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:
importance = good done / % of a problem solved
tractability = % of a problem solved / % increase in resources
neglectedness = % increase in resources / extra person or dollar
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
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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.
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Wiblin, Robert (2016) One approach to comparing global problems in terms of expected impact, 80,000 Hours, April (updated October 2019).
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Cotton-Barratt, Owen (2014) Estimating cost-effectiveness for problems of unknown difficulty, Future of Humanity Institute, December 4.
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MacAskill, William, Teruji Thomas & Aron Vallinder (2022) The significance, persistence, contingency framework, What We Owe the Future: Supplementary Materials.
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MacAskill, William (2022) ‘Appendix 3: The SPC framework’, in What We Owe the Future, New York: Basic Books.
I propose to use new terms: Importance, Implementability, Ignoredness. So three I’s, with the I of Impact.
Equation:
Impact = Importance x Implementability x Ignoredness
In Dutch these are the three O’s: Omvangrijk, Oplosbaar, Onderbelicht
Hi Pablo, I noticed that you changed this page to state that MacAskill et al. merge tractability and neglectedness into a single factor called leverage. I think that’s a misreading of the text: they actually split the dX/dW term in a different way from OCB’s original formulation, so that the first factor is tractability and the second factor is leverage instead of neglectedness. Here’s the relevant quote from the paper:
I think that the intent of the bolded text (emphasis mine) is to redefine tractability as “the overall easiness of solving the problem,” or X0/W0. The factor (dX/dW)/(X0/W0) is what they’re defining as leverage, not dX/dW as a whole.
Hi,
Thank you for correcting my mistake and explaining your correction. I only skimmed the text and mistakenly assumed that leverage referred to the second of the two factors in (21):dEVtotdW=dEVtotdX×dXdW, which in the ITN framework is decomposed asdXdW=dX%dW×1W. But it is clear from the quote you provide that the authors are instead proposing an alternative decomposition of that factor, dXdW=X0W0×dX/dWX0/W0, and that leverage refers to the second term in this decomposition, i.e.dX/dWX0/W0 rather thandXdW. Apologies for the confusion.