Greaves’ cluelessness paper was published in 2016. My impression is that the broad argument has existed for 100+ years, but the formulation of cluelessness arising from flow-through effects outweighing direct effects (combined with EA’s tending to care quite a bit about flow-through effects) was a relatively novel and major reformulation (though probably still below your bar).
Again, I do think later work including Greaves’s cluelessness paper was a valuable contribution. But the basic issue that impact may be dominated by flow-through effects on unintuitive variables, and the apparent sign flipping as new ‘crucial considerations’ are discovered, was clearly present in the 2013 and possibly earlier discussions.
Greaves’ cluelessness paper was published in 2016. My impression is that the broad argument has existed for 100+ years, but the formulation of cluelessness arising from flow-through effects outweighing direct effects (combined with EA’s tending to care quite a bit about flow-through effects) was a relatively novel and major reformulation (though probably still below your bar).
Thanks for this suggestion! Like ems, I think this is major but not novel. For instance, the first version of Brian Tomasik’s Charity Cost-Effectiveness in an Uncertain World was written in 2013. And here’s a reply from Jess Riedel, also from 2013.
Again, I do think later work including Greaves’s cluelessness paper was a valuable contribution. But the basic issue that impact may be dominated by flow-through effects on unintuitive variables, and the apparent sign flipping as new ‘crucial considerations’ are discovered, was clearly present in the 2013 and possibly earlier discussions.