have remarked that they find lists quite useful. The idea occurred to me after a friend suggested a few courses I may want to add to my list of effective altruism syllabi. It now seems to me that the Wiki might be a better place to collect this sort of information than some random blog. Thoughts?
Update: I've now made this entry
career advising or career advice or career coaching or something like that
We already have career choice. But that's very broad. It seems like it could be useful to have an entry with the more focused scope of things like:
This would be analogous to how we hav... (read more)
Charter cities or special economic zones or whatever the best catchall term for those things + seasteading is
From a quick search for "charter cities" on the Forum, I think there aren't many relevant posts, but there are:
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EpaSZWQkAy9apupoD/intervention-report-charter-cities
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9422BL5mDTzWBdPs4/link-the-case-for-charter-cities-within-the-ea-framework-cci
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/j63K34P9hermM4bfN/why-do-we-need-philanthropy-can-we-make-it-obsolete
- https://for
... (read more)Effective Altruism on Facebook and Effective Altruism on Twitter (and more - maybe Goodreads, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc). Alternatively Effective Altruism on Social Media, though I probably prefer tags/entries on particular platforms.
A few relevant articles:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/8knJCrJwC7TbhkQbi/ea-twitter-job-bots-and-more
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/6aQtRkkq5CgYAYrsd/ea-twitterbot
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mvLgZiPWo4JJrBAvW/longtermism-twitter
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BtptBcXWmjZBfdo9n/ea-fa... (read more)
Something like regulation
Intended to capture discussion of the Brussels effect, the California effect, and other ways regulation could be used for or affect things EAs care about.
Would overlap substantially with the entries on policy change and the European Union, as well as some other entries, but could perhaps be worth having anyway.
Update: I've now made this entry.
software engineering
Some relevant posts:
Related entries
artificial intelligence... (read more)
Maybe we should have an entry for each discipline/field that's fairly relevant to EA and fairly well-represented on the Forum? Like how we already have history, economics, law, and psychology research. Some other disciplines/fields (or clusters of disciplines/fields) that could be added:
- political science
- humanities
- I think humanities disciplines/fields tend to be somewhat less EA-relevant than e.g. economics, but it could be worth having one entry for this whole cluster of disciplines/fields
- social science
- But (unlike with humanities) it's probably better to h
... (read more)Vetting constraints
Maybe this wouldn't add sufficient value to be worth having, given that we already have scalably using labour and talent vs. funding constraints.
Mmh, upon looking at Vaidehi's list more closely, it now seems to me that we should have a single article: people have proposed various other constraints besides the three mentioned, and I don't think it would make sense to have separate articles for each of these, or to have an additional article for "other constraints". So I propose renaming talent vs. funding constraints constraints in effective altruism. Thoughts?
Update: I've now made this entry
Charity evaluation or (probably less good) Charity evaluator
We already have an entries donation choice, intervention evaluation, and cause prioritisation. But charity evaluation is a major component of donation choice for which we lack an entry. This entry could also cover things about charity evaluation orgs like GiveWell, e.g. how useful a role they serve, what the best practices for them are, and whether there should be one for evaluating longtermist charities or AI charities or whatever.
Downside of this name: Really it m... (read more)
Update: I've now made this entry.
Effective altruism outreach in schools or High school outreach or something like that
Overlaps with https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/effective-altruism-education , but that entry is broader, and it seems like now there's a decent amount of activity or discussion about high school outreach specifically. E.g.:
- Parts of this EAIF report, and presumably future stuff that comes from some of those grants
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HcaB2kJKhxJtS4oGc/some-thoughts-on-ea-outreach-to-high-schoolers
- A slack workspace
... (read more)Barriers to effective giving or Psychology of (in)effective giving or something like that
Bibliography
Why aren’t people donating more effectively? | Stefan Schubert | EA Global: San Francisco 2018
EA Efficacy and Community Norms with Stefan Schubert [see description for why this is relevant]
[Maybe some other Stefan Schubert stuff]
[Probably some stuff by Lucius Caviola, David Reinstein, and others]
Related entries
cognitive bias | cost-effectiveness | donation choice | diminishing returns | effective giving | market efficiency of philanthropy | rationality | sc... (read more)
Yeah, I think Psychology of effective giving is probably the best name. Stefan, Lucius and others have published a bunch of stuff on this, which would be good to cover in the article.
