Here’s how I’d put your suggestion in my own words:
Currently, political debate weighs policy options by whether or not they “help” or “harm” certain reference classes. A reference class is any symbolic, social, or physical thing that we care about.
Examples of a reference class could include “patriotism,” “community health,” “jobs,” or even something as concrete and small-scale as the view from an individual person’s deck.
Hence, political debate is currently about defining which reference classes we should care about, and how important they are, and then weighing the policy by whether it “helps” or “harms” each.
As such, current policy debate can take in the scale of the impact only according to how important the references classes are. The importance of the reference class is ambiguous, and lumps together both the physical consequences and the moral weight people attach to it.
The Amounts Matter movement would advocate that, instead of considering only the importance of the reference classes and whether or not the intervention “helps” or “harms” them, policy debate focus on how much the intervention “helps” or “harms” them. It would seek to make people have a genuine gut sense of missing some important information when policy debate does not include information on “how much” the intervention helps or harms.
In practice, it might cause debate to shift from this:
“We should make preschoolers wear masks because it helps protect our state from COVID-19.”
“No, we shouldn’t make preschoolers wear masks because it harms children’s language development.”
To this:
“We should make preschoolers wear masks because it helps protect our state from COVID-19 by preventing about 100 deaths per year.”
“No, we shouldn’t make preschoolers wear masks because it harms children’s language development by delaying it by about 6 months.”
The result is that debate can now take place not about whether or not the reference classes matter, or whether or not the policy “helps” or “harms” them, but in terms of how much the policy “helps” or “harms” each item.
I tend to think the reason this is not done is partly because adding more information expands the attack surface for a motivated opponent. In addition, it’s inherently easier to claim that X “helps” or “harms” than it is to specify how much it “helps” or “harms.”
The underlying problem here seems to be that anticipation of a hostile, non-truth-seeking response leads people to be less specific in their claims.
So you could do a few things:
Incentivize the provision of scale information during political debate
Disincentivize using scale information as a target for hostile criticism
Disincentivize making claims about “help” and “harm” if scale information is not included
I could see some sensible ways for doing this. For example, a formal political debate could make it a rule that all claims about policies must include a piece of scale information. Or critiques of political agendas could be produced that drill into the absence of scale information and use this as an occasion for ridicule.
On the whole though, any such movement would be participating in the blood sport of politics, and I would expect it to get bloody.
Here’s how I’d put your suggestion in my own words:
Currently, political debate weighs policy options by whether or not they “help” or “harm” certain reference classes. A reference class is any symbolic, social, or physical thing that we care about.
Examples of a reference class could include “patriotism,” “community health,” “jobs,” or even something as concrete and small-scale as the view from an individual person’s deck.
Hence, political debate is currently about defining which reference classes we should care about, and how important they are, and then weighing the policy by whether it “helps” or “harms” each.
As such, current policy debate can take in the scale of the impact only according to how important the references classes are. The importance of the reference class is ambiguous, and lumps together both the physical consequences and the moral weight people attach to it.
The Amounts Matter movement would advocate that, instead of considering only the importance of the reference classes and whether or not the intervention “helps” or “harms” them, policy debate focus on how much the intervention “helps” or “harms” them. It would seek to make people have a genuine gut sense of missing some important information when policy debate does not include information on “how much” the intervention helps or harms.
In practice, it might cause debate to shift from this:
“We should make preschoolers wear masks because it helps protect our state from COVID-19.”
“No, we shouldn’t make preschoolers wear masks because it harms children’s language development.”
To this:
“We should make preschoolers wear masks because it helps protect our state from COVID-19 by preventing about 100 deaths per year.”
“No, we shouldn’t make preschoolers wear masks because it harms children’s language development by delaying it by about 6 months.”
The result is that debate can now take place not about whether or not the reference classes matter, or whether or not the policy “helps” or “harms” them, but in terms of how much the policy “helps” or “harms” each item.
I tend to think the reason this is not done is partly because adding more information expands the attack surface for a motivated opponent. In addition, it’s inherently easier to claim that X “helps” or “harms” than it is to specify how much it “helps” or “harms.”
The underlying problem here seems to be that anticipation of a hostile, non-truth-seeking response leads people to be less specific in their claims.
So you could do a few things:
Incentivize the provision of scale information during political debate
Disincentivize using scale information as a target for hostile criticism
Disincentivize making claims about “help” and “harm” if scale information is not included
I could see some sensible ways for doing this. For example, a formal political debate could make it a rule that all claims about policies must include a piece of scale information. Or critiques of political agendas could be produced that drill into the absence of scale information and use this as an occasion for ridicule.
On the whole though, any such movement would be participating in the blood sport of politics, and I would expect it to get bloody.