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ITN framework

TagLast edit: 8 Sep 2022 9:44 UTC by Pablo

The importance, tractability and neglectedness framework, or ITN framework for short, is a framework for estimating the value of allocating marginal resources to solving a problem based on its importance, tractability, and neglectedness.

History

The ITN framework was first developed by Holden Karnofsky around 2013 as part of his work for GiveWell Labs (which later became Open Philanthropy).[1]

80,000 Hours later presented its own, quantitative version of the framework.[2] On this version, developed by Owen Cotton-Barratt in late 2014,[3] the three factors are formally defined as follows:

When these terms are multiplied, some of the units cancel out, resulting in a quantity denominated in good done per extra person or dollar.

Other differences between Karnofsky’s model and Cotton-Barratt’s are the terminology (“importance, tractability and uncrowdedness” is replaced by “scale, solvability and neglectedness”) and the use of problems rather than causes as the main unit of analysis.

More recently, in an article introducing the SPC framework, Will MacAskill, Teruji Thomas and Aron Vallinder replace neglectedness with leverage, a factor that describes how the work already being done on a problem affects the cost-effectiveness of additional work. The resulting framework generalizes to problems with constant or increasing returns to additional work, whereas the ITN framework remains appropriate for problems with diminishing, especially logarithmic, returns.[4][5]

Further reading

80,000 Hours (2016) Our current list of especially pressing world problems, 80,000 Hours, June.
A set of applications of the ITN framework.

Dickens, Michael (2016) Evaluation frameworks (or: when importance /​ neglectedness /​ tractability doesn’t apply), Philosophical Multicore, June 10.
A criticism of the ITN framework.

MacAskill, William, Teruji Thomas & Aron Vallinder (2022) The significance, persistence, contingency framework, What We Owe the Future: Supplementary Materials.
Section 4 discusses the ITN framework and how it relates to the SPC framework.

Wiblin, Robert (2016) One approach to comparing global problems in terms of expected impact, 80,000 Hours, April (updated October 2019).
80,000 Hours’ presentation of the ITN framework.

Related entries

career choice | cause prioritization | criticism of effective altruism | distribution of cost-effectiveness | impact assessment | SPC framework

  1. ^

    Karnofsky’s thinking evolved gradually. See Karnofsky, Holden (2013) Flow-through effects, The GiveWell Blog, May 15; Karnofsky, Holden (2013) Refining the goals of GiveWell Labs, The GiveWell Blog, May 30; Muehlhauser, Luke (2013) Holden Karnofsky on transparent research analyses, Machine Intelligence Research Institute, August 25; Karnofsky, Holden (2014) Narrowing down U.S. Policy Areas, Open Philanthropy, May 22.

  2. ^

    Wiblin, Robert (2016) One approach to comparing global problems in terms of expected impact, 80,000 Hours, April (updated October 2019).

  3. ^

    Cotton-Barratt, Owen (2014) Estimating cost-effectiveness for problems of unknown difficulty, Future of Humanity Institute, December 4.

  4. ^

    MacAskill, William, Teruji Thomas & Aron Vallinder (2022) The significance, persistence, contingency framework, What We Owe the Future: Supplementary Materials.

  5. ^

    MacAskill, William (2022) ‘Appendix 3: The SPC framework’, in What We Owe the Future, New York: Basic Books.

For­mal­iz­ing the cause pri­ori­ti­za­tion framework

Michael_Wiebe5 Nov 2019 18:09 UTC
50 points
22 comments4 min readEA link

Re­view of ITN Critiques

DirectedEvolution9 Oct 2019 8:27 UTC
76 points
6 comments6 min readEA link

[Question] Fac­tors other than ITN?

