The Trap of Suspended Judgment
TL;DR
The search for a justified reason to do good for everyone created the fog, leading Anthony DiGiovanni to conclude with a suspended judgement. This paper argues against this judgement, as the fog was self-made – the question we chose for decision-making created it. Also, how can we put everyone's future on hold when we ourselves are unable to decide? Again, when we suspend the judgement because we are clueless, we can't decide when to resume because of the same reason, and with that, we lose the power of making decisions and even the possibility of doing good for others. We can't watch the fog from outside; we need to step into the fog and take even small decisions for human betterment inside the fog.
A challenge to Anthony DiGiovanni's inference on unawareness.
Entry type
Challenge the inference (Option 2). Anthony DiGiovanni suspends judgment because no justified reason exists to prefer one option over another. This response argues that suspending judgment is itself an unjustified decision — especially when the “fog” that forced the suspension was created by the rule we chose, not by reality itself.
Initially we wanted to decide for everyone’s good. We created rules to make decisions. Later, our own rule created the fog. Rather than trying to clear the “fog”, we decided to suspend the decision, saying we can’t decide because there is no justified reason for either option to do good for all. Our inability to find a justified reason was caused by our own rule, so suspending judgement is not the answer. The judgement itself is not advisable.
For context
Anthony DiGiovanni argues that when there is no justified answer as to whether any particular work would make the future better, we should suspend judgement under unawareness—where all possible scenarios for making judgement are unavailable.
1. Anthony DiGiovanni's Inference
Under unawareness, when we don’t have a justified answer to prefer any option over another for future good, then we should suspend our judgement. But have we ever asked what happens when the framework we choose forces us to suspend the decision?
It fills us with some unspoken psychological behaviours
2. Dual forms of Suspension
The decision to suspend judgement can have different reasons. Maybe we wanted to suspend it intentionally with everyone's good in mind, or maybe we could not decide what to do, and it's a natural outcome. So, this suspended judgement can be either intentional or forced.
Intentional suspension: It’s a deliberate action. We know why we did it. We must have a plan of resumption. The power of decision-making still stays with us.
Forced suspension: It’s not our own decision. We are clueless and we don’t want to risk the future. Because we are clueless, we are even clueless about the plan of resumption. And we lose the power of decision-making.
But in Anthony DiGiovanni’s case it seems to be forced, as the chosen framework is unable to reach a decision.
3. The Reality of Uncertainty
Anthony DiGiovanni says, “We’re trying to weigh up speculative upsides and downsides to a degree of precision beyond our reach. In the face of this much epistemic fog, unintended effects could quite easily toggle the large-scale levers on the future in either direction.” [1]
DiGiovanni is well aware that we can never think of all scenarios upfront to make a decision. But the fog that forces his suspension is not only the uncertainty of the future but also the uncertainty of the decision.
With uncertainty about the future, the future always looks foggy from the present. But the fog due to uncertainty of the future is unavoidable, whereas fog due to uncertainty of decision is not real — it is created by our own rules to reach the decision.
The rule we have set always demands a winner, and failing to do so resulted in a fog. So, our own rule blocked our own decision by creating an artificial fog for ourselves. And then we suspend our judgement, waiting for the same fog to clear—not realising we are chasing something we created ourselves.
4. Suspension Without a Plan is a Trap
When we decide to suspend the judgement, the natural question about resumption arises.
If we don’t have the answers, then it seems like we have lost control over our decision to resume. And when the judgement of suspension is forced, obviously we will also be clueless about the resumption.
So, a forced suspension without an exit path is not a decision; it’s a trap we created for ourselves.
5. The Flaw of Justification
Anthony DiGiovanni says that a decision can't be taken if we don't have a justified reason that it will do good for the masses. Then how can the decision of suspension be justified in the same sense? And then how are we so sure the decision we take to suspend will not affect others?
This approach raises a few questions about our decision-making.
Not having answers to these questions raises concern about taking decisions that affect everyone. DiGiovanni’s inference doesn’t address any of these conditions about the tie—which means the tie was never expected.
6. The Race of Betterment
Let’s see an example of a running race. We always wanted to win the race. But if we decide not to participate, then there is zero chance of winning. But if we participate, at least there is some probability of winning.
Similarly, when we are forced to suspend a judgement due to uncertainty, we lose the power of doing good for others, but if we continue, we are in the race in those uncertain conditions, and we still have some probability of doing good, as we have the control of our own actions. And when we have control, we can still take small decisions for others’ good moving forward. When we lose this control, how can we make decisions for the general wellbeing of people, which we are always worried about?
If human good is the goal, suspension never clears the fog under uncertainty and sinks the probability of doing good to zero.
7. DiGiovanni's own actions contradict his conclusion
Though Anthony DiGiovanni’s approach of suspending judgement has some justified reason for the outside world, as someone worried about the wellbeing of everyone, deep down he thinks there is something wrong and has started working on it.
He tries to get out of this helplessness by doing this “Cluelessness Critiques Competition”. This proves he did not stay suspended; he is actively working on it to resolve uncertainty. His conclusion says "stop", but his action says "keep going”—a contradiction he himself seems aware of.
The interesting fact is he is not thinking in one direction; he is attacking uncertainty from multiple directions to see whether the way he is handling the problem and the inferences he made are going in the right direction or not, or even if there is another way to reach a decision — all of this shows his real intention.
Who knows if this suspension is for the world or for him to get some breathing time to get some good insight back to the world and for the well-being of people?
8. The Action of Stepping into the Fog
If we ourselves are helpless, how can we help other people for good? So first we need to find a way out of our own helplessness. And when we act on it, either we will not get into a tie or we can find a way to resume as well.
With human betterment in mind, we can't watch the fog from outside; we need to step into it and take even small decisions at a time, changing direction as required to navigate the fog. One such approach is comparing the worst cases of each option and working to reduce them—as explored in the submitted companion paper.
By allowing ourselves to take small steps we keep the intention of doing good alive and in control. That’s what Anthony DiGiovanni did by creating the competition – he stepped into the fog with the intention to navigate it.
We can’t stop during uncertainty; we need to act, take small steps, generate ideas and keep working to navigate the fog.
When multiple stakeholders are involved in decision-making, dealing with the fog is critical. This dimension of decision-making with multiple fog needs to be explored.
Reference
[1] DiGiovanni, Anthony. "Why existing approaches to cause prioritization are not robust to unawareness." EA Forum, June 2, 2025.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/rHqdsrieinyhM5KDv/p/pjc7w2r3Je7jgipYY
Disclosure
Ideas in this paper were developed through dialogue with an AI assistant. All arguments, examples, and written text are the author's own. AI was used as a thinking partner and editor, not as a writer.
