Same! I think neglectedness is more useful for identifying impactful “just add more funding” style interventions, but is less useful for identifying impactful careers and other types of interventions since focusing on neglectedness systematically misses high leverage careers and interventions.
I totally agree! You articulated something I’ve been thinking about lately in a very clear manner; I think you’re absolutely right to distinguish the value of neglectedness for funding vs. career choice—it’s such a useful heuristic for funding considerations, but I think it can be used too indiscriminately in conversations about career choice.
I wonder if others’ understanding of neglectedness is different from my own. I think I’ve always implicitly thought of neglectedness as how many people are trying to do the exact thing you’re trying to do to solve the exact problem you’re working on, and therefore think there’s loads of neglected opportunities everywhere, mostly at non-EA orgs. But now reading this thread I got confused and checked the community definition here and which says it’s about dedicating resources to a problem, which is quite different and helps me better understand this thread. It’s funny that after all these years I’ve had a different concept in my head to everyone else and didn’t realise. Anyway, if neglectedness includes resources dedicated to the problem, then a predominantly non-EA org like a government body might be dedicating lots of resources to a problem, but not making much progress on it. In my view, this is a neglected opportunity.
Maybe we should distinguish between neglected in terms of crowdedness vs. opportunities available?
Also, what are others’ understandings of neglectedness?
I think this is correct and EA thinks about neglectedness wrong. I’ve been meaning to formalise this for a while and will do that now.
Same! I think neglectedness is more useful for identifying impactful “just add more funding” style interventions, but is less useful for identifying impactful careers and other types of interventions since focusing on neglectedness systematically misses high leverage careers and interventions.
I totally agree! You articulated something I’ve been thinking about lately in a very clear manner; I think you’re absolutely right to distinguish the value of neglectedness for funding vs. career choice—it’s such a useful heuristic for funding considerations, but I think it can be used too indiscriminately in conversations about career choice.
I wonder if others’ understanding of neglectedness is different from my own. I think I’ve always implicitly thought of neglectedness as how many people are trying to do the exact thing you’re trying to do to solve the exact problem you’re working on, and therefore think there’s loads of neglected opportunities everywhere, mostly at non-EA orgs. But now reading this thread I got confused and checked the community definition here and which says it’s about dedicating resources to a problem, which is quite different and helps me better understand this thread. It’s funny that after all these years I’ve had a different concept in my head to everyone else and didn’t realise. Anyway, if neglectedness includes resources dedicated to the problem, then a predominantly non-EA org like a government body might be dedicating lots of resources to a problem, but not making much progress on it. In my view, this is a neglected opportunity.
Maybe we should distinguish between neglected in terms of crowdedness vs. opportunities available?
Also, what are others’ understandings of neglectedness?