Psychology of (in)effective altruism is adequate for a paper, where authors can use humor, puns, and other informal devices, but inappropriate for an encyclopedia, which should keep a formal tone.
(To elaborate: by calling the field of study e.g. the 'psychology of effective giving' one is not confining attention only to the psychology of those who give particularly effectively: 'effective giving' is used to designate a dimension of variation, and the field studies the underlying psychology responsible for causing people to give with varying degrees of effectiveness, ranging from very effectively to very ineffectively. By analogy, the psychology of eating is meant to also study the psychology of people who do not eat, or who eat little. A paper about anorexia may be called "The psychology of (non-)eating", but that's just an informal way of drawing attention to its focus; it's not meant to describe a field of study called "The psychology of (non-)eating", and that's not an appropriate title for an encyclopedia article on such a topic.)
Our World in Data
Some posts where this tag would be particularly relevant:
But from a quick search, it seems like at least 20 posts mention Our World in Data somewhere, and presumably some of them also say en... (read more)
Intelligence assessment or Intelligence (military and strategy) or Intelligence agencies or Intelligence community or Intelligence or something
I don't really like any of those specific names. The first is what Wikipedia uses, but sounds 100% like it means IQ tests and similar. The second is my attempt to put a disambiguation in the name itself. The third and and fourth are both too narrow, really - I'd want the entry to not just be about the agencies or community but also about the type of activity they undertake. The fifth is clearly even more ambiguous t... (read more)
(Edit: I've now made this entry.)
Independent research
Proposed text:
... (read more)Edit: I've now made this entry.
Longtermist Entrepreneurship Fellowship
I think this is only mentioned in three Forum posts so far[1], and I'm not sure how many (if any) would be added in future.
It's also mentioned in this short Open Phil page: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/giving/grants/centre-effective-altruism-jade-leung
I'm also not sure if the name is fully settled - different links seem to use different names, or to not even use a capitalised name.
[1] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/diZWNmLRgcbuwmYn4/long-term-future-fund-may-2021-gra... (read more)
Weapons of mass destruction
Related entries
anthropogenic existential risk | armed conflict | biosecurity | global governance | Nuclear Threat Initiative | nuclear warfare | peace and conflict studies | terrorism
Some orgs it might be worth making entries about:
David Pearce (the tag will be removed if others think it’s not warranted)
Arguments against:
- One may see David Pearce much more related to transhumanism (even if to the most altruistic “school” of transhumanism) than to EA (see e.g. Pablo’s comment).
- Some of Pearce’s ideas goes against certain established notions in EA: e.g. he thinks sentience of classical digital computers is impossible under the known laws of physics, that minimising suffering should take priority over increasing happiness of the already well-off, that environmental interventions alone,
... (read more)>Also, I really don’t see how the persons below have contributed more or are more relevant to effective altruism than Pearce
I tried to outline some criteria in an earlier comment. Chalmers and Hassabis fall under the category of "people who have attained eminence in their fields and who are connected to EA to a significant degree". Drexler, and perhaps also Chalmers, fall under the category of "academics who have conducted research of clear EA relevance". Matthews doesn't fall under any of the categories listed, though he strikes me as someone worth including given his leading role at Future Perfect—the only explicitly EA project in mainstream journalism—and his long-standing involvement with the EA movement.
As the example of Matthews shows, the categories I identified aren't exhaustive. That was just my attempt to retroactively make sense of the tactic criterion I had followed in selecting these particular people. Despite still not having a super clear sense of the underlying categories, I felt reasonably confident that Pearce didn't qualify because (1) it seemed that there was no other potential category he could fall under besides that of "EA core figure" and (2) ... (read more)
(I think it's weird and probably bad that this comment of nil's has negative karma. nil is just clarifying what they were saying, and what they're saying is within the realm of reason, and this was said politely.)
+1
I think discussion will probably usually be sufficient. Using upvotes and downvotes as info seems useful, but probably not letting them be decisive.
