Thanks for clarifying! I understand the intuition behind calling this “neglectedness”, but it pushes in the opposite direction of how EA’s usually use the term. I might suggest choosing a different term for this, as it confused me (and, I think, others).
To clarify what I mean by “the opposite direction”: the original motivation behind caring about “neglectedness” was that it’s a heuristic for whether low hanging fruit in the field exists. If no one has looked into something, then it’s more likely that there is low hanging fruit, so we should probably prefer domains that are less established . (All other things being equal.)
The fact that many people have looked into climate change but we still have not “flattened the emissions curve” indicates that there is not low hanging fruit remaining. So an argument that climate change is “neglected” in the sense you are using the term is actually an argument that it is not neglected in the usual sense of the term. Hence the confusion from me and others.
Thanks for clarifying! I understand the intuition behind calling this “neglectedness”, but it pushes in the opposite direction of how EA’s usually use the term. I might suggest choosing a different term for this, as it confused me (and, I think, others).
To clarify what I mean by “the opposite direction”: the original motivation behind caring about “neglectedness” was that it’s a heuristic for whether low hanging fruit in the field exists. If no one has looked into something, then it’s more likely that there is low hanging fruit, so we should probably prefer domains that are less established . (All other things being equal.)
The fact that many people have looked into climate change but we still have not “flattened the emissions curve” indicates that there is not low hanging fruit remaining. So an argument that climate change is “neglected” in the sense you are using the term is actually an argument that it is not neglected in the usual sense of the term. Hence the confusion from me and others.