Abandon Expected Value Calculations: Or, continue to assign numbers, but skip the math. Unlike money, most things we care about in the world are not fungible. People are not fungible. Aspirations are not fungible. Gains in one place do not neatly cancel out or substitute losses in the other.
Unfortunately my friend the need to measure things cannot be avoided as fundamentally we should streamline information so that decision makers can assess the viability of a certain decision. Hard calculations & estimates are still required at the most responsible way in order to ensure that funds are distributed and utilized properly or eliminate the possibilities of errors and fraud (the reason why most of us are concerned as of the moment).
This does not mean we abandon the rigor and clarity that comes with assigning numbers and probabilities when faced with complex tradeoffs. Nor do we ignore them as information or inputs into our decision making.
The issue arises when those numbers are used in the aggregate, for non-substitutable things. For example, when faced with the two job policies I mentioned as an example, is the policy with greater net jobs objectively the “most responsible way” to go?
Okay point taken, better join those two paragraphs so it will not be separately read as stand alone ideas...But to your point, the devil is always in the details and hypothetical scenarios are very difficult to analyze. Probably add a better example to your argument as I cannot understand why there was jobs lost in the first place.
Unfortunately my friend the need to measure things cannot be avoided as fundamentally we should streamline information so that decision makers can assess the viability of a certain decision. Hard calculations & estimates are still required at the most responsible way in order to ensure that funds are distributed and utilized properly or eliminate the possibilities of errors and fraud (the reason why most of us are concerned as of the moment).
Yes of course—as I wrote:
The issue arises when those numbers are used in the aggregate, for non-substitutable things. For example, when faced with the two job policies I mentioned as an example, is the policy with greater net jobs objectively the “most responsible way” to go?
Okay point taken, better join those two paragraphs so it will not be separately read as stand alone ideas...But to your point, the devil is always in the details and hypothetical scenarios are very difficult to analyze. Probably add a better example to your argument as I cannot understand why there was jobs lost in the first place.