This seems to me like a good question/a good idea.
Some quick thoughts:
I can’t think of such a list (at least, off the top of my head).
There was a very related comment thread on a recent post from 80,000 Hours. I’d recommend checking that out. (It doesn’t provide the sort of list you’re after, but touches on some reasons for and against making such a list.)
I’ve now also commented a link to this question from that thread, to tie these conversations together.
I’d suggest avoiding saying “known to be ineffective” (or “known to be low-priority”, or whatever). I think we’d at best create a list of causes we havereason to be fairly confident are probably low-priority. More likely, we’d just have a list of causes we have some confident are low-priority, but not much confidence, because once they started to seem low-priority we (understandably) stopped looking into them.
To compress that into something more catchy, we could maybe say “a list of causes that were looked into, but that seem to be low-priority”. Or even just “a list of causes that seem to be low-priority”.
This sort of list could be generated not only for causes, but also for interventions, charities, and/or career paths.
E.g., I imagine looking through some of the “shallow reviews” from GiveWell and Charity Entrepreneurship could help one create lists of charities and interventions that were de-prioritised for specific reasons, and that thus may not be worth looking into in future.
This seems to me like a good question/a good idea.
Some quick thoughts:
I can’t think of such a list (at least, off the top of my head).
There was a very related comment thread on a recent post from 80,000 Hours. I’d recommend checking that out. (It doesn’t provide the sort of list you’re after, but touches on some reasons for and against making such a list.)
I’ve now also commented a link to this question from that thread, to tie these conversations together.
I’d suggest avoiding saying “known to be ineffective” (or “known to be low-priority”, or whatever). I think we’d at best create a list of causes we have reason to be fairly confident are probably low-priority. More likely, we’d just have a list of causes we have some confident are low-priority, but not much confidence, because once they started to seem low-priority we (understandably) stopped looking into them.
To compress that into something more catchy, we could maybe say “a list of causes that were looked into, but that seem to be low-priority”. Or even just “a list of causes that seem to be low-priority”.
This sort of list could be generated not only for causes, but also for interventions, charities, and/or career paths.
E.g., I imagine looking through some of the “shallow reviews” from GiveWell and Charity Entrepreneurship could help one create lists of charities and interventions that were de-prioritised for specific reasons, and that thus may not be worth looking into in future.