Prabhat Soni26 Sep 2020 4:34 UTC
35 points
11 comments1 min readEA link

Naive ap­pli­ca­tion of the ITN frame­work on a situ­a­tion like the one in Gaza might lead us wrong

C Tilli13 Nov 2023 20:00 UTC
22 points
11 comments4 min readEA link

The ITN frame­work, cost-effec­tive­ness, and cause prioritisation

John G. Halstead6 Oct 2019 5:26 UTC
143 points
20 comments14 min readEA link

Most prob­lems fall within a 100x tractabil­ity range (un­der cer­tain as­sump­tions)

Thomas Kwa4 May 2022 0:06 UTC
108 points
25 comments3 min readEA link

There can be highly ne­glected solu­tions to less-ne­glected problems

Linda Linsefors10 Feb 2023 20:08 UTC
211 points
35 comments3 min readEA link

Why scale is over­rated: The case for in­creas­ing EA policy efforts in smaller countries

Philip Hall Andersen15 Aug 2021 17:48 UTC
74 points
11 comments30 min readEA link

We can do bet­ter than argmax

Jan_Kulveit10 Oct 2022 10:32 UTC
113 points
36 comments10 min readEA link

Eval­u­a­tion Frame­works (or: When Im­por­tance /​ Ne­glect­ed­ness /​ Tractabil­ity Doesn’t Ap­ply)

MichaelDickens10 Jun 2016 21:35 UTC
10 points
5 comments4 min readEA link

The COILS Frame­work for De­ci­sion Anal­y­sis: A Short­ened In­tro+Pitch

Harrison Durland7 May 2022 19:01 UTC
16 points
6 comments3 min readEA link

How scale is of­ten mi­sused as a met­ric and how to fix it

Joey30 Jan 2018 1:36 UTC
10 points
14 comments2 min readEA link

Against neglectedness

Arepo1 Nov 2017 23:09 UTC
14 points
18 comments12 min readEA link

The Im­por­tant/​Ne­glected/​Tractable frame­work needs to be ap­plied with care

Robert_Wiblin24 Jan 2016 15:10 UTC
21 points
7 comments3 min readEA link

Bi­ases in our es­ti­mates of Scale, Ne­glect­ed­ness and Solv­abil­ity?

MichaelStJules24 Feb 2020 18:39 UTC
93 points
12 comments8 min readEA link

Should you still use the ITN frame­work? [Red Team­ing Con­test]

frib14 Jul 2022 4:02 UTC
25 points
12 comments9 min readEA link

[Out­dated] In­tro­duc­ing the Stock Is­sues Frame­work: The INT Frame­work’s Cousin and an “Ad­vanced” Cost-Benefit Anal­y­sis Framework

Harrison Durland3 Oct 2020 7:18 UTC
14 points
0 comments8 min readEA link

Shap­ley value, im­por­tance, eas­i­ness and neglectedness

Vasco Grilo5 May 2023 7:33 UTC
27 points
0 comments4 min readEA link

[Question] Im­prov­ing the EA framework

jinghan129 Jan 2022 16:17 UTC
2 points
2 comments1 min readEA link

Un­der­stand­ing and eval­u­at­ing EA’s cause pri­ori­ti­sa­tion methodology

MichaelPlant14 Oct 2019 19:55 UTC
39 points
2 comments19 min readEA link

Is Ne­glect­ed­ness a Strong Pre­dic­tor of Marginal Im­pact?

sbehmer9 Nov 2018 15:34 UTC
45 points
17 comments10 min readEA link

[Question] Should we con­sider “ur­gency” as a fac­tor of cause pri­ori­ti­za­tion?

jackchang11026 Mar 2023 12:20 UTC
13 points
21 comments1 min readEA link

Adapt­ing the ITN frame­work for poli­ti­cal in­ter­ven­tions & anal­y­sis of poli­ti­cal polarisation

OlafvdVeen27 Apr 2020 10:05 UTC
30 points
5 comments1 min readEA link

Re­place Neglectedness

Indra Gesink16 Jan 2023 17:42 UTC
51 points
4 comments4 min readEA link

Im­por­tant ideas for pri­ori­tiz­ing am­bi­tious fund­ing opportunities

jh3 Dec 2021 18:31 UTC
42 points
2 comments16 min readEA link

“Ne­glect­ed­ness” is a po­ten­tially con­fus­ing sim­plifi­ca­tion of true impact

JoshYou18 Aug 2022 17:58 UTC
10 points
1 comment1 min readEA link

Pri­ori­ti­za­tion when size matters

jh5 Jan 2022 22:11 UTC
39 points
2 comments9 min readEA link

Does cli­mate change de­serve more at­ten­tion within EA?

