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: 3 suggestions about jargon in EA, published by MichaelA on the effective altruism forum. Write a Review Summary and purpose I suggest that effective altruists should: Be careful to avoid using jargon to convey something that isn’t what the jargon is actually meant to convey, and that could be conveyed well without any jargon. As examples, I’ll discuss misuses I’ve seen of the terms existential risk and the unilateralist’s curse, and the jargon-free statements that could’ve been used instead. Provide explanations and/or hyperlinks to explanations the first time they use jargon. Be careful to avoid implying jargon or concepts originated in EA when they did not. I’m sure similar suggestions have been made before, both within and outside of EA. This post’s purpose is to collect the suggestions together in one post that (a) can be linked to, and (b) has this as its sole focus (rather than touching on these suggestions in passing). This post is intended to provide friendly suggestions rather than criticisms. I’ve sometimes failed to follow these suggestions myself. 1. Avoid misuse The upside of jargon is that it can efficiently convey a precise and sometimes complex idea. The downside is that jargon will be unfamiliar to most people. I’ve seen instances where EAs or EA-aligned people have used jargon to convey something other than what the jargon is meant to convey. This erodes the upside of that jargon, while also unnecessarily having that downside of unfamiliarity. In these instances, it would be better to say what one is trying to say without jargon (or with the different, appropriate jargon). Of course, “avoid misuse” is a hard principle to disagree with - but how do you implement it, in this case? I have two concrete suggestions (though I’m sure other suggestions could be made as well): Before using jargon, think about whether you’ve actually read the source that introduced that jargon, and/or the most prominent source that used the jargon (i.e., the “go-to” reference). If you haven’t, perhaps read that before using the jargon. If you read that a long time ago, perhaps double-check it. I suggest this in part because I suspect people often encounter jargon second-hand, leading to a “telephone game” effect. See whether you can say the same idea without the jargon, at least in your own head. This may help you realise that you’re unsure what the jargon means. Or it may help you realise that the idea is easy to convey without the jargon. I’ll now give two examples I’ve come across of the sort of misuse I’m talking about. Existential risk For details, see Clarifying existential risks and existential catastrophes. What the term is meant to refer to: The most prominent definitions of existential risk are the following: An existential risk is one that threatens the premature extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development (Bostrom, 2012) And: An existential risk is a risk that threatens the destruction of humanity’s longterm potential (Ord, 2020) Both authors make it clear that this refers to more than just extinction risk. For example, Ord breaks existential catastrophes down into three main types: extinction, unrecoverable collapse, and unrecoverable dystopia. What the term is sometimes mistakenly used for: The term existential risk is sometimes used when the writer or speaker is actually referring only to extinction risk (e.g., in this post, this podcast, and this post). This is a problem because: This makes the statements unnecessarily hard to understand for non-EAs. We could suffer an existential catastrophe even if we do not suffer extinction, and it’s important to remain aware of this. It would be better for these speakers and writers to just say “extinction risk”, as that term i...