The challenge of unawareness for impartial altruist action guidance

The core posts of this sequence are the posts numbered 1-4 in the titles, which introduce the problem of unawareness and its significant implications for cause prioritization.

“Winning isn’t enough” (first-authored by Jesse Clifton) and “Should you go with your best guess?” are background. The essential content from those posts is summarized in the core sequence, but I strongly recommend reading the background posts in full beforehand.

Win­ning isn’t enough

Should you go with your best guess?: Against pre­cise Bayesi­anism and re­lated views

1. The challenge of un­aware­ness for im­par­tial al­tru­ist ac­tion guidance: Introduction

2. Why in­tu­itive com­par­i­sons of large-scale im­pact are unjustified

3. Why im­par­tial al­tru­ists should sus­pend judg­ment un­der unawareness

4. Why ex­ist­ing ap­proaches to cause pri­ori­ti­za­tion are not ro­bust to unawareness

Re­source guide: Unaware­ness, in­de­ter­mi­nacy, and cluelessness

Clue­less­ness: Sum­mary of the ar­gu­ment, why it mat­ters, and counterarguments

Clar­ify­ing some mi­s­un­der­stand­ings of the un­aware­ness argument