Executive summary: When estimating the value of contributing to solving an “all-or-nothing” problem of unknown difficulty, using a point estimate of the problem’s difficulty can significantly overstate the expected impact, as greater uncertainty about the true difficulty reduces the likelihood that additional effort will make the critical difference.
Key points:
Some problems, like proving a theorem or enacting systemic change, deliver most of their value only once a certain threshold of effort is reached to fully “solve” the problem.
For such problems, if the total effort required to solve the problem is highly uncertain, then the likelihood that additional effort will make the difference between solving and not solving the problem decreases as the uncertainty increases.
Using only a point estimate of the difficulty of such a problem, without accounting for the uncertainty, can overestimate the expected value of additional effort.
The “importance, tractability, neglectedness” (ITN) framework can be misleading or awkward to apply for such problems, as the definitions of those terms don’t cleanly capture the dynamics at play.
For these problems, it’s better to directly estimate the value of solving the problem and the probability that additional effort will be the critical difference, informed by considerations of tractability and neglectedness.
An appropriate stance may be “moderate fatalism”—thinking it unlikely that you will personally make the difference, while still believing the expected value justifies the effort.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: When estimating the value of contributing to solving an “all-or-nothing” problem of unknown difficulty, using a point estimate of the problem’s difficulty can significantly overstate the expected impact, as greater uncertainty about the true difficulty reduces the likelihood that additional effort will make the critical difference.
Key points:
Some problems, like proving a theorem or enacting systemic change, deliver most of their value only once a certain threshold of effort is reached to fully “solve” the problem.
For such problems, if the total effort required to solve the problem is highly uncertain, then the likelihood that additional effort will make the difference between solving and not solving the problem decreases as the uncertainty increases.
Using only a point estimate of the difficulty of such a problem, without accounting for the uncertainty, can overestimate the expected value of additional effort.
The “importance, tractability, neglectedness” (ITN) framework can be misleading or awkward to apply for such problems, as the definitions of those terms don’t cleanly capture the dynamics at play.
For these problems, it’s better to directly estimate the value of solving the problem and the probability that additional effort will be the critical difference, informed by considerations of tractability and neglectedness.
An appropriate stance may be “moderate fatalism”—thinking it unlikely that you will personally make the difference, while still believing the expected value justifies the effort.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.