JP Addison🔸

Karma: 5,766

Head of the CEA Online Team, which runs this Forum.

A bit about me, to help you get to know me: Prior to CEA, I was a data engineer at an aerospace startup. I got into EA through reading the entire archive of Slate Star Codex in 2015. I found EA naturally compelling, and donated to AMF, then GFI, before settling on my current cause prioritization of meta-EA, with AI x-risk as my object-level preference. I try to have a wholehearted approach to morality, rather than thinking of it as an obligation or opportunity. You see my LessWrong profile here.

I love this Forum a bunch. I’ve been working on it for 5 years as of this writing, and founded the EA Forum 2.0. (Remember 1.0?) I have an intellectual belief in it as an impactful project, but also a deep love for it as an open platform where anyone can come participate in the project of effective altruism. We’re open ²⁴⁄₇, anywhere there is an internet connection.

In my personal life, I hang out in the Boston EA and Gaymer communities, enjoy houseplants, table tennis, and playing coop games with my partner, who has more karma than me.

JP Addison🔸Aug 28, 2024, 9:38 PM
10 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: richard_ngo’s comment on: Lizka’s Shortform
That is not the post in question. We removed the post that prompted the ban.

JP Addison🔸Aug 28, 2024, 7:32 PM
−1 points
0 ∶ 9
in reply to: Lizka’s comment on: Lizka’s Shortform
Moderation update: We’re issuing dstudiocode a one-month ban for breaking Forum norms in their recent post and subsequent behavior. Specifically:
- Posting content that could be interpreted as promoting violence or illegal activities.
The post in question, which asked whether murdering meat-eaters could be considered “ethical,” crosses a line in terms of promoting potential violence.
As a reminder, the ban affects the user, not just the account. During their ban period, the user will not be permitted to rejoin the Forum under another account name. If they return to the Forum after the ban period, we’ll expect a higher standard of norm-following and compliance with moderator instructions.
You can reach out to forum-moderation@effectivealtruism.org with any questions. You can appeal this decision here.

JP Addison🔸Aug 5, 2024, 4:43 PM
39 points
13 ∶ 0
on: On Owning Our EA Affiliation
I very much appreciate you writing this, and writing it so well. I really resonate with a lot of this, though of course maybe my role as a professional EA community person makes it harder for me and others to trust my take.

JP Addison🔸Jul 1, 2024, 11:21 PM
6 points
2 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Nathan Young’s Shortform
I’m excited that we exceeded our goals enough to have the issue :)

JP Addison🔸Jun 25, 2024, 9:01 PM
7 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform
I don’t know about you but I just learned about one of the biggest updates to OPs grantmaking in a year on the Forum.
That said, the data does show some agreement with your and commenters vibe of lowering quantity.
I agree that the Forum could be a good place for a lot of these discussions. Some of them aren’t happening at all to my knowledge.^[1] Some of those should be, and should be discussed on the Forum. Others are happening in private and that’s rational, although you may be able to guess that my biased view is that a lot more should be public, and if they were, should be posted on the Forum.
Broadly: I’m quite bullish on the EA community as a vehicle for working on the world’s most pressing problems, and of open online discussion as a piece of our collective progress. And I don’t know of a better open place on the internet for EAs to gather.
1. ^
  Part of that might be because as EA gets older the temperature (in the annealing sense) rationally lowers.

JP Addison🔸Jun 19, 2024, 1:01 PM
8 points
4 ∶ 0
on: Loving a world you don’t trust
I can’t recommend the podcast audio enough. 🥲

JP Addison🔸Jun 18, 2024, 9:16 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Announcing AI Welfare Debate Week (July 1-7)
Maybe halfway relevant: An Argument for Why the Future May Be Good by @Ben_West.

JP Addison🔸Jun 12, 2024, 5:49 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: JP Addison🔸’s comment on: EA EDA: Looking at Forum trends across 2023
Oh, random thought: I think there are sometimes effects where the late holiday seasons often sees a dip like you observe. Maybe there’s a seasonal adjustment you could do?
(If you did, you would be going beyond what we do internally though, so, like, not a criticism.)

