I took a stab at this a couple of years ago and ended up in some interesting discussions. Mostly what I found is that a lot of times people are arguing for one policy when they really mean for that policy to be bundled with a second policy. For example, in the USA, shelter-in-place is a good response to COVID if it is paired with a social safety net to handle lost wages. But if you don't trust the government to hold up the safety net, then maybe a masks-only policy would have been better.

I called my discussion method, Humble Americans for Math and Reason (HAMR) and it was sort of tongue in cheek because I knew how annoying it would be if that was an actual group trying to insert itself into conversations all over the place.

The discussion system boiled down to three guidelines. Do the math. Be transparent about values. Be humble about the math.

Here's the longer explanation:

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#1. Do The Math

The main goal of HAMR is to promote mathematical reasoning when we evaluate problems and solutions.
For example, the media often covers new dangers that are probably overblown. The novelty of the danger far exceeds the actual risk.

The HAMR style response would be to develop a standard of safety that everyone can relate to.

Let’s call it the car standard, or Automobile Fatality Comparison Scale to be precise.

One person dies per 2 million hours driving in a car.

So, when we hear a story that someone died during a Tough Mudder competition, HAMR’s job is to apply the car standard.

The math looks approximately like:
750,000 people have entered a Tough Mudder, the average Tough Mudder takes three hours to finish, and there has been one fatality.

That’s (1 death / (750,000 participants * 3 hours)) = 1 death per 2.25 million hours.

In other words it’s a 0.9 on the Automobile Fatality Comparison Scale, i.e. 10% safer than driving.

Now people can make a mathematically reasoned decision about the dangers of a Tough Mudder.

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#2. Value System Transparency and Neutrality

Reason is actually a value system — but let’s ignore that.

What HAMR needs is to be able to be both transparent and neutral about other value systems.

For example, if we were to analyze the Iraq War we could look at several value systems:
* Imperial: will the United States come out ahead in terms of opening and protecting new markets.
* Respect for Human Life: How many Iraqi’s will die in the conflict? What change can we expect in their quality of life?
* Respect for American Life: How many Americans will die in the conflict.

One of those three angles is much more compelling to my value system. But the point of HAMR isn’t to convince you my value system is better than yours. It’s simply to help people be better at mathematical reasoning.

And I picked Iraq as an example, because I’m nearly positive that the Iraq War was a bad decision by almost any value system:
* The Iraq war cost the US: $2 Trillion dollars (i.e. $6,289 per US citizen)
* Led to the death of 4,486 US soldiers.
* Led to the death of 110,000+ Iraqi civilians.

For every calculation, there needs to be transparency about the value system prompting that calculation.

Then, having transparency about the values, there needs to be a huge amount of respect for other people’s values.

It’s an oxymoron, but the HAMR party is non-partisan. Democrats, Communists and Republicans should be able to contribute together.

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#3. Embrace Humility

Anyone who spends any time with data knows that data is messy. You need to be open to better data and better math at all times.

For example, I just gave numbers from the Iraq war above. I got those from a Google search. Do you have better numbers or a deeper analysis of how those numbers were calculated?

Undoubtedly, someone does.