I think it is good to keep vigilant and make sure we are not missing good cause areas. However, I think that your examples are not actually neglected. Using this scale, ~$10 billion per year or more is not neglected.
The point is that there is a difference between working in a general area and working on the specific subset of that area that is highest impact and most neglected. In much the same way as AI safety research is neglected even if AI research more generally is not, likewise in the parallel cases I present, I argue that serious evidence-based research into the specific questions I present is highly neglected, even if the broader areas are not.
Below I try to look at actual effort to resolving the problem effectively, so it is not analogous to the total amount of money put into artificial intelligence. For resource depletion, the total amount of money put in could include all the money spent on extracting resources. So I’m just looking at efforts towards resource sustainability, which would be analogous to artificial intelligence safety.
One flaw with the 80,000 hours scale is that it does not take into account historic work. Historically, there has been a tremendous amount of effort devising and implementing practical alternatives to capitalism. So averaged over the last century, it would be far more than $10 billion per year.
Before climate change reached prominence in the environmental movement, much effort was directed at recycling and renewable energy to address the resource depletion issue. Even now some effort in these areas is directed at resource depletion. In previous decades, there was a large amount of effort on family planning, partly because of resource depletion issues, and even now billions of dollars are being spent per year on this. So I am quite sure more than $10 billion per year is being spent on addressing resource depletion.
I’m not easily finding the number of philosophers of religion. However, I know that many people who are disillusioned with the religion they grew up with do not just jump to atheism, and instead try to find the true religion (at least for certain period of time). So if you add up all the effort hours with some reasonable wage, I’m pretty sure it would average more than $10 billion per year over the last century.
So the neglectedness of these cause areas just cannot compare to that of artificial intelligence safety, which is only tens of millions of dollars per year (and very small more than a decade ago). Of course it is still possible that there are good opportunities within these cause areas, but it is just much less likely than in more neglected cause areas.
I think it is good to keep vigilant and make sure we are not missing good cause areas. However, I think that your examples are not actually neglected. Using this scale, ~$10 billion per year or more is not neglected.
Below I try to look at actual effort to resolving the problem effectively, so it is not analogous to the total amount of money put into artificial intelligence. For resource depletion, the total amount of money put in could include all the money spent on extracting resources. So I’m just looking at efforts towards resource sustainability, which would be analogous to artificial intelligence safety.
One flaw with the 80,000 hours scale is that it does not take into account historic work. Historically, there has been a tremendous amount of effort devising and implementing practical alternatives to capitalism. So averaged over the last century, it would be far more than $10 billion per year.
Before climate change reached prominence in the environmental movement, much effort was directed at recycling and renewable energy to address the resource depletion issue. Even now some effort in these areas is directed at resource depletion. In previous decades, there was a large amount of effort on family planning, partly because of resource depletion issues, and even now billions of dollars are being spent per year on this. So I am quite sure more than $10 billion per year is being spent on addressing resource depletion.
I’m not easily finding the number of philosophers of religion. However, I know that many people who are disillusioned with the religion they grew up with do not just jump to atheism, and instead try to find the true religion (at least for certain period of time). So if you add up all the effort hours with some reasonable wage, I’m pretty sure it would average more than $10 billion per year over the last century.
So the neglectedness of these cause areas just cannot compare to that of artificial intelligence safety, which is only tens of millions of dollars per year (and very small more than a decade ago). Of course it is still possible that there are good opportunities within these cause areas, but it is just much less likely than in more neglected cause areas.