This might just be a case where written communication on the internet makes the tone seem off, but "hidden" sounds to me unfair and harsh. That seems to imply Pablo already knew what the inclusion criteria should be, and was set on them, but deliberately withheld them. This seems extremely unlikely.
I think it's more like the wiki is only a few months old, and there's (I think) only one person paid to put substantial time into it, so we're still figuring out a lot of policies as we go - I think Pablo just had fuzzier ideas, and then was prompted by this conversation to make them more explicit, and then was still clearly open to feedback on those criteria themselves (rather than them already being set).
I do agree that it will help now that we have possible inclusion criteria written up, and it would be even better to have them shown more prominently somewhere (though with it still being clear that they're tentative and open to revision). Maybe this is all you meant?
I personally feel that the proposal would allow for the inclusion of a number of people (not Pearce) who intuitively should not have their own Wiki entry, so I'm somewhat reluctant to adopt it. More generally, an advantage of having a more exclusionist approach for individuals is that the class of borderline cases is narrower, and so is therefore the expected number of discussions concerning whether a particular person should or should not be included. Other things equal, I would prefer to have few of these discussions, since it can be tricky to explicitly address whether someone deserves an entry (and the unpleasantness associated with having to justify an exclusionist position specifically—which may be perceived as expressing a negative opinion of the person whose entry is being considered—may unduly bias the discussion in an inclusionist direction).
FWIW, I agree that Hassabis and Drexler meet your proposed criteria and warrant entries, and that Chalmers and Caplan probably do (along with Hanson and Beckstead). But Matthews does seem roughly on par with Pearce to me. (Though I don't know that much about either of their work.)
I also agree that Pearce seems to be a similar case to de Grey, so we might apply a similar principle to both.
Maybe it'd be useful to try switching briefly from the discussion of specific entries and criteria to instead consider: What are the pros and cons of having more or much more entries (and especially entries on people)? And roughly how many entries on people do we ultimately want? This would be similar to the inclusionism debate on Wikipedia, I believe. If we have reason to want to avoid going beyond like 50 or 100 or 200 or whatever entries on people, or we have reason to be quite careful about adding less prominent or central people to the wiki, or if we don't, then that could inform how high a "bar" we set.
Michael is correct that the inclusion criteria for entries of individual people hasn't been made explicit. In deciding whether a person was a fit subject for an article, I haven't followed any conscious procedure, but merely relied on my subjective sense of whether the person deserved a dedicated article. Looking at the list of people I ended up including, a few clusters emerge:
Some people, such Bostrom, MacAskill, Ord, fit into more than one of these clusters. My sense is that David Pearce doesn't fit into any of the clusters. It seems relatively uncontroversial that he doesn't fit into clusters 1-4, so the relevant question—at least i... (read more)
I think there's a relatively clear sense in which Arkhipov, Borlaug, and similar figures (e.g. winners of the Future of Life Award, names included in Scientists Greater than Einstein, and related characters profiled in Doing Good Better or the 80,000 Hours blog) count as having had an extraordinary positive impact and Pearce does not, namely, the sense in which also Ord, MacAskill, Tomasik, etc. don't count. I think it's probably unnecessary to try to specify in great detail what the criterion is, but the core element seems to be that the former are all examples of do-gooding that is extraordinary from both an EA and a common-sense perspective, whereas if you wanted to claim that e.g. Shulman or Christiano are among humanity's greatest benefactors, you'd probably need to make some arguments that a typical person would not find very persuasive. (The arguments for that conclusion would also likely be very brittle and fail to persuade most EAs, but that doesn't seem to be so central.)
So I think it really boils down to the question of how core a figure Pearce is in the EA movement, and as noted, my impression is that he just isn't a core enough figure. I say this, incidentally, as someone who admires him greatly and who has been profoundly influenced by his writings (some of which I translated into Spanish a long time ago), although I have also developed serious reservations about various aspects of his work over the years.
Maybe we should have a tag for each individual EA Fund, in addition to the existing tag Effective Altruism Funds tag? The latter could then be for posts relevant to EA Funds as a whole.
There are now 60 posts with the Effective Altruism Funds tag, and many readers may only be interested in posts relevant to one or two of the funds.
