I think this depends crucially on how, and to what object, you are applying the ITN framework:
Applying ITN to broad areas in the abstract, treating what one would do in them as something of a black box (a common approach in earlier cause prioritisation IMO), one might reason:
Malaria is a big problem (Importance)
Progress is easily made against malaria (Tractability)
… It seems clear that Neglectedness should be added to these considerations to avoid moving resources into an area where all the resources needed to solve X are already in place
Applying ITN to a specific intervention or action, it’s more common to be able to reason like so:
Malaria is a big problem (Importance)
Me providing more malaria nets [does / does not] easily increase progress against malaria, given that others [are / are not] already providing them (Tractability)
… In this case it seems that all you need from Neglectedness is already accounted for in Tractability, because you were able to account for whether the actions you could take were counterfactually going to be covered.
On the whole, it seems to me that the further you move aware from abstract evaluations of broad cause areas, and more towards concrete interventions, the less it’s necessary or appropriate to depend on broad heuristics and the more you can simply attempt to estimate expected impact directly.
I think the opposite might be true: when you apply it to broad areas, you’re likely to mistake low neglectedness for a signal of low tractability, and you should just look at “are there good opportunities at current margins.” When you start looking at individual solutions, it starts being quite relevant whether they have already been tried. (This point already made here.)
That’s interesting, but seems to be addressing a somewhat separate claim to mine.
My claim was that that broad heuristics are more often necessary and appropriate when engaged in abstract evaluation of broad cause areas, where you can’t directly assess how promising concrete opportunities/interventions are, and less so when you can directly assess concrete interventions.
If I understand your claims correctly they are that:
Neglectedness is more likely to be misleading when applied to broad cause areas
When considering individual solutions, it’s useful to consider whether the intervention has already been tried.
I generally agree that applying broad heuristics to broad cause areas is more likely to be misleading than when you can assess specific opportunities directly. Implicit in my claim is that where you don’t have to rely on broad heuristics, but can assess specific opportunities directly, then this is preferable. I agree that considering whether a specific intervention has been tried before is useful and relevant information, but don’t consider that an application of the Neglectedness/Crowdedness heuristic.
I think this depends crucially on how, and to what object, you are applying the ITN framework:
Applying ITN to broad areas in the abstract, treating what one would do in them as something of a black box (a common approach in earlier cause prioritisation IMO), one might reason:
Malaria is a big problem (Importance)
Progress is easily made against malaria (Tractability)
… It seems clear that Neglectedness should be added to these considerations to avoid moving resources into an area where all the resources needed to solve X are already in place
Applying ITN to a specific intervention or action, it’s more common to be able to reason like so:
Malaria is a big problem (Importance)
Me providing more malaria nets [does / does not] easily increase progress against malaria, given that others [are / are not] already providing them (Tractability)
… In this case it seems that all you need from Neglectedness is already accounted for in Tractability, because you were able to account for whether the actions you could take were counterfactually going to be covered.
On the whole, it seems to me that the further you move aware from abstract evaluations of broad cause areas, and more towards concrete interventions, the less it’s necessary or appropriate to depend on broad heuristics and the more you can simply attempt to estimate expected impact directly.
I think the opposite might be true: when you apply it to broad areas, you’re likely to mistake low neglectedness for a signal of low tractability, and you should just look at “are there good opportunities at current margins.” When you start looking at individual solutions, it starts being quite relevant whether they have already been tried. (This point already made here.)
That’s interesting, but seems to be addressing a somewhat separate claim to mine.
My claim was that that broad heuristics are more often necessary and appropriate when engaged in abstract evaluation of broad cause areas, where you can’t directly assess how promising concrete opportunities/interventions are, and less so when you can directly assess concrete interventions.
If I understand your claims correctly they are that:
Neglectedness is more likely to be misleading when applied to broad cause areas
When considering individual solutions, it’s useful to consider whether the intervention has already been tried.
I generally agree that applying broad heuristics to broad cause areas is more likely to be misleading than when you can assess specific opportunities directly. Implicit in my claim is that where you don’t have to rely on broad heuristics, but can assess specific opportunities directly, then this is preferable. I agree that considering whether a specific intervention has been tried before is useful and relevant information, but don’t consider that an application of the Neglectedness/Crowdedness heuristic.