Crucial consideration
A crucial consideration is a consideration that warrants a major reassessment of a cause area or an intervention.
The concept was introduced by Nick Bostrom in a 2007 article (Bostrom 2007: 149) and applied in subsequent publications (Bostrom 2014a; Bostrom 2014b).
Related concepts
Besides introducing the concept of a crucial consideration, Bostrom introduced two other concepts closely related to it. First, the concept a crucial consideration component, or a consideration that is not itself a crucial consideration, but which has the potential to become one when conjoined with additional considerations still unknown (Bostrom 2014a). As Bostrom writes, a crucial consideration component is "the kind of thing of which we would say: 'This looks really intriguing, this could be important; I’m not really sure what to make of it at the moment.' On its own, maybe it doesn’t tell us anything, but maybe there’s another piece that, when combined, will somehow yield an important result." (Bostrom 2014b)...