It might be worth going through the Effective Altruism Hub's resource collections and the old attempts to build EA Wikis (e.g., the Cause Prioritization wiki), to:
I assume some of this has been done already, but someone doing it thoroughly seems worthwhile.
Academia or something like that
This could cover things like how (in)efficient academia is, what influences it has had and could have, the best ways to leverage or direct academia, whether people should go into academic or academia-related careers, etc.
E.g., Open Phil's post(s) on field-building and this post on How to PhD.
Related entries
field-building | meta-science | research methods | research training programs | scientific progress
---
It's possible that this is made redundant by other tags we already have?
And my current suggested name and scope are... (read more)
Mind uploads, or Whole brain emulation, or maybe Digital minds
I think that:
But I could be wrong about either of those things.
Further reading
Age of Em
https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf
Related entries
artificial sentience | consciousness research | intelligence and neuroscience | long-term future | moral patienthood | non-humans and the long-term future | number of futur... (read more)
Non-longtermist arguments for GCR reduction, or Non-longtermist arguments for prioritising x-risks, or similar but with "reasons" instead of arguments, or some other name like that
The main arguments I have in mind are the non-longtermist 4 of the 5 arguments Toby Ord mentions in The Precipice, focusing on the past, the present, civilizational virtues, and cosmic significance.
Ideally, the entry would cover both (a) such arguments and (b) reasons why those arguments might be much weaker than the longtermist arguments and thus might not by themselves justify ... (read more)
Terrorism
Make entries for many of the concepts featured on Conceptually?
I read the content on that site in 2019 and found it useful. I haven't looked through what concepts are on there to see which ones we already have and which ones might be worth adding, but I expect it'd be useful for someone to do so. So I'm noting it here in case someone else can do that (that'd be my preferred outcome!), or to remind myself to do it in a while if I have time.
Epistemic challenge, or The epistemic challenge, or Epistemic challenges, or any of those but with "to longtermism" added
Relevant posts include the following, and presumably many more:
Related entries
I think there should either be an entry for each of Accident risk, Misuse risk, and Structural risk, or a single entry that covers all three, or something like that.
Maybe these entries should just focus on AI, since that's where the terms were originally used (as far as I'm aware). On the other hand, I think the same concepts also make sense for other large-scale risks from technologies.
If the entries do focus on AI, maybe they should have AI in the name (e.g. AI accident risk or Accident risk from AI), or maybe not.
In this case, the reason I'm posting thi... (read more)
Update: I've now made this entry.
Fermi estimation or Fermi estimates
Overlaps with some other things in the Decision Theory and Rationality cluster of the Tags Portal.
Demandingness objection
I'd guess there are at least a few Forum posts quite relevant to this, and having a place to collect them seems nice, but I could be wrong about either of those points.
Update: I've now made this tag.
Charitable pledges or Altruistic pledges or Giving pledges (but that could be confused with the Giving Pledge specifically) or Donation pledges or similar
Maybe the first two names are good in that they could capture pledges about resources other than money (e.g., time)? But I can't off the top of my head think of any non-monetary altruistic pledges.
This could serve as an entry on this important-seeming topic in general, and as a directory to a bunch of other entries or orgs on specific pledges (e.g., Giving Pledge, GWWC... (read more)
Antimicrobial resistance or Antibiotic resistance
Not sure enough EAs care about this and/or have written about this on the Forum for it to warrant an entry/tag?
(I don't personally have much interest in this topic, but I'm just one person.)
Update: I've now made this tag.
Something like Bayesianism
Arguments against having this entry/tag:
Cognitive biases/Cognitive bias, and/or entries for various specific cognitive biases (e.g. Scope neglect)
I feel unsure whether we should aim to have just a handful of entries for large categories of biases, vs one entry for each of the most relevant biases (even if this means having 5+ or 10+ entries of this type)
Nonlinear Fund
Maybe it's too early to make a tag for that org?
Update: I've now made this entry.
Instrumental vs. epistemic rationality
Some brief discussion here.
These terms may basically only be used on the LessWrong community, and may not be prominent or useful enough to warrant an entry here. Not sure.
Metaethical uncertainty and/or Metanormative uncertainty
These concepts are explained here.
