Combining Scale and Tractability

Imagine you have a small amount of money to solve a global problem. You could spend it on a local park project or a massive vaccination campaign. One choice feels good but helps few people. The other choice reaches millions but seems hard to manage well. This tension between doing good and doing it effectively defines the heart of modern ethics. We must find ways to balance the scale of our impact with the ability to actually fix the issue.

Evaluating Problem Severity and Potential

When we look at world issues, we often focus on what is closest to us. This approach feels natural because we can see the impact immediately. However, effective altruism asks us to look at the total number of lives affected. Scale refers to the total magnitude of the problem we intend to solve. A problem that affects millions of people has a higher scale than one affecting a small group. We should prioritize issues where the potential for positive change remains high.

Key term: Scale — the total number of individuals or future beings affected by a specific global problem or initiative.

Think of this like choosing a project for a community garden. If you plant one flower, you improve a tiny corner of the yard. If you install a massive irrigation system, you help every single plant grow throughout the season. The irrigation system requires more planning and effort. However, it delivers a much larger benefit to the entire garden over time. We must search for problems that allow for this kind of widespread, lasting improvement.

Measuring Success Through Tractability

Once we identify a large problem, we must ask if we can actually solve it. Tractability measures how likely we are to make progress on a specific issue. Some problems are massive but remain impossible to change with our current tools. Other problems are smaller but offer clear paths to success. We need to find the sweet spot where a problem is both large enough to matter and solvable enough to tackle.

To evaluate these factors, we often use a framework that compares different options. This helps us avoid wasting resources on impossible tasks. Consider the following criteria for choosing a project:

• Neglectedness describes how many other people are already working on the specific problem right now.
• Tractability represents the likelihood that our extra effort will lead to a measurable improvement in outcomes.
• Scale measures the total number of lives we can improve if we succeed in our mission.

We can compare these factors using a simple grid to see which projects deserve our limited time and money.

This table shows that we should focus on the third row. When a problem is both large and solvable, it becomes the most efficient use of our resources. If we choose projects that are impossible, we gain nothing despite the high scale. If we choose projects that are too small, we fail to create the impact we desire. We must look for the intersection of these two vital traits. By focusing our energy here, we ensure that our efforts produce the most good for the most people.

Finding the right balance requires constant attention to new data and changing conditions. We must remain flexible as we learn more about what works and what fails. This process is not a one-time decision but a habit of thinking carefully about our choices. When we combine high scale with high tractability, we move from just wishing for a better world to actually building one. This approach allows us to make the best use of every resource we have available for the future.

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True impact requires finding the intersection where the scale of a problem matches our ability to solve it effectively.

But how can we use formal logic to make these difficult choices when the future remains uncertain?