JP Addison🔸Jun 12, 2024, 5:44 PM
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: EA EDA: Looking at Forum trends across 2023
Great stuff. I’m glad you looked into the data, and posted it publicly. Congrats on getting the draft over the line 🙂. I’m glad our public API was able to help, sorry about the lack of documentation. (Oh, you know about our open source repo though?) I want to check on one point that it behaved correctly: did the site redirect you to the bot site?

JP Addison🔸Jun 1, 2024, 8:36 AM
12 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Announcing a $6,000,000 endowment for NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy
Congratulations!

JP Addison🔸May 20, 2024, 8:57 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: JP’s Shortform
Working questions
A mental technique I’ve been starting to use recently: “working questions.” When tackling a fuzzy concept, I’ve heard of people using “working definitions” and “working hypotheses.” Those terms help you move forward on understanding a problem without locking yourself into a frame, allowing you to focus on other parts of your investigation.
Often, it seems to me, I know I want to investigate a problem without being quite clear on what exactly I want to investigate. And the exact question I want to answer is quite important! And instead of needing to be precise about the question from the beginning, I’ve found it helpful to think about a “working question” that I’ll then refine into a more precise question as I move forward.
An example: “something about the EA Forum’s brand/reputation” → “What do potential writers think about the costs and benefits of posting on the Forum?” → “Do writers think they will reach a substantial fraction of the people they want to reach, if they post on the EA Forum?”

JP Addison🔸May 20, 2024, 12:29 PM
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: EA Forum feature suggestion thread
You can do this on the search page. (I agree it would be better for that option to appear on the user page filtering — it’s a natural thing to want to look for.)

JP Addison🔸May 10, 2024, 9:06 PM
4 points
2 ∶ 1
in reply to: Remmelt’s comment on: Émile P. Torres’s history of dishonesty and harassment
The moderators have removed personal information from the above comment. The Forum’s policy is to allow anonymity, and even if you believe someone has misbehaved or misled, it is still not allowed to identify them or related parties.

JP Addison🔸May 10, 2024, 8:48 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: EA Forum feature suggestion thread
I believe it should work if you search “foobar Vasco Grilo”

JP Addison🔸May 7, 2024, 6:28 PM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: JP Addison🔸’s comment on: EA Forum feature suggestion thread
A thought I want to leave for posterity and because I just linked this conversation to someone: I really would like the comment hiding to also hide agree/disagree votes. I’m nervous about people feeling more pressure to disagree-vote in this world.
Also while I’m at it I should note that, as evidence of the feature being under-baked: someone reported it to me as a bug 😅

JP Addison🔸May 7, 2024, 6:24 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: EA Forum feature suggestion thread
Ah, I see. I don’t hate that at all.

JP Addison🔸May 7, 2024, 1:56 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: EA Forum feature suggestion thread
If I were defending my past decision, I’d say that you’d probably hover over the usernames after reading and before you reply.

JP Addison🔸May 6, 2024, 9:31 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: EA Forum feature suggestion thread
Again without defending past!me’s decision, we deliberate thought it would be a bad idea to have some of the participants able to see karma and some unable to. Karma is an important part of the social landscape that some people would be missing.

JP Addison🔸May 6, 2024, 9:28 PM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Max Ghenis’s comment on: New forum feature: preview & embed Our World in Data charts
I’ll write down the request. I tried previewing what it would look like and it’s not perfect
so we’d probably need OWID to make a dedicated preview page.

JP Addison🔸May 3, 2024, 9:32 PM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: EA Forum feature suggestion thread
Hiding karma would be specially relevant for people with low karma, who are new to the forum?
At the time we wrote the feature, we wanted to experiment with it for only some posts, and generally we often roll(ed) out features to power users first. Rather than having someone new to the site who just happened to discover it but wouldn’t be able to model the costs/benefits of turning on the feature.
I assume it can be disabled later one (in the post editor moderation options)?
No, actually. On the basis that karma does actually contribute a lot to the way people interact with comments, we wanted to avoid changing the system midway through a thread.
(TBC this really was a long time ago and I don’t necessarily endorse the decisions that past!me made here.)