Research history

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A problem is **neglected** when few people or dollars are working on it compared with how big it is. 80,000 Hours measures neglectedness simply: how many people, or how many dollars, are currently dedicated to solving the problem?

## Why it matters

The first resources that go into a problem usually go to its best opportunities. Later resources go to the next best, and so on. So returns diminish as a field fills up. 80,000 Hours argues that returns most likely diminish logarithmically, which means each doubling of resources buys roughly the same amount of progress. If that is right, a dollar added to a problem that gets a million dollars a year can matter far more than a dollar added to one that gets a billion.

GiveWell Labs, the project that became the Open Philanthropy Project, made a similar point in 2014 with a different word. When it compared U.S. policy areas, it asked how *crowded* each one was: how much existing advocacy already pushed for the same goals, and where the gaps were.

## Three cautions

1. **Neglected for a reason.** Neglectedness is a good guide only when a problem is neglected for bad reasons. Some problems get little money because they are small or because nobody knows how to make progress on them.
2. **The factors overlap.** Robert Wiblin of 80,000 Hours notes that a problem can stay important precisely because it is neglected. He suggests judging how important and how tractable a problem would be if nobody were working on it, so that one observation is not counted twice.
3. **Boundaries move the answer.** A narrowly defined problem almost always looks more neglected than a broad one. How you draw the edges of a problem changes its score.

## Neglect as a property of the system

Charitology adds a system view. Neglect is not random. The [Story Bias](/diagnosis/story-bias/) predicts that problems without faces or headlines will be neglected. The [Proximity Pull](/diagnosis/proximity-pull/) predicts neglect of distant need, and the [Single Lens](/diagnosis/single-lens/) predicts neglect of goods that the dominant moral frameworks cannot see.

Charitology’s founding hypothesis, the [Symptom Trap](/diagnosis/symptom-trap/), is that work at the structure and source levels is neglected relative to relief. That hypothesis is untested. Testing it starts with [the Depth Census](/open-problems/the-depth-census/).

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    "body": "\nA problem is **neglected** when few people or dollars are working on it compared with how big it is. 80,000 Hours measures neglectedness simply: how many people, or how many dollars, are currently dedicated to solving the problem?\n\n## Why it matters\n\nThe first resources that go into a problem usually go to its best opportunities. Later resources go to the next best, and so on. So returns diminish as a field fills up. 80,000 Hours argues that returns most likely diminish logarithmically, which means each doubling of resources buys roughly the same amount of progress. If that is right, a dollar added to a problem that gets a million dollars a year can matter far more than a dollar added to one that gets a billion.\n\nGiveWell Labs, the project that became the Open Philanthropy Project, made a similar point in 2014 with a different word. When it compared U.S. policy areas, it asked how *crowded* each one was: how much existing advocacy already pushed for the same goals, and where the gaps were.\n\n## Three cautions\n\n1. **Neglected for a reason.** Neglectedness is a good guide only when a problem is neglected for bad reasons. Some problems get little money because they are small or because nobody knows how to make progress on them.\n2. **The factors overlap.** Robert Wiblin of 80,000 Hours notes that a problem can stay important precisely because it is neglected. He suggests judging how important and how tractable a problem would be if nobody were working on it, so that one observation is not counted twice.\n3. **Boundaries move the answer.** A narrowly defined problem almost always looks more neglected than a broad one. How you draw the edges of a problem changes its score.\n\n## Neglect as a property of the system\n\nCharitology adds a system view. Neglect is not random. The [Story Bias](/diagnosis/story-bias/) predicts that problems without faces or headlines will be neglected. The [Proximity Pull](/diagnosis/proximity-pull/) predicts neglect of distant need, and the [Single Lens](/diagnosis/single-lens/) predicts neglect of goods that the dominant moral frameworks cannot see.\n\nCharitology’s founding hypothesis, the [Symptom Trap](/diagnosis/symptom-trap/), is that work at the structure and source levels is neglected relative to relief. That hypothesis is untested. Testing it starts with [the Depth Census](/open-problems/the-depth-census/).\n",
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          "publisher": "Robert Wiblin, 80,000 Hours",
          "title": "A framework for comparing global problems in terms of expected impact",
          "url": "https://80000hours.org/articles/problem-framework/",
          "year": 2016
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          "publisher": "Robert Wiblin, Effective Altruism Forum",
          "title": "The Important/Neglected/Tractable framework needs to be applied with care",
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