Ben17 Apr 2019 6:50 UTC
149 points
65 comments15 min readEA link

Ne­glect­ed­ness is not enough

Victor Matta18 Jun 2023 9:00 UTC
2 points
0 comments4 min readEA link

Why we look at the limit­ing fac­tor in­stead of the prob­lem scale

Joey28 Jan 2019 19:12 UTC
64 points
8 comments5 min readEA link

A Cri­tique of The Precipice: Chap­ter 6 - The Risk Land­scape [Red Team Challenge]

Sarah Weiler26 Jun 2022 10:59 UTC
57 points
2 comments16 min readEA link

EA should seek out more crit­i­cism of key EA concepts

freedomandutility30 Aug 2022 15:14 UTC
7 points
4 comments1 min readEA link

Pri­ori­ti­za­tion when size mat­ters: Model

jh17 Dec 2021 16:16 UTC
23 points
0 comments8 min readEA link

Dataset of Trillion Dol­lar figures

Hauke Hillebrandt13 Jan 2020 13:33 UTC
37 points
10 comments1 min readEA link

What is ne­glect­ed­ness, ac­tu­ally?

Richard Ren6 Sep 2022 18:25 UTC
29 points
6 comments2 min readEA link

New Cause Area: Baby Longter­mism – Child Rights and Fu­ture Children

LiaH14 Sep 2022 20:22 UTC
26 points
10 comments8 min readEA link

Fu­ture peo­ple might not ex­ist

Indra Gesink30 Nov 2022 19:17 UTC
18 points
0 comments4 min readEA link

Prospect­ing for Gold (Owen Cot­ton-Bar­ratt)

EA Global18 Nov 2016 12:11 UTC
44 points
5 comments22 min readEA link

The TUILS/​COILS Frame­work for Im­prov­ing Pro-Con Analysis

Harrison Durland8 Apr 2021 1:37 UTC
11 points
1 comment14 min readEA link

Pri­ori­ti­za­tion when size mat­ters: Value of information

jh7 Jan 2022 5:16 UTC
23 points
0 comments2 min readEA link

In some cases, if a prob­lem is harder hu­man­ity should in­vest more in it, but you should be less in­clined to work on it

Robert_Wiblin21 Feb 2017 10:29 UTC
9 points
1 comment2 min readEA link

Why found­ing char­i­ties is one of the high­est im­pact things one can do

Joey13 May 2018 20:13 UTC
27 points
5 comments5 min readEA link

A Case for Cli­mate Change as a Top Fund­ing Pri­or­ity

Ted Shields22 Dec 2022 23:50 UTC
2 points
9 comments4 min readEA link

Open Philan­thropy Shal­low In­ves­ti­ga­tion: Tobacco Control

Open Philanthropy25 Jan 2023 1:14 UTC
93 points
8 comments36 min readEA link

Editable “Im­por­tant, Tractable, Ne­glected” cri­tiques review

DirectedEvolution11 Feb 2023 4:01 UTC
10 points
2 comments1 min readEA link
(forum.effectivealtruism.org)

The Sig­nifi­cance, Per­sis­tence, Contin­gency Frame­work (William MacAskill, Teruji Thomas and Aron Val­lin­der)

Global Priorities Institute14 Oct 2022 9:24 UTC
37 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(globalprioritiesinstitute.org)

Com­par­ing Health In­ter­ven­tions in Colom­bia and Nige­ria: Which are More Effec­tive and by How Much?

Alejandro Acelas24 Mar 2023 13:48 UTC
49 points
1 comment12 min readEA link

doebem: Char­ity Eval­u­a­tion and Effec­tive Giv­ing in Brazil

Bruno Sterenberg30 Oct 2023 16:14 UTC
60 points
6 comments4 min readEA link