I think it's probably best to instead have an entry on "Normative uncertainty" in general that has sections for each of those concepts, as well as sections that briefly describe (regular) Moral uncertainty and Decision-theoretic uncertainty and link to the existing tags on those concepts. (Also, the entry on Moral uncertainty could discuss the question of how to behave when uncertain what approach to moral uncertainty is best, which is metanormative uncertainty.) This... (read more)
Subjective vs. objective normativity
See here and here
Update: I've now made this entry.
Disentanglement research
Defined here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RCvetzfDnBNFX7pLH/personal-thoughts-on-careers-in-ai-policy-and-strategy
Off the top of my head, I'm not sure how many posts would get this tag. But I know at least that one would, and I'd guess we'd find several more if we looked.
And in any case, this seems to be a useful concept that's frequently invoked in the EA community, so having a short wiki entry on it might be good (even ignoring tagging).
Related entries:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.... (read more)
Tag portal question/suggestion:
Many tags are probably relevant for more than one of the categories/clusters used on the tag portal. For example, Economic growth is currently listed under global health & development, but it's also relevant to Long-Term Risk and Flourishing and to Economics & Finance and probably some other things.
Currently, I think each tag is only shown in one place on the portal. That might be the best move.
But maybe they should instead be mentioned in every place where they're (highly) relevant, and where people might expect to ... (read more)
Crypto or something like that
Some EAs are working on or interested in things like crypto and blockchain, either as investment opportunities or as tools that might be useful for accomplishing things EAs care about (e.g., mechanism design, solving coordination problems). Maybe there should be a tag for posts relevant to such things. I'd guess that there are at least 3 relevant Forum posts, though I haven't checked.
There are also at least two 80,000 Hours episodes that I think are relevant:
- Vitalik Buterin on better ways to fund public goods, the blockch
... (read more)EA vs Non-EA Orgs
Proposed tag description:
... (read more)Scalably Using People or Scalably Using Labour or Task Y or something like that
Proposed description:
Notes on that description:
- I'll obviously add the links to the "See also" tags if I a
... (read more)Industrial Revolution
We already have a variety of related tags, like History, Economic Growth, and Persistence of Political/Cultural Variables. But the Industrial Revolution does seem like perhaps the single most notable episode of history for many/all EA cause areas, so maybe we should have a tag just for it?
Some posts that would warrant the tag:
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7QiXR2dv8KL4fkf9D/notes-on-henrich-s-the-weirdest-people-in-the-world-2020
- https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TMCWXTayji7gvRK9p/is-democracy-a-fad
- Maybe https://forum
... (read more)Cultural Evolution
One relevant post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7QiXR2dv8KL4fkf9D/notes-on-henrich-s-the-weirdest-people-in-the-world-2020
I haven't searched my memory or the Forum for other relevant posts yet.
This would overlap somewhat with the tags for Memetics and Persistence of Political/Cultural Variables.
Update: I've now made this tag.
Persistence of Political/Cultural Variables (or Cultural Persistence, or Cultural, Political, and Moral Persistence, or something like that)
First pass at a description:
... (read more)Update: I've now made this entry
Non-Humans and the Long-Term Future
Why I propose this:
- The following sorts of topics come up decently often:
- Is longtermism focused only on humans?
- Should longtermists focus on improving wellbeing for animals?
- Should longtermists focus on improving wellbeing for artificial sentiences?
- Are existential risks just about humans?
- Topics like "Will most moral patients in the long-term future be humans? Other animals? Something else? By how large a margin?" also come up sometimes (though less often)
- I think it'd be good to collect posts r
... (read more)One consideration I just thought of, which I do not recall seeing mentioned elsewhere, is that the optional number of tags depends somewhat on the typical tag use case.
- Clicking on an article's tags to find other related articles
- As only a small % of tags apply to any given article, and this % will fall as the number of tags increases, article tag spaces will not become too 'busy'.
- Hence there should be many tags, so that each article can be tagged as usefully as possible.
