In light of central explanations one and two, I feel like this fairly cries out for a reasoned rule in the Kahneman sense.
Short recap: this is the idea that you consult the best available experts to determine what the 6-8 most important dimensions of the problem are, and then give each of these a score, like cells in a spreadsheet. The default approach is to weight all these equally. The story goes this routinely meets expert performance even in fields where there are good experts, and tends to exceed it in fields where there isn’t anything like real experts (politics being one of them).
I think the use of the method would be a fast and simple way to estimate priorities for which policies to pursue based on their approximate goodness.
One modification to the method I suggest: I expect one of the dimensions to be salience, and in keeping with the pulling from the side strategy I suggest we weight it negatively, which I expect to have the impact of down weighting stuff the parties are really stuck on.
An exception to what I just suggested: if the salience score suddenly goes from low to high (like a big scandal or disaster draws attention to a previously ignored problem) then it would be a good idea to make that the top priority all of a sudden so we can present something actionable to Congress or regulators as a fait accompli.
In light of central explanations one and two, I feel like this fairly cries out for a reasoned rule in the Kahneman sense.
Short recap: this is the idea that you consult the best available experts to determine what the 6-8 most important dimensions of the problem are, and then give each of these a score, like cells in a spreadsheet. The default approach is to weight all these equally. The story goes this routinely meets expert performance even in fields where there are good experts, and tends to exceed it in fields where there isn’t anything like real experts (politics being one of them).
I think the use of the method would be a fast and simple way to estimate priorities for which policies to pursue based on their approximate goodness.
One modification to the method I suggest: I expect one of the dimensions to be salience, and in keeping with the pulling from the side strategy I suggest we weight it negatively, which I expect to have the impact of down weighting stuff the parties are really stuck on.
An exception to what I just suggested: if the salience score suddenly goes from low to high (like a big scandal or disaster draws attention to a previously ignored problem) then it would be a good idea to make that the top priority all of a sudden so we can present something actionable to Congress or regulators as a fait accompli.