Hi, I'm Eli Lifland. I may improve the formatting at some point.

Me Elsewhere

Effective Altruism

I'm part of the effective altruism movement, which aims to use reason and evidence to improve the world as much as possible. I've taken the Giving What We Can Pledge to donate at least 10% of my lifetime income to charities I think are the most effective. I write more about effective altruism here.

Career

I'm doing independent research on AI alignment strategy. I advise Sage, an organization I cofounded helping impactful communities figure out what's true. I previously worked at Ought on the AI research assistant Elicit.

Writing

My blog is at foxy-scout.com. I often crosspost to the Effective Altruism Forum or LessWrong. Some writing I've (co-)authored that I am happiest about:

Forecasting

I'm interested in judgmental forecasting as a route to improved decision making. I recommend Superforecasting for an introduction, but I think it overclaims in some ways (e.g. regarding generalists vs. expertise). I co-lead the Samotsvety Forecasting team. My forecasting track record is described here.

AI Research

During my last year of college, I co-created TextAttack, a Python framework for adversarial attacks in NLP. See the paper or blog post. We also published a paper arguing for stricter evaluation of adversarial examples in NLP.

Terraforming Mars

The latest strategy game I'm into is Terraforming Mars. It's a board game with some online adaptations.

Education

I have degrees in computer science and economics from the University of Virginia, 2019 NCAA basketball national champions!

Previous dimensions

Battlecode

I competed in Battlecode for several years, a competition for high-school and college students to program the best bot to win a strategy game. My team advanced to the top 4 3 out of 6 years. See the README here for more.

Clash Royale

During the end of high school and beginning of college, I was addicted to the mobile game, Clash Royale, did well in a few competitions and built up a bit of a following before quitting. My YouTube channel was here.

Speedcubing

During middle school and early in high school, I spent a lot of time solving Rubik's cubes as fast as I could (and doing them one-handed and blindfolded). My WCA profile is here; I was decent but not world class.