There’s a range of posts critiquing ITN from different angles, including many of the ones you specify. I was working on a literature review of these critiques, but stopped in the middle. It seemed to me that organizations that use ITN do so in part because it’s an easy to read communication framework. It boils down an intuitive synthesis of a lot of personal research into something that feels like a metric.
When GiveWell analyzes a charity, they have a carefully specified framework they use to derive a precise cost effectiveness estimate. By contrast, I don’t believe that 80k or OpenPhil have anything comparable for the ITN rankings they assign. Instead, I believe that their scores reflect a deeply researched and well-considered, but essentially intuitive personal opinion.
There’s a range of posts critiquing ITN from different angles, including many of the ones you specify. I was working on a literature review of these critiques, but stopped in the middle. It seemed to me that organizations that use ITN do so in part because it’s an easy to read communication framework. It boils down an intuitive synthesis of a lot of personal research into something that feels like a metric.
When GiveWell analyzes a charity, they have a carefully specified framework they use to derive a precise cost effectiveness estimate. By contrast, I don’t believe that 80k or OpenPhil have anything comparable for the ITN rankings they assign. Instead, I believe that their scores reflect a deeply researched and well-considered, but essentially intuitive personal opinion.