- Clicking on the tag list to find a specific topic
- There are already so many tags it
... (read more)Update: I've now made this entry
Positive futures (or Utopias, or Ideal futures, or something like that)
Proposed description:
... (read more)"Economic Policy" or "Macroeconomic Stabilization"
Pros:
Cons:
Fermi Paradox
Arguments for having this tag:
Arguments against:
Simulation Argument
Arguments for having this tag:
Arguments against:
EA fellowships
I think it might be useful to have a post on EA fellowships, meaning things like the EA Virtual Programs, which "are opportunities to engage intensively with the ideas of effective altruism through weekly readings and small group discussions over the course of eight weeks. These programs are open to anyone regardless of timezone, career stage, or anything else." (And not meaning things like summer research fellowships, for which there's the Research Training Programs tag.)
I think this'd be a subset of the Event strategy tag.
But I'm not sure i... (read more)
What do you think about a tag for posts that include Elicit predictions? I'd like to see all posts that include them and it might be a tiny further reminder to use them more.
Can I create a tag called "EA Philippines", for posts by people related to EA Philippines, such as about our progress or research? I'd like to easily see a page compiling posts related to EA Philippines. I could create a sequence for this, but a sequence usually implies things are in a sequential order and more related to each other. But our posts will likely be not that related to each other, so a tag would likely be better.
A counterargument is I currently don't see any tags for any EA chapter, except for EA London updates, But these aren't about EA... (read more)
Country-specific tags
I just saw "creation of country specific content"as an example among the higher rated meta EA areas in the recent article What areas are the most promising to start new EA meta charities - A survey of 40 EAs. What do you think about introducing tags for specific countries? E.g. I'd already have a couple of articles in mind that would be specifically interesting for members of German/Austrian/Swiss communities.
Should we have a tag for "Feedback Request"?
We in EA Philippines have made 2 posts (and have another upcoming one) already that were specifically for requesting feedback from the global EA community on an external document we wrote, before we post this document for the general public. See here and here as examples from EA PH, and this other example from a different author.
I think it happens quite often that EAs or EA orgs ask for feedback on an external document or on a writeup they have rough thoughts on, so I think it's worth having this tag.
A pote... (read more)
Update: I've now made this tag.
ITN
Proposed description:
... (read more)Longtermism (Cause Area)
We have various tags relevant to longtermism or specific things that longtermists are often interested in (e.g., Existential Risk). But we don't have a tag for longtermism as a whole. Longtermism (Philosophy) and Long-Term Future don't fit that bill; the former is just for "posts about philosophical matters relevant to longtermism", and the latter is "meant for discussion of what the long-term future might actually look like".
One example of a post that's relevant to longtermism as a cause area but that doesn't seem to neatly fit in ... (read more)
Update: I've now made this tag.
Fellowships or EA-Aligned Fellowships or Research Fellowships or something like that
Stefan Schubert writes:
Maybe this would be partially addressed via a tag ... (read more)
UPDATE: I've proposed the change to the tag.
Proposal: Change the EA Global tag to EA Conferences.
Since many of the tagged posts are relevant to EA Student Summit, EAGx's etc. and the description itself is conference posts.
(Update: I've now made this tag.)
Institutions for Future Generations
This is arguably a subset of Institutional Decision-Making and/or Policy Change. It also overlaps with Longtermism (Philosophy) and Moral Advocacy / Values Spreading. But it seems like this is an important category that various people might want to learn about in particular (i.e., not just as part of learning about institutional decision-making more broadly), and like there are many EA Forum posts about this in particular.
Advanced Military Technology (or some other related name)
Proposed description:
Other tags that this overlaps with include: AI Governance, Atomically Precise Man... (read more)
(Update: I've now made this tag.)
China (or maybe something broader like BRICS or Rising Powers)
Rough proposed description:
It seems perhaps odd to single China out for a tag while not having tags for e.g. USA, Southeast Asia, ASEAN, United Nations, Middle Powers. But we do have a tag for posts relevant to the Europ... (read more)
Markets for Altruism or Market Mechanisms for Altruism or Impact Certificates or Impact Purchases (or some other name)
Tentatively proposed description:
The posts listed here would fit this tag. Some other posts tagged EA Funding might fit as well.
I'm unsure precisely what the ideal scope and name of this tag would be.
Update: I've created the tag "Discussion Norms"
Community Norms/Discussion Norms
Very Bad Description: Posts that discuss norms on how EAs to interact with each other.
