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There are no sidelines in public policy. There's nowhere to wait to see how things turn out before making a decision. So, there are no neutral decisions. "Wait

There are no sidelines in public policy. There's nowhere to wait to see how things turn out before making a decision. So, there are no neutral decisions. "Waiting until we're more sure about something" is not actually waiting, it is an affirmative decision to disregard what we think we know right now. That can be a valid choice, and something to debate, but it's fundamentally different from the feined neutrality of the concept of waiting to see. To make such an argument requires attacking that knowledge directly, showing specifically how it's wrong. Not just vaguely complaining that it's not good enough yet. This is actually well-understood in public policy when it comes to other areas like economics or defense; leaders act to address needs in real time, making the best decisions they can with the information available to them. "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite time in the future.” ― General Patton Engineering, as a discipline, cannot cover all of life. It largely constrains itself to situations that are understood, and can do so because there are other complementary disciplines that create the knowledge it uses. But in public policy there's not a complementary Earth or society that we can wait for.

pdonis 6y ago
> "Waiting until we're more sure about something" is not actually waiting, it is an affirmative decision to disregard what we think we know right now. No, it's an affirmative choice to not impose a public policy on everyone based on what we think we know right now. And often that is the right choice. > To make such an argument requires attacking that knowledge directly, showing specifically how it's wrong. Not just vaguely complaining that it's not good enough yet. You have this backwards. Claimed knowledge doesn't get to be assumed to be right until it's shown to be wrong. It needs to demonstrate that it's right with a sufficient level of confidence before it even gets considered at all. "Not good enough yet" just means "you haven't shown your claims to be right with enough confidence to make them worth considering in this public policy debate". > leaders act to address needs in real time, making the best decisions they can with the information available to them. "Leaders" aren't the only ones who act to address needs in real time and make decisions. Everybody does that. Often the best thing for "leaders" to do is to not make any decisions at all as "leaders", but to simply let individual people, who have far more accurate information about their individual situations than any "leader" can possibly have, make their own decisions. For a "leader" to make a decision and dictate a public policy, the policy needs to be based on knowledge that is strong enough to justify overriding the billions of individual decisions that people are making all the time about their individual lives, with a top-down dictated decision that everybody must follow. That's a much, much stricter requirement than most people appear to think.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  Everyone is already under the imposition of public policy, right now. Today's society is not neutral just because it is today. Edit to add: the public policy imposed on us today is based on what we thought we knew back when it was put in place.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > Everyone is already under the imposition of public policy, right now. To the extent that this is true, it is, IMO, mostly a bug, not a feature. > the public policy imposed on us today is based on what we thought we knew back when it was put in place. If you seriously believe the public policies we have today were all based on the best current knowledge at the time they were put in place, all I can say is that you have a most charming naivete.
    - snowwrestler 6y ago
      I don't think I claimed they were based on "best current knowledge," but I hope we can agree that is an ideal to aspire to.
      - pdonis 6y ago
        > I hope we can agree that is an ideal to aspire to. It's an ideal to aspire to, but only if the ideal includes a very strict standard on what level of knowledge justifies dictating a public policy at all.
        jbay808 6y ago
        snowwrestler has repeatedly made the point that you can't not have a public policy about something; you can only accept or change the status quo. England has a public policy that people drive on the left. America has a public policy that people drive on the right. In a society that had no codified rule about which side of the road to drive on, where people just weave back and forth, the choice to not enforce a particular convention would also be a defacto public policy. It seems to me that in general you should only need the preponderance of evidence to suggest that a public policy change will do more good than harm in order to adopt it; otherwise you're unnecessarily biasing yourself in favour of the status quo. This of course should be done with an appropriate risk-weighting decision theory (how you weigh a small chance of large negative utility against a large chance of small positive utility, etc).

pdonis 6y ago

> "Waiting until we're more sure about something" is not actually waiting, it is an affirmative decision to disregard what we think we know right now. No, it's an affirmative choice to not impose a public policy on everyone based on what we think we know right now. And often that is the right choice. > To make such an argument requires attacking that knowledge directly, showing specifically how it's wrong. Not just vaguely complaining that it's not good enough yet. You have this backwards. Claimed knowledge doesn't get to be assumed to be right until it's shown to be wrong. It needs to demonstrate that it's right with a sufficient level of confidence before it even gets considered at all. "Not good enough yet" just means "you haven't shown your claims to be right with enough confidence to make them worth considering in this public policy debate". > leaders act to address needs in real time, making the best decisions they can with the information available to them. "Leaders" aren't the only ones who act to address needs in real time and make decisions. Everybody does that. Often the best thing for "leaders" to do is to not make any decisions at all as "leaders", but to simply let individual people, who have far more accurate information about their individual situations than any "leader" can possibly have, make their own decisions. For a "leader" to make a decision and dictate a public policy, the policy needs to be based on knowledge that is strong enough to justify overriding the billions of individual decisions that people are making all the time about their individual lives, with a top-down dictated decision that everybody must follow. That's a much, much stricter requirement than most people appear to think.

snowwrestler 6y ago
Everyone is already under the imposition of public policy, right now. Today's society is not neutral just because it is today. Edit to add: the public policy imposed on us today is based on what we thought we knew back when it was put in place.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > Everyone is already under the imposition of public policy, right now. To the extent that this is true, it is, IMO, mostly a bug, not a feature. > the public policy imposed on us today is based on what we thought we knew back when it was put in place. If you seriously believe the public policies we have today were all based on the best current knowledge at the time they were put in place, all I can say is that you have a most charming naivete.
  - snowwrestler 6y ago
    I don't think I claimed they were based on "best current knowledge," but I hope we can agree that is an ideal to aspire to.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > I hope we can agree that is an ideal to aspire to. It's an ideal to aspire to, but only if the ideal includes a very strict standard on what level of knowledge justifies dictating a public policy at all.
      - jbay808 6y ago
        snowwrestler has repeatedly made the point that you can't not have a public policy about something; you can only accept or change the status quo. England has a public policy that people drive on the left. America has a public policy that people drive on the right. In a society that had no codified rule about which side of the road to drive on, where people just weave back and forth, the choice to not enforce a particular convention would also be a defacto public policy. It seems to me that in general you should only need the preponderance of evidence to suggest that a public policy change will do more good than harm in order to adopt it; otherwise you're unnecessarily biasing yourself in favour of the status quo. This of course should be done with an appropriate risk-weighting decision theory (how you weigh a small chance of large negative utility against a large chance of small positive utility, etc).