Also we still, as a community seem confused over what ‘neglectedness’ does in the ITN framework—whether it’s a heuristic or a multiplier, and if the latter how to separate it from tractability and how to account for the size of the problem in question (bigger, less absolutely neglected problems might still benefit more from marginal resources than smaller problems on which we’ve made more progress with fewer resources, yet I haven’t seen a definition of the framework that accounts for this). Yet anecdotally I still hear ‘it’s not very neglected’ used to casually dismiss concerns on everything from climate change through nuclear war to… well, interplanetary colonisation. Until we get a more consistent and coherent framework, if I as a longtime EA supporter am sceptical on one of the supposed core components of EA philosophy, I don’t see how I’m supposed to convince mission-driven not-very-utilitarians to listen to its analyses.
Also we still, as a community seem confused over what ‘neglectedness’ does in the ITN framework—whether it’s a heuristic or a multiplier, and if the latter how to separate it from tractability and how to account for the size of the problem in question (bigger, less absolutely neglected problems might still benefit more from marginal resources than smaller problems on which we’ve made more progress with fewer resources, yet I haven’t seen a definition of the framework that accounts for this). Yet anecdotally I still hear ‘it’s not very neglected’ used to casually dismiss concerns on everything from climate change through nuclear war to… well, interplanetary colonisation. Until we get a more consistent and coherent framework, if I as a longtime EA supporter am sceptical on one of the supposed core components of EA philosophy, I don’t see how I’m supposed to convince mission-driven not-very-utilitarians to listen to its analyses.