Posts this tag could apply to:
- Robert Wiblin, Six Ways To Get Along With People Who Are Totally Wrong*
- Jess Whittlestone, Supportive Scepticism
- Michelle Hutchinson and Jess Whittlestone, Supportive Scepticism in Practice
- Owen Cotton-Barratt, Keeping the Effective Altruism movement welcoming
- The extraordinary value of ordinary norms by Emily Tench
- Me, Suggestions for Online EA Discussion N
... (read more)Anyone have thoughts on this tag? I'm skeptical, but might be more inclined if I saw more applications that were good. Also if it had a description that described it's naturalness as a category in the EA-sphere. (If this were a business forum it would obviously be good, and maybe it is in this Forum — I'm not sure.)
I think it wouldbe useful to be able to see all the posts from a particular organisation all at once on the forum. For the most part, individuals from those organisations post, rather than a single organisation account it can be difficult to see e.g. all of Rethink Priorities' research on a given topic
Curious to hear if people think it's better to have tags or sequences for group these posts?
Change My View!
I found r/ChangeMyView recently and I think it's the bee's knees. "A place to post an opinion you accept may be flawed, in an effort to understand other perspectives on the issue."
There are already a good deal of questions and posts inviting criticism on this forum, and this tag could organize them all for the people who enjoy a good, clean disagreement/discussion. It could be used especially (or only) for ideas with <50% certainty.
The subreddit itself is a cool place to go, but many issues are more fruitfully discusse... (read more)
I've added a Meta-Science tag. I'd love for some help with clarifying the distinction between it and Scientific Progress.
Generally, I imagine meta-science as being more focused on specific aspects of the academic ecosystem and scientific progress to be related more to the general properties of scientific advances. There is clearly an overlap there, but I'm not sure where exactly to set the boundaries.
I'm surprised that "cost-effectiveness evaluation" doesn't exist yet.
Some others that it's weird enough that they don't exist yet: "meta-charities", "advocacy", "pandemic preparedness".
A couple of tags that would apply to all of my posts: "aging research", "scientific research".
Would be good if tags always had descriptions/definitions of the things they're for.
Do we need both Longtermism (Philosophy) and Long-Term Future?
(Update: I've now made this tag.)
Impact Assessment (or maybe something like Impact Measurement or Measuring Impact)
Proposed rough description:
... (read more)(Update: I've now made this tag.)
Law
Some posts this could cover:
Arguments for:
- I have a sense it could be useful to have a tag for each major field/discipline that many EAs are from and/or that is relevant to many EA areas.
- The key reason is that this could maybe help people find posts relevant to their backgrounds, and thin
... (read more)(Update: I've now made this tag.)
Operations
Arguments against
Arguments for:
(Update: I've now made this tag.)
Cooperation & Coordination or [just one of those terms] or Moral Trade
(I think I lean towards the first option and away from Moral Trade.)
Proposed description:
... (read more)Economics
The Economics tag would be for posts focusing on topics in the domain of economics, making particularly heavy use of concepts or tools from economics, or highlighting ways for people with economics backgrounds to do good.
Some posts that would fit:
- An introduction to global priorities research for economists
- Posts with the Economic Growth tag
- Maybe some posts wth the Global Health and Development and Statistical Methods tags
- Probably a lot of other posts, but not merely any post that uses terms like "externalities" - hence "particularly heavy use of co
... (read more)I like Lists, so get me a List of Lists for my tag List.
There are a number of good posts that are basically lists of links to different articles (like this one). It would be nice to be able to easily access them.
Maybe some of the existing tags related to politics & policy should be deleted, and a tag for Politics & Policy should replace them?
Some relevant tags that might be on the chopping block: Improving Institutional Decision-Making, Policy Change, Political Polarisation, International Relations, Direct Democracy, and Global Governance.
I think I'm moderately against this idea, as I think the sub-topics are large/important enough to warrant their own tags, even if there's a lot of overlap. But I thought I'd throw this idea out there anyway.
(Update: I've now made this tag.)
Improving Institutional Decision-Making (or similar)
Argument against:
Arguments for:
- Seems substantially distinct from any of the above tags, including Policy Change
- A major topic in EA (e.g., one of 80k's main
... (read more)(Update: I've now made this tag, with the name Epistemic Humility and a description noting it can be about other, broadly related things as well.)
