From summer 2024 up to summer 2025, I had been keeping track of these resources in a private Google Doc shared only with a couple of people. I realized others might benefit too, so here is the latest version, last-updated on August 7th, 2025.
You'll find a few references that are missing from the list below in my post Discussions of Longtermism should focus on the problem of Unawareness (October 20th, 2025), and in this informal research agenda (November 19th, 2025)---I might keep updating the latter with refs.
See also DiGiovanni's Resource guide: Unawareness, indeterminacy, and cluelessness (July 7th, 2025) for a cluelessness Q&A and pointers to what references address what.
See also this comment of mine (September 15th, 2025) for a brief overview of key debates surrounding cluelessness.
See also DiGiovanni's What to do about near-term cluelessness in animal welfare (October 8th, 2025) and Graham's If wild animal welfare is intractable, everything is intractable. (November 14th, 2025) for cluelessness concerns (and what to make of them) in animal welfare, in particular.
On reasons to be clueless about how to increase welfare impartially
- Anthony DiGiovanni's (2025) sequence The challenge of unawareness for impartial altruist action guidance
- Christian Tarsney et al. (2024) Moral Decision-Making Under Uncertainty, Section 3. Cluelessness and Deep Uncertainty
- Andreas Mogensen (2021) Maximal cluelessness
- Joe Roussos (2021, slides) Unawareness for Longtermists
- Elaine Lok Lam Yim (2019) The Cluelessness Objection Revisited
- Hilary Greaves (2016) Cluelessness (only the part where she treats complex cluelessness)
- Simon Friederich (2025) Causation, Cluelessness, and the Long Term
- Patrick Williamson (2022) On Cluelessness
- Philip Trammel (2019) Simplifying Cluelessness (only the part where he treats complex cluelessness)
- Eric Schwitzgebel (2024) The Washout Argument Against Longtermism
- David Thorstad (2024) Three mistakes in the moral mathematics of existential risk, Section 6.4
- Amanda Askell & Sven Neth (forthcoming) Longtermist myopia, Section on Epistemic diffusion.
- Nick Beckstead & Teruji Thomas (2021) A paradox for tiny probabilities and enormous values
- James Lenman (2000) Consequentialism and Cluelessness
- Regina Rini (2022) An effective altruist? A philosopher’s guide to the long-term threats to humanity
- Björn Lundgren & Karolina Kudlek (2024) What we owe (to) the present: Normative and practical challenges for strong longtermism, Section 4 & 5
- Dylan Matthews (2015) I spent a weekend at Google talking with nerds about charity. I came away … worried
- Sarah Frances Hicks & Dominika Janus (2023) The threat of longtermism
- Boaz Barak (2022) Why I am not a longtermist
- Jim Buhler's (2024-2025) sequence On cluelessness
- Some forum comments I found germane: from Eli Rose; from Will MacAskill, comments cited in DiGiovanni's Resource guide: Unawareness, indeterminacy, and cluelessness
Attempts to debunk these reasons for cluelessness
Some work where there is no actual case. They simply claim we know things:
Some work that doesn’t actually argue contra cluelessness but draws implications assuming we are highly uncertain but not fully clueless (without justifying this assumption):
On indeterminate beliefs
Wow thank you! I'm sending this to someone I know. Appreciate it!
Something that would make this post more helpful for me: If you had to pick 1-3 resources for someone to start reading about cluelessness (say: someone who is vaguely worried about cluelessness but hasn't invested deeply in building their own models yet / could use a refresher), where would you choose?
(No pressure of course, this is already very helpful :) )
Thank you :)
I guess I recommend reading this overview (or this longer one?) and/or DiGiovanni's Q&A and then checking the references in these that discuss whatever they think their own crux is.
This will likely point them to some parts of DiGiovanni's (2025) sequence The challenge of unawareness for impartial altruist action guidance, which is the best and most comprehensive resource (in terms of arguments) on the topic imo.
Were I to pick only one that's at once rigorous and accessible, I'd say the first post in Anthony DiGiovanni's sequence on Unawereness (20m read officially, but has some references and charts, so I'd say it probably takes 10 minutes to read it: 1. The challenge of unawareness for impartial altruist action guidance: Introduction