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ITN framework

TagLast edit: Sep 8, 2022, 9:44 AM 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.

Re­view of ITN Critiques

DirectedEvolutionOct 9, 2019, 8:27 AM
77 points
6 comments6 min readEA link

For­mal­iz­ing the cause pri­ori­ti­za­tion framework

Michael_WiebeNov 5, 2019, 6:09 PM
50 points
22 comments5 min readEA link

[Question] Fac­tors other than ITN?

Prabhat SoniSep 26, 2020, 4:34 AM
35 points
11 comments1 min readEA link

The ITN frame­work, cost-effec­tive­ness, and cause prioritisation

John G. HalsteadOct 6, 2019, 5:26 AM
144 points
20 comments14 min readEA link

There can be highly ne­glected solu­tions to less-ne­glected problems

Linda LinseforsFeb 10, 2023, 8:08 PM
211 points
35 comments3 min readEA link

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

Philip Hall AndersenAug 15, 2021, 5:48 PM
84 points
11 comments30 min readEA link

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

Thomas KwaMay 4, 2022, 12:06 AM
116 points
25 comments4 min readEA link

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

C TilliNov 13, 2023, 8:00 PM
23 points
11 comments4 min readEA link

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

MichaelDickensJun 10, 2016, 9:35 PM
10 points
5 comments4 min readEA link

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

Marcel DMay 7, 2022, 7:01 PM
16 points
6 comments3 min readEA link

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

Joey🔸Jan 30, 2018, 1:36 AM
10 points
15 comments2 min readEA link

Against neglectedness

ArepoNov 1, 2017, 11:09 PM
14 points
18 comments12 min readEA link

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

Robert_WiblinJan 24, 2016, 3:10 PM
23 points
7 comments3 min readEA link

We can do bet­ter than argmax

Jan_KulveitOct 10, 2022, 10:32 AM
113 points
36 comments10 min readEA link

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

Marcel DOct 3, 2020, 7:18 AM
14 points
0 comments8 min readEA link

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

Global Priorities InstituteOct 14, 2022, 9:24 AM
43 points
0 comments1 min readEA link
(globalprioritiesinstitute.org)

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

fribJul 14, 2022, 4:02 AM
32 points
12 comments9 min readEA link

Bi­ases in our es­ti­mates of Scale, Ne­glect­ed­ness and Solv­abil­ity?

MichaelStJulesFeb 24, 2020, 6:39 PM
93 points
12 comments7 min readEA link

Un­der­stand­ing and eval­u­at­ing EA’s cause pri­ori­ti­sa­tion methodology

MichaelPlantOct 14, 2019, 7:55 PM
39 points
2 comments19 min readEA link

Is Ne­glect­ed­ness a Strong Pre­dic­tor of Marginal Im­pact?

sbehmerNov 9, 2018, 3:34 PM
45 points
17 comments10 min readEA link

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

OlafvdVeenApr 27, 2020, 10:05 AM
30 points
5 comments1 min readEA link

Shap­ley value, im­por­tance, eas­i­ness and neglectedness

Vasco Grilo🔸May 5, 2023, 7:33 AM
27 points
0 comments4 min readEA link

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

jackchang110Mar 26, 2023, 12:20 PM
13 points
21 comments1 min readEA link

Im­por­tant ideas for pri­ori­tiz­ing am­bi­tious fund­ing opportunities

jhDec 3, 2021, 6:31 PM
42 points
2 comments16 min readEA link

Does cli­mate change de­serve more at­ten­tion within EA?