Social Epistemology & Epistemic Humility or [just one of those terms] or [some other label]
Some posts that might fit this tag:
How about a tag for global governance and/or providing global public goods? This is arguably one of the most pressing problems there is, because many of the problems EA works on are global coordination problems, including existential risk (since existential security is a global public good).
Please separate global development from global health.
Global health is one part of global development, which can include political, economic and humanitarian interventions. I write on politics in developing countries, but I'm probably the only one on the forum so I don't need my own tag.
Global priorities research and macrostrategy.
I wanted to use these tags when asking this question, but they don't seem to exist.
There is a tag on cause prioritization. But I think it'd be more useful if that tag was focused on content that is directly relevant for prioritizing between causes, e.g. "here is why I think cause A is more tractable than cause B" or "here's a framework for assessing the neglectedness of a cause". Some global priorities or macrostrategy research has this property, but not all of it. E.g. I think... (read more)
Cluelessness
Arguments against:
Arguments for:
- Many smart longtermist and/or philosophically minded EAs seem to think cluelessness is a really important idea, and I think
... (read more)(Update: I've now made this tag.)
Moral Uncertainty
Argument against:
Argument for:
Now vs Later, or Optimal Timing, or Optimal Timing for Altruists, or some other name.
This would be intended to capture posts relevant to the debate over "giving now vs later" and "patient vs urgent longtermism", as well as related debates like whether to do direct work now vs build career capital vs movement-build, and how much to give/work now vs later, and when to give/work if not now ("later" is a very large category!).
This tag would overlap with Hinge of History, but seems meaningfully distinct from that.
Not sure what the best name would be.
Sorry if offtopic but how do I remove a tag after wrongly using it?
I noticed there's no Consciousness tag, so I was going to create one, but then I saw the Sentience tag. Perhaps that should be renamed "Sentience / Consciousness", and/or its description should be tweaked to mention consciousness?
(I'm putting this here so it can be up- or down-voted to inform whether this change should be made. I think the tag pages will later have the equivalent of Wikipedia's "Talk" pages, at which point I'd put comments like this there instead.)
(Update: This got 2 upvotes, and continues to seem to me like a good idea, so I updated
... (read more)When tags were introduced, the post said to "submit new tag ideas to us using this form." I made a bunch of suggestions (don't remember what they were) and probably some other people did too. Could someone who has access to results of that form paste all those suggestions here?
I've edited this post to include our official mandate at the top. Thanks for creating it, MichaelA!
Global Catastrophic Risk
Argument against:
Argument for:
Some posts that might fit this tag but not the Existential Risk tag:
- Food Crisis - Cascading Events from COVID-19 & Locusts
... (read more)[Any 80,000 problem areas and career paths - or the additional problem areas and career ideas they mention - that are not directly covered by existing tags]
I haven't yet looked through these problem areas and career paths/ideas with this in mind, to see what's not covered by existing tags and what the arguments for and against creating new tags for these things would be.
(Feel free to comment yourself with specific tag ideas drawn from the 80k problem areas and career paths, or the additional ones they mention.)
Update: I've now made this tag.
[Something about war, armed conflict, or great power conflict]
Arguments against:
Arguments for:
- Arguably a very important subset of International Relations, which might warrant a tag of its own.
- Arguably not entirely a subset of International Relations, as things like civil/intrastate armed conflicts could also be important. (But maybe any EA Forum post that covers that would in practice also cover other Internatio
... (read more)Political Polarisation
I already made this tag, but maybe it should be removed.
Arguments against its existence:
Arguments for its existence:
(Update: I've now created this tag.)
Meta-Ethics
Argument against: This is arguably a subset of the tag Moral Philosophy.
Arguments for: This seems like an important subset, which there are several Forum posts about, and which some people might appreciate a specific tag about (e.g., if they're beginning to grapple with meta-ethics and are less focused on moral philosophy as a whole right now).
Some posts this should include:
- All posts in the sequence commencing with this one: Moral Anti-Realism Sequence #1: What Is Moral Realism?
- Morality vs related concepts
- Mayb
... (read more)