(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!
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.
Political Polarisation
I already made this tag, but maybe it should be removed.
Arguments against its existence:
Arguments for its existence:
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.
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.
... (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?
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.
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.
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.
Would be good if tags always had descriptions/definitions of the things they're for.
(Update: I've now made this tag.)
Operations
Arguments against
Arguments for:
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)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.
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?
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".
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)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)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 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.
(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)
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.)
Do we need both Longtermism (Philosophy) and Long-Term Future?
(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)(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:
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)
(Update: I've now made this tag.)
Moral Uncertainty
Argument against:
Argument for:
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)I've edited this post to include our official mandate at the top. Thanks for creating it, MichaelA!
[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 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)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)
(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)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)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.
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)Nonlinear Fund
Maybe it's too early to make a tag for that org?
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
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.org/tag/scalably-involving-people... (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)Non-Humans and the Long-Term Future
Why I propose this:
Examples ... (read more)
Positive futures (or Utopias, or Ideal futures, or something like that)
Proposed description:
... (read more)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)
Update: I've now made this tag.
ITN
Proposed description:
... (read more)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.)
Impact Assessment (or maybe something like Impact Measurement or Measuring Impact)
Proposed rough description:
... (read more)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.
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)"Economic Policy" or "Macroeconomic Stabilization"
Pros:
Cons:
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)
Sorry if offtopic but how do I remove a tag after wrongly using it?