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 note that having tractability and neglectedness as separate factors is appropriate when there are diminishing returns, and especially when 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 % of a problem solved per extra person or dollar.^[4]