Here’s a review of ITN critiques I put together a couple years ago. I just dumped it in an editable Google doc. It’s set up to alert me if anyone makes changes so I can import them into the main post.
I think the main issue is the conceptual distinction between a “cause” and an “intervention,” or what you’re calling here a “solution.” Originally, I think they were using ITN as a quick first-pass heuristic for considering different cause areas on the scale of “global health” or “X-risk.” But lots of people also use it to look at specific interventions. As you point out, it’s totally possible to find an ITN solution within a non-ITN cause area. I think the idea of applying ITN to cause areas is to find issues where there are a lot of ITN solutions to be found in a probabilistic sense.
One reason, I think, to be a little suspicious of a “neglected” solution in a non-neglected cause area is that there’s more reason to think the particular solution is neglected for a reason. That’s not an absolute, just a heuristic. For example, I’m in biotech, and I work with a particular technology for molecular recognition, called “aptamers.” I’m interviewing for a job at a startup that works with this technology. If you looked at them as an aptamer biosensor company, they have little-no competition. But if you look at them as an assay company, they face massive competition. Thiel makes this point eloquently in Zero to One. It’s important to be aware enough of the dimensions of the issue to understand when a potential solution is truly neglected versus when it’s just lost among a sea of alternatives.
Here’s a review of ITN critiques I put together a couple years ago. I just dumped it in an editable Google doc. It’s set up to alert me if anyone makes changes so I can import them into the main post.
I think the main issue is the conceptual distinction between a “cause” and an “intervention,” or what you’re calling here a “solution.” Originally, I think they were using ITN as a quick first-pass heuristic for considering different cause areas on the scale of “global health” or “X-risk.” But lots of people also use it to look at specific interventions. As you point out, it’s totally possible to find an ITN solution within a non-ITN cause area. I think the idea of applying ITN to cause areas is to find issues where there are a lot of ITN solutions to be found in a probabilistic sense.
One reason, I think, to be a little suspicious of a “neglected” solution in a non-neglected cause area is that there’s more reason to think the particular solution is neglected for a reason. That’s not an absolute, just a heuristic. For example, I’m in biotech, and I work with a particular technology for molecular recognition, called “aptamers.” I’m interviewing for a job at a startup that works with this technology. If you looked at them as an aptamer biosensor company, they have little-no competition. But if you look at them as an assay company, they face massive competition. Thiel makes this point eloquently in Zero to One. It’s important to be aware enough of the dimensions of the issue to understand when a potential solution is truly neglected versus when it’s just lost among a sea of alternatives.