This is essentially what I was thinking. If we’re to discover that the “best” intervention is something that we aren’t funding much now, we’ll need to look closer at interventions which are currently neglected.
I agree with the author that neglectedness isn’t a perfect measure, since others may already have examined them and been unimpressed, but I don’t know how often that “previous examination” actually happens (probably not too often, given the low number of organizations within EA that conduct in-depth research on causes). I’d still think that many neglected causes have received very little serious attention, especially attention toward the most up-to-date research (maybe GiveWell said no five years ago, but five years is a lot of time for new evidence to emerge).
(As I mentioned in another comment, I wish we knew more about which interventions EA orgs had considered but decided not to fund; that knowledge is the easiest way I can think of to figure out whether or not an idea really is “neglected”.)
This is essentially what I was thinking. If we’re to discover that the “best” intervention is something that we aren’t funding much now, we’ll need to look closer at interventions which are currently neglected.
I agree with the author that neglectedness isn’t a perfect measure, since others may already have examined them and been unimpressed, but I don’t know how often that “previous examination” actually happens (probably not too often, given the low number of organizations within EA that conduct in-depth research on causes). I’d still think that many neglected causes have received very little serious attention, especially attention toward the most up-to-date research (maybe GiveWell said no five years ago, but five years is a lot of time for new evidence to emerge).
(As I mentioned in another comment, I wish we knew more about which interventions EA orgs had considered but decided not to fund; that knowledge is the easiest way I can think of to figure out whether or not an idea really is “neglected”.)