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I assume the GP is talking about the name "effective altruism".

• JamesBarney 4y ago
  I don't know what else they should have picked? It seems like a fairly straightforward name for movement that focuses on charity effectiveness. I guess you could call it "effective giving" or something like that but caring about effectiveness is it core differentiating tenant and anything related to altruism/giving/charity is going to sound good.
  • zztop44 4y ago
    I think the argument is that everyone else doing charity/altruism also (ostensibly) cares about effectiveness so it’s only a differentiating tenant if you somehow think your caring about effectiveness is somehow different to everyone else’s.
    • JamesBarney 4y ago
      They care about effectiveness in the sense of if you asked if they cared about effectiveness they'd say yes. They don't care about effectiveness in the sense that they are doing the math on how effective different outreach is, comparing that against other uses of the money, and sharing that with their donors. I've been to 9-10 charity events and none of them talked about effectiveness in a dollar and cents way like the way givewell does. It's a real change from the status quo.