A list of resources on Cluelessness
From summer 2024 up to summer 2025, I had been keeping track of these resources in a private Google Doc shared only with a couple of people. I realized others might benefit too, so here is the latest version, last-updated on August 7th, 2025.
You’ll find a few references that are missing from the list below in my post Discussions of Longtermism should focus on the problem of Unawareness (October 20th, 2025).
See also DiGiovanni’s Resource guide: Unawareness, indeterminacy, and cluelessness (July 7th, 2025) for a cluelessness Q&A and pointers to what references address what.
See also this comment of mine (September 15th, 2025) for a brief overview of key debates surrounding cluelessness.
See also DiGiovanni’s What to do about near-term cluelessness in animal welfare (October 8th, 2025) and Graham’s If wild animal welfare is intractable, everything is intractable. (November 14th, 2025) for cluelessness concerns (and what to make of them) in animal welfare, in particular.
On reasons to be clueless about how to increase welfare impartially
Anthony DiGiovanni’s (2025) sequence The challenge of unawareness for impartial altruist action guidance
Christian Tarsney et al. (2024) Moral Decision-Making Under Uncertainty, Section 3. Cluelessness and Deep Uncertainty
Andreas Mogensen (2021) Maximal cluelessness[1]
Joe Roussos (2021, slides) Unawareness for Longtermists
Elaine Lok Lam Yim (2019) The Cluelessness Objection Revisited
Andreas Mogensen (2021) Maximal Cluelessness
Hilary Greaves (2016) Cluelessness (only the part where she treats complex cluelessness)
See also her 2018 interview on the 80,000 Hours podcast and her 2020 talk.
Simon Friederich (2025) Causation, Cluelessness, and the Long Term
Patrick Williamson (2022) On Cluelessness
Philip Trammel (2019) Simplifying Cluelessness (only the part where he treats complex cluelessness)
Eric Schwitzgebel (2024) The Washout Argument Against Longtermism
David Thorstad (2024) Three mistakes in the moral mathematics of existential risk, Section 6.4
Amanda Askell & Sven Neth (forthcoming) Longtermist myopia, Section on Epistemic diffusion.
Nick Beckstead & Teruji Thomas (2021) A paradox for tiny probabilities and enormous values
James Lenman (2000) Consequentialism and Cluelessness
Regina Rini (2022) An effective altruist? A philosopher’s guide to the long-term threats to humanity
Björn Lundgren & Karolina Kudlek (2024) What we owe (to) the present: Normative and practical challenges for strong longtermism, Section 4 & 5
Dylan Matthews (2015) I spent a weekend at Google talking with nerds about charity. I came away … worried
Sarah Frances Hicks & Dominika Janus (2023) The threat of longtermism
Boaz Barak (2022) Why I am not a longtermist
Jim Buhler’s (2024-2025) sequence On cluelessness
Some forum comments I found germane: from Eli Rose; from Will MacAskill, comments cited in DiGiovanni’s Resource guide: Unawareness, indeterminacy, and cluelessness
Attempts to debunk these reasons for cluelessness
Hilary Greaves and William MacAskill (2021) The Case for Strong Longtermism (sections 4 & 7)
Gregory Lewis (2021) Complex cluelessness as credal fragility
Tobias Baumann (2019) Thoughts on longtermism
Tobias Baumann (2019) How can we influence the long-term future?
Amanda Askell and Rob Wilblin (2018; 32:25) Amanda Askell on moral empathy, the value of information & the ethics of infinity
Rob Wibling and Jeremiah Johnson (2019; 15:00) Good at Doing Good: Effective Altruism ft. Robert Wiblin
Siebe Rozendal (2018) The Problem of Complex Cluelessness: what is it and what can we do about it?
William MacAskill (2022) What We Owe The Future
See also a summary/distillation of some part of his overall case in this 2022 video from Rational Animations
Joanna M. Burch-Brown (2014) Clues for Consequentialists
Milan Griffes (2018) Doing good while clueless
See also my quick takeaways
Stefan Schubert (2022) Against cluelessness: pockets of predictability
Paul Christiano (if you combine two of his blog posts)
(2014) We can probably influence the far future (where he simply argues “we know how to reduce x-risks” which looks more like a case when you combine that with the below)
Evan G. Williams (2013) Promoting Value As Such
Some work where there is no actual case. They simply claim we know things:
Richard Y Chappel (2023) The Cluelessness Objection
Richard Y Chappel (2023) It’s Not Wise to be Clueless
Richard Y Chappel (2022) Consequentialism and Cluelessness: Why I’m Skeptical of Lenman’s Epistemic Objection
Hilary Greaves (2020; 26:00) Evidence, cluelessness, and the long term
Benjamin Todd (2021) Cluelessness: can we know the effects of our actions?
Hayden Wilkinson (2019) Doing good in an infinite, chaotic world
Robin Hanson (2018) Long Legacies and Fights
Some work that doesn’t actually argue contra cluelessness but draws implications assuming we are highly uncertain but not fully clueless (without justifying this assumption):
Brian Tomasik (2015) Charity Cost-Effectiveness in an Uncertain World
See my summary.
Michael St. Jules (2020) Hedging against deep and moral uncertainty
David Thorstad & Andreas Mogensen (2020) Heuristics for clueless agents: how to get away with ignoring what matters most in ordinary decision-making
Christian J. Tarsney (2022, paper and talk) The Epistemic Challenge to Longtermism
David Thorstad (2024) The Scope of Longtermism
Tyler Cowen (2006) The Epistemic Problem Does Not Refute Consequentialism
On indeterminate beliefs
Anthony DiGiovanni (2025) Should you go with your best guess?: Against precise Bayesianism and related views
Seamus Bradley (2019) Imprecise Probabilities and academic references therein
“This article introduces the theory of imprecise probabilities, discusses the motivations for their use and their possible advantages over the standard precise model. It then discusses some philosophical issues raised by this model. There is also a historical appendix which provides an overview of some important thinkers who appear sympathetic to imprecise probabilities.”
Milan Griffes (2017) “Just take the expected value” – a possible reply to concerns about cluelessness
VioletHour (2023) Probabilities, Prioritization, and ‘Bayesian Mindset’
Gregory Lewis (2020) Use resilience, instead of imprecision, to communicate uncertainty
Hayley Clatterbuck (2024) An Epistemic Defense of Rounding Down
- ^
Proposes Maximality as a way of choosing the best actions under indeterminate beliefs regarding their impact. Argues Maximality is plausible although it might never recommend anything.
Wow thank you! I’m sending this to someone I know. Appreciate it!
Something that would make this post more helpful for me: If you had to pick 1-3 resources for someone to start reading about cluelessness (say: someone who is vaguely worried about cluelessness but hasn’t invested deeply in building their own models yet / could use a refresher), where would you choose?
(No pressure of course, this is already very helpful :) )
Thank you :)
I guess I recommend reading this overview (or this longer one?) and/or DiGiovanni’s Q&A and then checking the references in these that discuss whatever they think their own crux is.
This will likely point them to some parts of DiGiovanni’s (2025) sequence The challenge of unawareness for impartial altruist action guidance, which is the best and most comprehensive resource (in terms of arguments) on the topic imo.
Were I to pick only one that’s at once rigorous and accessible, I’d say the first post in Anthony DiGiovanni’s sequence on Unawereness (20m read officially, but has some references and charts, so I’d say it probably takes 10 minutes to read it: 1. The challenge of unawareness for impartial altruist action guidance: Introduction