Talk:Effective altruism/Definition of EA

Definition of Effective Altruism
I see there is some very good feedback from User:J Milburn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Effective_altruism/GA1) on how the lead of this article can be made better, and I've decided to take on this task. I want to make sure I get the definition of EA right before I change something so vital to the article. Currently the first sentence is:

> Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates the use of evidence and reasoning to determine the most effective ways to improve the quality of life others.

It's true that evidence-based practices, specifically randomized controlled trials, have been used in the past to determine which interventions are most effective. However, in recent years, the movement has been evolving, with the realization that this kind of "randomista development" is not the most effective (see https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bsE5t6qhGC65fEpzN/growth-and-the-case-against-randomista-development). It turns out that doing things like opening up trade with a developing country can do much more to improve citizens' quality of life than health-based interventions. I propose changing the first sentence to the following.

> Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates identifying and contributing to the most effective ways to improve the quality of life others.

I know rationality is a big part of Altruism, and I do see that that community is already mentioned later in the lead. What do you think? Ruthgrace (talk) 01:43, 3 December 2021 (UTC)


 * In 2017, MacAskill submitted a document of guiding principles of EA to several EA organizations in the hope that the movement could agree to a single set of principles. At the beginning of that document, a short definition of EA was included. The contacted EA orgs voiced their support for this document.
 * While it is true that movements do change over time and it would be appropriate to carry those changes over to the EA wikipedia article, when it comes to the lede of this article, I would prefer that the wikipedia page stick to the definition of EA that was agreed to by several EA orgs back in 2017 in that document. This means keeping the "evidence and reason" language. However, that document also seems to support making your proposed change to include "contributing" to the lede. These are just my immediate thoughts; I don't feel certain on this and am open to others' opinions. &mdash; Eric Herboso 06:00, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
 * No strong take on this. Personally, I quite like the CEA definition in the document that Eric linked to ("Effective altruism is about using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis."). I'm not too worried that mentioning "evidence" in the definition is a misrepresentation of EA since "evidence" in the Bayesian sense is much broader than RCTs. However, I also really like Ruth's formulation, except that I'd favor the simpler formulation "to benefit others" over "to improve the quality of life of others". —— Ego.Eudaimonia (talk) 14:42, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I solicited the first GA review at Talk:Effective altruism/GA1, and I already revised the article from the top through the philosophy section to address the review; it is the rest of the article that still needs revision. (I'm not implying that my revisions don't need improvement, but they do address the GA-review issues.) Especially keep in mind the complaints from other editors on this talk page that the article relies too much on primary sources, grey literature, and self-published sources (see, e.g., WP:PSTS, WP:SPS). I addressed this issue in the part of the article that I reviewed by changing the cited sources (and changing the text to reflect the sources, of course) to published books and articles as much as possible. above said that he liked a certain document by MacAskill, but that is merely a web page, and MacAskill says basically the same statements in a published and presumably peer-reviewed article in the journal Essays in Philosophy, so it is a preferable source and is already cited in the first sentence and in several other places in the article. There are also published sources in the "Further reading" section (mostly about philosophy) that are not yet cited in the article but could be. A big problem with 's recent edit to the first sentence (which I've partially reverted, as the edit is otherwise fine) is not sticking to the cited sources, and again the sources are, not posts from forum.effectivealtruism.org. Biogeographist (talk) 17:19, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi Biogeographist! Really appreciate all the work you've done on this. Do you think we could ask for another Good Article review, since you've already addressed the feedback from before? I feel like for it to be a Good Article, it should be more succinct, and some of the more specific philosophy stuff can maybe moved to relevant philosophy pages. However, I'm relatively new to editing Wikipedia, so it might be worth it to get a 3rd party opinion. Ruthgrace (talk) 17:34, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I haven't recently looked at the remaining issues from the past GA review, so I don't remember how much work remains to be done. It seemed like a lot of work to me at the time, but that may be because I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and someone with lower standards may want to look at it! In any case, it's best to make sure the issues from the first GA review are resolved before soliciting another one. Biogeographist (talk) 17:40, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I think what said about the fact that the CEA/MacAskill definition is endorsed by a number of organizations does give that definition a lot of legitimacy, and a way to acknowledge that would be to insert a quotation as follows, which directly quotes the part of the CEA/MacAskill definition that is in the first cited source: Effective altruism is a philosophical and social movement that advocates "using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis". I think this is superior to the current first sentence, since it doesn't repeat the word "effective" and adds the important "taking action" part. It also eliminates the quasi-citogenesis involved in citing Singer (who quotes Wikipedia), which I've felt uneasy about ever since I did it. Biogeographist (talk) 21:06, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm super happy with your resolution of this, User:Biogeographist! Thanks for making the edits to the page. I'm going to move this discussion to a subpage now that it's resolved. Ruthgrace (talk) 02:31, 4 December 2021 (UTC)