JP Addison

Karma: 4,896

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.

Scott Alexander — Meditations on Moloch

JP Addison30 Jul 2014 14:09 UTC

10 points

2 comments1 min readEA link

(slatestarcodex.com)

JP Addison 16 Jun 2017 21:16 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Introducing the EA Involvement Guide
“As English increasingly becomes the universal language..” This seems needlessly likely to give offense.

JP Addison 18 Jun 2017 15:50 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
on: What is valuable about effective altruism? Implications for community building
Does anyone have recommendations for activities that are valuable for people considering their values? Or people considering / doing action?

JP Addison 7 Sep 2018 10:05 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: MaxDalton’s comment on: Which piece got you more involved in EA?
Bug report filed: URLs are not automatically turned in to links. In the mean time:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxuYmVja3N0ZWFkfGd4OjExNDBjZTcwNjMxMzRmZGE

JP Addison 18 Oct 2018 19:50 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jan_Kulveit’s comment on: Forum moving to open beta this week
Hi, sorry for the confusion. I agree it’s suboptimal to have the duplicated Forums, and am working as fast as I can to get it up. I think it is good to have the new Forum get tested and for people who wish to to get familiar with it before redirecting the entire Forum traffic to it. It is a fork of the LW codebase, but there are enough changes to have allowed many bugs to have been caught already. I’m aiming to have the new Forum up before Friday Nov 2nd, or the week after. I have been less good than I might have hoped at making timing predictions however, and have tried to avoid having people plan around predictions that have not proved well-calibrated. Thanks for your patience.

JP Addison 19 Oct 2018 19:38 UTC
3 points
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on: EA Concepts: Share Impressions Before Credences
Despite widespread agreement with the principle, I find this pretty rare to happen in practice. Do you have ideas for how this could become a more catchy social convention?

JP Addison 23 Oct 2018 21:48 UTC
2 points
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on: On Becoming World-Class
It’s not obvious to me how to get order of magnitude estimates on the expected value of these considerations. They seem likely to be true, but I’m uncertain how to weigh against the value of a ‘traditional’ EA-aligned career. (Edited for clarity)

JP Addison 23 Oct 2018 22:01 UTC
9 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Julia_Wise’s comment on: Is Suffering Convex?
It seems like from an evolutionary perspective, children have a higher incentive to communicate their emotions and adults have a higher incentive to take action in response. I worry that this throws off our calibration of the magnitude of their respective experiences.

JP Addison 24 Oct 2018 21:32 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: SiebeRozendal’s comment on: On Becoming World-Class
No worries. I’m a newcomer to posting Forum comments, so I expect to need to train my writing. I updated the comment, thanks!

JP Addison 8 Nov 2018 6:00 UTC
18 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Welcome to the New Forum!
Credit where credit is due: we are deeply indebted to the Less Wrong team for letting us use their codebase and providing assistance with the transformation and migration.

JP Addison 9 Nov 2018 6:41 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Even non-theists should act as if theism is true
This conclusion haunts me sometimes, although I’ve come to it from a different direction. I find it nontrivial to find fault with, given moral uncertainty. I haven’t come across the “worlds where we know moral realism” argument before. Upvoted. Here are two possible objections as replies to this comment:

JP Addison 9 Nov 2018 6:42 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: JP Addison’s comment on: Even non-theists should act as if theism is true
Reason could give us access to moral facts. There are plenty of informed writers who would claim to have solved the Is-Ought Problem. If one does not solve the Is-Ought problem, I’m not clear why this is better than moral subjectivism, though I didn’t read the link on subjectivism.

edit: spelling

JP Addison 9 Nov 2018 6:43 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: JP Addison’s comment on: Even non-theists should act as if theism is true
Suppose for sake of argument that I have p < .1% that a being existed who had access to moral facts and could influence the world. Given this, the likelihood that one is confused on some basic question about morality would be higher.

JP Addison 9 Nov 2018 19:17 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: What’s Changing With the New Forum?
You can do link posts, but the way the alignment forum does it relies on them sharing the same database.

JP Addison 9 Nov 2018 19:21 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Doing brainstorming better
You should call this brain-hurricaning.

JP Addison 12 Nov 2018 22:17 UTC
17 points
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on: 2017 Donor Lottery Report
Thanks for going the extra mile and writing up the results of your research.

JP Addison 13 Nov 2018 0:36 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: Which piece got you more involved in EA?
It took me a minute to figure this on out. It looks to me like the editor switches to “Plain Markdown Editor” on mobile, even if you don’t ordinarily have it enabled. Here’s how to make links in markdown:
[optional link text like “click here”](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/fakelink).

JP Addison 16 Nov 2018 1:06 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: JoshYou’s comment on: 2017 Donor Lottery Report
Coming soon! Should be announced by Giving Tuesday, although I’m a bit behind schedule.
I’m glad you like them, and thanks for asking 🙂.

JP Addison 19 Nov 2018 18:58 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Julia_Wise’s comment on: “Taking AI Risk Seriously” – Thoughts by Critch
Agreed but with the caveat that I’d rather see something imperfect than nothing at all. I like the post and I’m glad it was cross-posted.

Donor Lottery 2018 is live

JP Addison6 Dec 2018 0:29 UTC

19 points

0 comments1 min readEA link

(app.effectivealtruism.org)

JP Addison

Scott Alexan­der — Med­i­ta­tions on Moloch

Donor Lot­tery 2018 is live

Scott Alexander — Meditations on Moloch

Donor Lottery 2018 is live