A Name for a Movement?

March 12th, 2012
ea, terms
There's a young movement that combines the idea of a duty to help others with the idea that you should maximize the impact of your actions. It has been given many names, including Effective Giving, Smart Giving, Giving, Optimal Philanthropy, Effective Altruism, Smart Aid, High Impact Philanthropy, and Efficient Charity. It includes Give Well, Giving Effectively, 80,000 Hours, Giving Gladly, Good Intentions are not Enough, and Giving What We Can.

I want to be able to say things like the "X movement" or "I'm organizing an X discussion", but I'm not sure what name to use. Suggestions? I'm currently leaning towards "Smart Giving" or "Effective Giving".

Update 2013-02-28: The community seems to have standardized on "Effective Altruism".

Update 2014-03-11: Will MacAskill wrote up a history of how the Center for Effective Altruism got its name, which is probably much of how the term "effective altruism" came into use.

Update 2014-07-26: I found a use of "effective altruist" on one of Eliezer Yudkowsky's 2007 Overcoming Bias posts (now redirects to lesswrong): "If you want to be an effective altruist, you have to think it through with the part of your brain that processes those unexciting inky zeroes on paper, not just the part that gets real worked up about that poor struggling oil-soaked bird."

Referenced in:

Comment via: google plus, facebook, r/smartgiving

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy

Look! A therapy technique people don't already know!

via Thing of Things May 14, 2025

Workshop House case study

Lauren Hoffman interviewed me about Workshop House and wrote this post about a community I’m working on building in DC.

via Home April 30, 2025

Impact, agency, and taste

understand + work backwards from the root goal • don’t rely too much on permission or encouragement • make success inevitable • find your angle • think real hard • reflect on your thinking

via benkuhn.net April 19, 2025

more     (via openring)