Cause prioritization as an effort associated with the effective altruism movement is a fairly recent development. However, other efforts to prioritize between different causes and interventions have existed before this. What are these efforts, and what names did they go by?

• In global health, priority setting seems to be in use.
• Some people use cause selection instead of cause prioritization.

Even within EA or EA-adjacent communities, several terms exist, e.g. “global priorities”, “cause selection”, or even just “prioritization”. Some ideas like identifying crucial considerations is also related.

See also

• Implicit cause prioritization