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To what extent did Eliezer Yudkowsky invent the Effective Altruist movement? (forum.effectivealtruism.org)
submitted 11 months ago by GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems
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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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[-] dgerard@awful.systems 11 points 11 months ago

yeah, he totally did. EAs claiming otherwise are just incorrect.

remember that the original Roko's Basilisk post talked about the dilemma of being an "altruist", i.e. how to donate as much money as possible to MIRI (or SIAI as it was in 2010).

the terms were in extremely heavy use back then.

a bunch of the various Singer-inspired groups tried to work out a name for the whole thing, and they picked Yudkowsky's coinage.

this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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