BenApr 17, 2019, 6:50 AM
152 points
65 comments15 min readEA link

Re­place Neglectedness

Indra Gesink 🔸Jan 16, 2023, 5:42 PM
52 points
4 comments4 min readEA link

Pri­ori­ti­za­tion when size matters

jhJan 5, 2022, 10:11 PM
39 points
2 comments9 min readEA link

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

Sarah WeilerJun 26, 2022, 10:59 AM
57 points
2 comments21 min readEA link

“Ne­glect­ed­ness” is a po­ten­tially con­fus­ing sim­plifi­ca­tion of true impact

JoshYouAug 18, 2022, 5:58 PM
10 points
1 comment1 min readEA link

Be­ware point es­ti­mates of prob­lem difficulty

finmMay 27, 2024, 10:17 PM
23 points
7 comments12 min readEA link

Ne­glect­ed­ness is not enough

Victor MattaJun 18, 2023, 9:00 AM
2 points
0 comments4 min readEA link

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

Joey🔸Jan 28, 2019, 7:12 PM
64 points
8 comments5 min readEA link

How to treat prob­lems of un­known difficulty

Owen Cotton-BarrattJul 30, 2014, 2:57 AM
27 points
0 comments9 min readEA link

[Question] Im­prov­ing the EA framework

jinghan1Jan 29, 2022, 4:17 PM
2 points
2 comments1 min readEA link

Pareto-Distributed Op­por­tu­ni­ties Im­ply Isoe­las­tic Utility

ABlankMar 30, 2024, 8:23 PM
44 points
7 comments3 min readEA link

Con­cave and con­vex altruism

finmApr 27, 2022, 10:36 PM
32 points
3 comments21 min readEA link

Open Philan­thropy Shal­low In­ves­ti­ga­tion: Tobacco Control

Open PhilanthropyJan 25, 2023, 1:14 AM
93 points
8 comments36 min readEA link

Pri­ori­ti­za­tion when size mat­ters: Model

jhDec 17, 2021, 4:16 PM
23 points
0 comments8 min readEA link

Dataset of Trillion Dol­lar figures

Hauke HillebrandtJan 13, 2020, 1:33 PM
37 points
10 comments1 min readEA link

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

LiaHSep 14, 2022, 8:22 PM
26 points
10 comments8 min readEA link

Fu­ture peo­ple might not ex­ist

Indra Gesink 🔸Nov 30, 2022, 7:17 PM
18 points
0 comments4 min readEA link

Prospect­ing for Gold (Owen Cot­ton-Bar­ratt)

EA GlobalNov 18, 2016, 12:11 PM
44 points
5 comments21 min readEA link

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

Marcel DApr 8, 2021, 1:37 AM
11 points
1 comment14 min readEA link

Pri­ori­ti­za­tion when size mat­ters: Value of information

jhJan 7, 2022, 5:16 AM
23 points
0 comments2 min readEA link

EA should seek out more crit­i­cism of key EA concepts

freedomandutilityAug 30, 2022, 3:14 PM
7 points
4 comments1 min readEA link

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

Joey🔸May 13, 2018, 8:13 PM
27 points
5 comments5 min readEA link

A Case for Cli­mate Change as a Top Fund­ing Pri­or­ity

Ted ShieldsDec 22, 2022, 11:50 PM
2 points
9 comments4 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_WiblinFeb 21, 2017, 10:29 AM
9 points
1 comment2 min readEA link

Editable “Im­por­tant, Tractable, Ne­glected” cri­tiques review

DirectedEvolutionFeb 11, 2023, 4:01 AM
10 points
2 comments1 min readEA link
(forum.effectivealtruism.org)

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

Alejandro AcelasMar 24, 2023, 1:48 PM
49 points
1 comment12 min readEA link

doebem: Char­ity Eval­u­a­tion and Effec­tive Giv­ing in Brazil

Bruno SterenbergOct 30, 2023, 4:14 PM
61 points
6 comments4 min readEA link

FIX IT GENTLY

RosenhanMay 6, 2024, 9:05 AM
−5 points
1 comment1 min readEA link

Weighted Fac­tor Models: Con­sider us­ing the ge­o­met­ric mean in­stead of the ar­ith­metic mean

Soemano ZeijlmansOct 21, 2024, 7:57 PM
59 points
13 comments10 min readEA link

[Question] Ur­gency in the ITN framework

Shaïman ThürlerOct 24, 2024, 3:02 PM
11 points
5 comments1 min readEA link