EA - General support for "General EA" by Arthur Malone

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: General support for "General EA", published by Arthur Malone on July 27, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.TL;DR: When I say "General EA" I am referring to the cluster including the term "effective altruism," the idea of "big-tent EA," as well as branding and support of those ideas. This post is a response in opposition to many calls for renaming EA or backing away from an umbrella movement. I make some strategic recommendations and take something of a deep dive using my own personal history/cause prioritization as a case study for why "General EA" works (longpost is long, so there's TL;DRs for each major section).I'm primarily aiming to see if I'm right that there's a comparatively silent group that supports EA largely as it. If you're in that category and don't need the full rationale and story, the call to action is to add a comment linking your favorite "EA win" (success story/accomplishment you'd like to have people associate with EA).Since long before last fall's reckoning, I've been following discussions in the EA community both for or against the "effective altruism" name, debates about rebranding, and calls to splinter the various worldviews currently covered by the EA umbrella into separate groups. There are too many to link, and since this post is ultimately in opposition to them, I prefer not to elevate any specific post.I'm actually entirely supportive of such discussions. And I think the reevaluation post-FTX and continued questioning during the EA Strategy fortnight is great, precisely because it is EA in action: trying to use reason to figure out how to do the most good means applying that methodology to our movement, its principles and its public image.Unfortunately, I haven't seen a post advocating for a holistic reaffirmation of "EA has already developed and coalesced around a great (if not optimal) movement. We should not only stay the course, but further invest in the EA status quo." Because while status quo bias is a real thing to stay vigilant against, it is also the case that the movement, its name and branding, and the actions it takes in the world, are all the cumulative work of a lot of incredibly intelligent people doing their best to take the right course of action. Don't fix what ain't broke.As I interact with EAs as a community builder (I also lead the team organizing EAGxNYC, applications closing soon!) I have heard people advocating for the strategy/branding changes that are described on the forum. However, I perceive this as a minority compared to those who generally think we should just continue "being EA." It is often the case that those in favor of maintaining a positive status quo do not express their position as vocally as those aiming for a change, so I wrote this post to reflect my own view of why it is preferable to stick with general EA.I aim to be somewhat ambitious and address several longstanding criticisms about EA, and hope to get some engagement from those with different viewpoints. But I also hope that some of the (what I perceive to be) silent majority will chime in and demonstrate that we're here and don't want to see EA splintered, rebranded, or otherwise demoted in favor of some other label."Effective Altruism"TL;DR: There's no word in the English language that accurately covers EA's principles or equally applies to all its community. Every possible name would be a compromise, and "effective altruism" has the benefit of demonstrable success and established momentum. As long as we stick with it as a descriptive moniker rather than asserting it as a prescriptive identifier, it can serve us as well as the names chosen by other movements.Circa 2009-2014, I attempted to write a book with the goal of starting a movement of individuals who try to take their ethics seriously and make positive changes in the w...