Autocompletes to asperger-rationalist for me, and I see Valentine reports the same. But maybe this frees up enough syllable-budget to spend one on bypassing that. How about: endevrat, someone who endeavours to be rational.
(This one is much better on the linguistic properties, but note that there’s a subtle meaning shift: it’s no longer inclusive of people who aspire but do not endeavour, ie people who identify-with rationality but can’t quite bring themselves to read or practice. This seems important but I don’t know whether it’s better or worse.)
If “rationalist” is a taken as a success term, then why wouldn’t “effective altruist” be as well? That is to say: if you aren’t really being effective, then in a strong sense, you aren’t really an “effective altruist”. A term that doesn’t presuppose you have already achieved what you are seeking would be “aspiring effective altruist”, which is quite long IMO.
“Effective Altruist” has six syllables, “Aspiring Rationalist” has seven. Not that different.
I will try using it in my writing more for a while.
Note what people actually say in conversation is “EA” (suggests “AR” as a replacement)
Hm, the “AR scene” already refers to something, but maybe we could fight out our edge in the culture.
There’s also the good ol’ Asp Rat abbreviation.
Autocompletes to asperger-rationalist for me, and I see Valentine reports the same. But maybe this frees up enough syllable-budget to spend one on bypassing that. How about: endevrat, someone who endeavours to be rational.
(This one is much better on the linguistic properties, but note that there’s a subtle meaning shift: it’s no longer inclusive of people who aspire but do not endeavour, ie people who identify-with rationality but can’t quite bring themselves to read or practice. This seems important but I don’t know whether it’s better or worse.)
(this was the intended joke)
OOoooooohhhhhhhhhh.
Alas, my brain autocompletes “Asp Rat” to “Asperger’s-like rationalist”.
That one’s also a little hard to pronounce, so I think we’d have to collapse it to “assrat”.
Could go “aspirat”. (Pronounced /ˈæs.pɪ̯.ɹæt/, not /ˈæsˈpaɪ̯.ɹɪʔ/.)
I find “AR” more difficult to actually say out loud than “EA”.
Just think like a pirate.
If “rationalist” is a taken as a success term, then why wouldn’t “effective altruist” be as well? That is to say: if you aren’t really being effective, then in a strong sense, you aren’t really an “effective altruist”. A term that doesn’t presuppose you have already achieved what you are seeking would be “aspiring effective altruist”, which is quite long IMO.
One man’s modus tollens is another’s modus ponens—I happen to think that the term “effective altruist” is problematic for exactly this reason.