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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

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To what extent did Eliezer Yudkowsky invent the Effective Altruist movement? (forum.effectivealtruism.org)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I was wondering if someone here has a better idea of how EA developed in its early days than I do.

Judging by the link I posted, it seems like Yudkowsky used the term "effective altruist" years before Will MacAskill or Peter Singer adopted it. The link doesn't mention this explicitly, but Will MacAskill was also a lesswrong user, so it seems at least plausible that Yudkowsky is the true father of the movement.

I want to sort this out because I've noticed that a recently lot of EAs have been downplaying the AI and longtermist elements within the movement and talking more about Peter Singer as the movement's founder. By contrast the impression I get about EA's founding based on what I know is that EA started with Yudkowsky and then MacAskill, with Peter Singer only getting involved later. Is my impression mistaken?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Eh, the impression that I get here is that Eliezer happened to put "effective" and "altruist" together without intending to use them as a new term. This is Yud we're talking about - he's written roughly 500,000 more words about Harry Potter than the average person does in their lifetime.

Even if he had invented the term, I wouldn't say this is a smoking gun of how intertwined EAs are with the LW rats - there's much better evidence out there.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Oh my god. I should have realised of course teenage Yud would be Like This, but looking through this archive is a trip.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

He has quite possibly written more words about Harry Potter than She Who Shall Not Be Named, herself.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Thank you, that link is exactly what I was looking for (and also sated my curiosity about how Yudkowsky got involved with Bostrom and Hanson, I had heard they met on the extropian listserv but I had never seen any proof).