I completely agree that neglectedness is often the route cause of the size and tractability, but that’s the whole point. Neglectedness only matters inasmuch as it affects the other two criteria and is included on it’s own mostly to aid analysis of tractability – it has no value on it’s own. For instance, if a cause is low in importance/scale and tractability, it wouldn’t matter what the neglectedness is at all. I think the neglectedness factor only comes into play if a problem is important and tractable (including on the margin), yet crowded. In that case, even though it would be a high priority for an organization to enter because the only two relevant factors (scale and tractability) are high, if it is a very popular cause, it may become less tractable/important in the near future with more entrants into the space.
I think that the type of importance analysis depends on whether the intervention is scalable or systemic, not whether or not it is new. In systemic action, you are tackling the entire issue, so you want to judge the importance of the issue’s entirety. Scalable action works on a per unit basis, so the severity of the issue per person/animal/acre, etc is what matters, as you mentioned regarding GiveDirectly.
Lastly, I think that flow through effects should always be included among cause prioritization criteria, because (cheese warning) what matters at the end of the day, is how much the entire world benefits from an intervention, not just how much it benefits the targeted cause. For instance, research intended to progress one subject often ends up providing unforseen benefits in other areas.
It may be more technically correct not to have neglectedness as a separate criterion, but I find that it is the single most important factor in cause prioritization, despite the fact that it’s only utility is its affect on the other two factors. Just my personal observation. For example, the causes that I think have the highest expected value: pesticide poisoning, self harm/suicide, depression in the Third World, loneliness, are all great in magnitude and have huge potential for progress precisely because they have been severely neglected. That’s why I’ve come to see neglectedness as the starting point in cause selection, even though I now view it as a subfactor rather than an independent factor. So technical correctness may not necessarily lead to the most usefulness.
Perhaps someone will come up with a linear process for strategic cause prioritization one day, rather than the current practice of referring to static criteria. For instance, the process could start with brainstorming what you think the biggest sources of suffering (or impediments to flourishing) in the world are, followed by an examination of why those sources exist, then on to how they can be solved, and so on. It could be represented visually in a diagram. A process rather than set criteria could also be useful in unexpected ways. For example, I consider loneliness (lack of positive socialization or a romantic partner) to be one of the biggest social issues in the world because it is one of the largest sources of sorrow in the world. However, most people wouldn’t even think about taking action on it because they don’t even view it as a social issue. Thinking logically, however, it must be a social issue because it causes so much suffering, but cause prioritization using set criteria would be unlikely to lead you to that conclusion without using some sort of critical thinking process.
Similar benefits could probably be had without using a process by branching off each criterion into sub-components. For example, the importance bubble could have bubbles around it of “Why are people not happier?”, “What prevents flourishing?”, “Why is a society not better than it currently is?”, “What is an advancement in society that would lead to other improvements?”
I completely agree that neglectedness is often the route cause of the size and tractability, but that’s the whole point. Neglectedness only matters inasmuch as it affects the other two criteria and is included on it’s own mostly to aid analysis of tractability – it has no value on it’s own. For instance, if a cause is low in importance/scale and tractability, it wouldn’t matter what the neglectedness is at all. I think the neglectedness factor only comes into play if a problem is important and tractable (including on the margin), yet crowded. In that case, even though it would be a high priority for an organization to enter because the only two relevant factors (scale and tractability) are high, if it is a very popular cause, it may become less tractable/important in the near future with more entrants into the space.
I think that the type of importance analysis depends on whether the intervention is scalable or systemic, not whether or not it is new. In systemic action, you are tackling the entire issue, so you want to judge the importance of the issue’s entirety. Scalable action works on a per unit basis, so the severity of the issue per person/animal/acre, etc is what matters, as you mentioned regarding GiveDirectly.
Lastly, I think that flow through effects should always be included among cause prioritization criteria, because (cheese warning) what matters at the end of the day, is how much the entire world benefits from an intervention, not just how much it benefits the targeted cause. For instance, research intended to progress one subject often ends up providing unforseen benefits in other areas.
An alternative option would be to scrap neglectedness as an independent criterion and consider it in importance and tractability.
I think we agree on the the systemic/scalable distinction—perhaps I just expressed myself poorly.
It may be more technically correct not to have neglectedness as a separate criterion, but I find that it is the single most important factor in cause prioritization, despite the fact that it’s only utility is its affect on the other two factors. Just my personal observation. For example, the causes that I think have the highest expected value: pesticide poisoning, self harm/suicide, depression in the Third World, loneliness, are all great in magnitude and have huge potential for progress precisely because they have been severely neglected. That’s why I’ve come to see neglectedness as the starting point in cause selection, even though I now view it as a subfactor rather than an independent factor. So technical correctness may not necessarily lead to the most usefulness.
Perhaps someone will come up with a linear process for strategic cause prioritization one day, rather than the current practice of referring to static criteria. For instance, the process could start with brainstorming what you think the biggest sources of suffering (or impediments to flourishing) in the world are, followed by an examination of why those sources exist, then on to how they can be solved, and so on. It could be represented visually in a diagram. A process rather than set criteria could also be useful in unexpected ways. For example, I consider loneliness (lack of positive socialization or a romantic partner) to be one of the biggest social issues in the world because it is one of the largest sources of sorrow in the world. However, most people wouldn’t even think about taking action on it because they don’t even view it as a social issue. Thinking logically, however, it must be a social issue because it causes so much suffering, but cause prioritization using set criteria would be unlikely to lead you to that conclusion without using some sort of critical thinking process.
Similar benefits could probably be had without using a process by branching off each criterion into sub-components. For example, the importance bubble could have bubbles around it of “Why are people not happier?”, “What prevents flourishing?”, “Why is a society not better than it currently is?”, “What is an advancement in society that would lead to other improvements?”