ITN framework

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BrownHairedEevee (+433/-465) MacAskill et al. do not combine neglectedness with tractability
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  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'Appendix 3: The SPC Framework"framework', in What We Owe the Future., New York: Basic Books.

More recently, in an article introducing the SPC framework, Will MacAskill, Teruji Thomas and Aron Vallinder notereplace neglectedness with leverage, a factor that having tractability and neglectedness as separate factors is appropriate when there are diminishing returns, and especially whendescribes how the returns diminish logarithmically. In cases involving linear returns, by contrast,  it may be more intuitive to use a framework consisting of just importance and a second factor subsuming tractability and neglectedness. This second factor, which the authors call leverage, is formally defined as the % ofwork already being done on a problem solved per extra personaffects the cost-effectiveness of additional work. The resulting framework generalizes to problems with constant or dollar.increasing returns to additional work, whereas the ITN framework remains appropriate for problems with diminishing, especially logarithmic, returns.[4][5]

  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.

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

More recently, in an article introducing the SPC framework, Will MacAskill, Teruji Thomas and Aron Vallinder note that having tractability and neglectedness as separate factors is appropriate when there are diminishing returns, and especially when the returns diminish logarithmically. By contrast, inIn cases involving linear returnsreturns, by contrast,  it may be more intuitive to use a framework consisting of just importance and a second factor subsuming tractability and neglectedness. This second factor, which the authors call leverage, is formally defined as the % of a problem solved per extra person or dollar.[4]

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

InMore recently, in an article introducing the SPC framework, Will MacAskill, Teruji Thomas and Aron Vallinder note that having tractability and neglectedness as separate factors is appropriate when there are diminishing returns, and especially when the returns diminish logarithmically. By contrast, in cases involving linear returns it may be more intuitive to use a framework consisting of just importance and a second factor subsuming tractability and neglectedness. This second factor, which the authors call leverage, is formally defined as the % of a problem solved per extra person or dollar.[4]

80,000 Hours later presented its own, quantitative version of the framework.[2] This version wasOn this version, developed by Owen Cotton-Barratt in late 2014.2014,[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

MacAskill, Thomas,In an article introducing the SPC framework, Will MacAskill, Teruji Thomas and Aron Vallinder (2022) replacenote that having tractability and neglectedness with leverage, which accounts foras separate factors is appropriate when there are diminishing returns, and especially when the returns diminish logarithmically. By contrast, in cases involving linear returns it may be more intuitive to scaleuse a framework consisting of work onjust importance and a second factor subsuming tractability and neglectedness. This second factor, which the authors call leverage, is formally defined as the % of a problem at the current margin. If work on a problem now has high leverage, then each unit of future work on will make more progress than a unit of work now. On the other hand, if work on a problem has low leverage, then future work will make less progress.solved per extra person or dollar.[4]

  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.

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

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

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

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