JP Addison🔸

• JP Addison🔸Jun 10, 2025, 8:14 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Tristan D’s comment on: EA Core Skillset

  I agree they’re generally useful. I claim^[1] they’re especially useful in EA. But that’s not enough to make this interesting.

  There are many generally useful correlated traits where the correlation with general mental ability is stronger than the correlation between those traits. So being a good writer is good, and also being good at solving math problems is good. And they’re positively correlated. But most things are, just through general intelligence.

  What becomes interesting is identifying a cluster of traits that are more correlated with each other than with intelligence, and also predictive of success. These are rare, and usually wrong.^[2] If such a cluster can be identified, than knowing about it can help you identify talent that will do well.

  If such a cluster is also trainable, well then, you’ve got a real prize.

  1. ^

     With the noted caveats.

  2. ^

     Citation needed.

• JP Addison🔸May 21, 2025, 4:25 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Alex (Αλέξανδρος)’s comment on: Reflec­tions on 7 years build­ing the EA Fo­rum — and mov­ing on

  Much of the credit belongs to LessWrong!

Money Stuff on char­ity-ad­justed billion­aire rankings

• JP Addison🔸May 6, 2025, 9:35 PM

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Jeff Kaufman 🔸’s comment on: Reflec­tions on 7 years build­ing the EA Fo­rum — and mov­ing on

  Fair, I was probably too loose there. I believe specifically that posts which were copied from google docs^[1] failed to wrap at the screen width. But I wasn’t a much of a mobile reader at the time.

  Also thank you! I didn’t realize you were the one who added mobile support.

  1. ^

     IIRC, maybe it was some other cause that affected a subset of posts

• JP Addison🔸May 6, 2025, 2:33 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: EA as a Tree of Questions

  I like the branching tree metaphor, and I like the attempt to framework these intro conversations — good post.

• JP Addison🔸May 2, 2025, 2:44 PM

  8 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Lizka’s comment on: Reflec­tions on 7 years build­ing the EA Fo­rum — and mov­ing on

  Thanks, Lizka. I think this is one of the best retirement presents I could have gotten.

Reflec­tions on 7 years build­ing the EA Fo­rum — and mov­ing on

• JP Addison🔸May 1, 2025, 8:06 PM

  25 points

  13 ∶ 0

  on: Pri­ori­tiz­ing Work

  A Forum post can be short. What a great ratio of punch per word.

• JP Addison🔸Apr 7, 2025, 8:49 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: The Life’s Work of Ban­er­jee, Du­flo, and Kremer

  Nice, I like this. Have you considered crossposting the full content? Usually those get a lot more people reading them, and more visibility, though do note the CC-BY restriction.

• JP Addison🔸Apr 7, 2025, 2:37 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Con­tact us

  Good ideas, thank you!

• JP Addison🔸Mar 31, 2025, 9:04 PM

  2 points

  2 ∶ 4

  in reply to: NobodyInteresting’s comment on: 80,000 Hours is shift­ing its strate­gic ap­proach to fo­cus more on AGI

  We’re issuing @NobodyInteresting a warning for the above comment. The comment does not meet the expectations for civility and engaging in good faith. I would not recommend a public warning for this comment on it’s own (though I would downvote it for the above reasons, and recommend a discrete DM), but we have less tolerance for users who have not yet shown that they can engage productively.

EA Core Skillset

• JP Addison🔸Mar 4, 2025, 5:01 PM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Grayden 🔸’s comment on: His­tor­i­cal ex­am­ples of stew­ard­ship in EA

  I think this is a good and useful point. And one that’s underappreciated in general.

His­tor­i­cal ex­am­ples of stew­ard­ship in EA

• JP Addison🔸Feb 25, 2025, 8:42 PM

  23 points

  5 ∶ 3

  on: Stop call­ing them labs

  I expect that “labs” usefully communicates to most of my interlocutors that I’m talking about the companies developing frontier models and not something like Palantir. There’s a lot of hype-based incentive for companies to claim to be “AI companies”, which creates confusion. (Indeed, I didn’t know before I chose Palantir as an example, but of course they’re marketing themselves as an AI company.)

  —

  That said, I agree with the consideration in your post. I don’t claim which is the bigger consideration, only that they trade off.

Some mod­er­a­tion team principles

• JP Addison🔸Jan 15, 2025, 3:40 PM

  15 points

  6 ∶ 1

  on: Vol­un­tary Salary Reduction

  Why don’t you consider the reduction as part of of your donations? Unlike taking a direct-work job (where the counterfactual and non-monetary compensation questions are complicated and any estimate will involve a lot of guesswork)^[1] your salary reduction is from a known very well-understood baseline.

  I’m sympathetic overall to your desire for this not to become a norm in EA, due to the concerns you listed, but I would (and do) count it towards my donation target, and would generally advise others to do so.

  1. ^

     There’s an argument in your case that your counterfactual salary is extremely clear. I would expect for most people taking a salary reduction, the answer is much harder. I’d estimate that half of people I’ve heard of leaving EtG jobs would have had a hard time being happy at that job any more, and many more people are like me where I haven’t worked in industry for 7 years and so I would have to guess, which makes it a bit of a weird norm question if a peer of mine gets to claim a 50% reduction, but I have no idea if I could have made double my (reduced) salary in industry in a very distant counterfactual world.

• JP Addison🔸Dec 17, 2024, 8:58 PM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Seek­ing Sup­port: Help Fish Welfare Ini­ti­a­tive Develop Re­mote Sens­ing Technology

  I used to work in remote sensing in a past life. I don’t have much to say about the science of measuring water quality, but I do want to comment on the data collection question.

  You mention satellites and drones. If you can get the info you need from existing satellite imagery that’s great. To the extent that you need something more, I can recommend using manned aircraft over drones.

  The world is well set-up for pilots to fly small aircraft. The type of drone you would need to cover a large area would have to be a very autonomous, fixed-wing aircraft. You don’t need this. You can contract a pilot & plane for hundreds of $s an hour and cover a whole lot of ground per hour. I would bet you could survey the whole of India’s fish farms annually for less than a single FTE in a western country working on drones.

  Once you realize this, you might start thinking about other approaches than visible light. Can you identify substances that shouldn’t be present in a humane fish farm and measure them with a spectrometer mounted on an aircraft?

Where CEA staff are donat­ing in 2024

• JP Addison🔸Dec 12, 2024, 9:33 PM

  6 points

  1 ∶ 1

  in reply to: Habryka [Deactivated]’s comment on: Tech­ni­cal Re­port on Mir­ror Bac­te­ria: Fea­si­bil­ity and Risks

  I really appreciate that the comment section has rewarded you both precisely equally.