Home › Topics › Government › Government ethics › Public office and private gain › Public office should not be usable for priv… › Claim: Stated at this level the principle decides nothing, because…
Claim
Stated at this level the principle decides nothing, because every real dispute is about what counts as "gain" and what counts as "using" the office. 0.50 Agree Disagree
If you disagree, this page has a column for you. A reason to disagree that answers: “A member who owns a farm and votes on farm policy gains, and nobody thinks that is corruption”.
Argument TreesHow arguments are scored →
Reasons to agree
| # | Argument | Truth | Conf | Link | Imp | Uniq | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A member who owns a farm and votes on farm policy gains, and nobody thinks that is corruption. | 0.50 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.50 | 1.00 | +0.00 |
| 2 | Every official gains from a healthy economy their votes affect. | 0.50 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.50 | 1.00 | +0.00 |
Reasons to disagree
| # | Argument | Truth | Conf | Link | Imp | Uniq | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A principle that does not resolve hard cases still rules out easy ones, and the easy ones are most of the caseload. | 0.50 | 0.00 | 1.00 | 0.50 | 1.00 | -0.00 |
Weight for 0.00 · weight against 0.00 · net +0.00
Each reason is a claim with its own page. Score = sign x (2 x Truth - 1) x Conf x Link x Imp x Uniq, and every column is here so the row can be multiplied out and checked. A reason argued false scores negative and counts against the side it is filed on; a reason nobody has argued yet scores exactly 0, and so does one whose own page has no work behind it.
Where This Page Is Used
| Page | Table | As | Its truth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public office should not be usable for private gain. | reasons | a row | 0.50 |
Every page that reads this one. One claim, one home, every use visible.
Not filled in yet
| What Would Change the Answer | nothing sits beneath this page yet for the answer to rest on |
| Evidence Ledger | no findings cited yet |
| Falsifiability Test | nothing named that would strengthen or weaken this claim if it turned up |
| Testable Predictions | nothing stated that we should observe if this claim is true or false |
| Objective Criteria | no yardstick both sides would accept in advance has been proposed |
| What Acting On This Would Cost and Gain | no costs or benefits priced yet |
| Logical Anatomy | the claim has not been split into its component parts |
| Interests, Not Positions | nobody has mapped who wants what, or why |
| Media Resources | no books, studies or films weighed |
| Legal Framework | no laws or rulings cited |
| General to Specific | not linked to broader or narrower beliefs |
Parts of the template nobody has filled in here. They are named rather than shown, because an empty table is not a finding, and each one is a reason the confidence above is not higher. A part that takes rows has a form for its first one.
What this page needs right now
| # | The gap | Where it goes | Who is best placed to fill it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A reason to disagree that answers: “A member who owns a farm and votes on farm policy gains, and nobody thinks that is corruption” | Argument Trees, Reasons to disagree | someone who holds the opposing position |
| 2 | A study, record or dataset that bears on this belief directly | Evidence Ledger | anyone with the source |
| 3 | A measurement both sides would accept in advance, with the reading each side predicts | Objective Criteria | anyone who can name a yardstick the other side would sign |
Named gaps, read off the tables above, so a newcomer can see exactly where a contribution goes. None of them requires agreeing with the page, and each one links to the form it goes in.
What the numbers are made of
- Share on the agree side
- no scored weight either way
- Confidence
- 28%. Weakest parts: depth 0% · scrutiny 0%
- Depended on
- ReasonRank 0.0003, 925 of 2173 · beneath 1 of 162 beliefs · read by 1 page
- Strongest reason for
- A member who owns a farm and votes on farm policy gains, and nobody thinks that is corruption. +0.00
- Strongest reason against
- A principle that does not resolve hard cases still rules out easy ones, and the easy ones are most of the caseload. -0.00
- Coverage
- Of 3 scored rows, 3 have no linkage page, 3 have no importance page, 3 have no uniqueness page. This page reads no other page, so nothing beneath it can move it.
- Bottom line
- A real objection to using the principle as a decision rule, not to holding it.
Scoring EngineTruth scores →
| Quantity | Value | How |
|---|---|---|
| Argument score | +0.00 | argument rows: weight for minus weight against |
| Evidence score | +0.00 | evidence rows: weight for minus weight against |
| Prediction contribution | +0.00 | prediction rows, same signed formula as every other row |
| Belief score | +0.00 | the three lines above added together |
| Positive total | 0.00 | every row whose signed contribution came out positive, from either side |
| Negative total | 0.00 | every row whose signed contribution came out negative, as a magnitude |
| Starting point | 0.50 | where this claim starts before any of its own rows count: Nothing observed: no source type recorded, so this claim starts at a coin flip |
| Weight of the starting point | 1.00 | k x a bounded reward for independent replication, k = 1, capped at 2.0 x k |
| Truth score, argued | 0.50 | (positive + weight x starting point) / (positive + negative + weight) |
| Truth score | 0.50 | argued truth, capped by the weakest load-bearing component that has its own page |
| ReasonRank | 0.0003 | how much of the site depends on this page: rank 925 of 2173. The share of a walk that starts at the 162 beliefs and steps to the pages they read, with a 0.85 chance of stepping on each time |
| Work value | 0.0002 | ReasonRank x (1 - confidence): how much settling this page would be worth to everything above it |
| Completeness | yes | at least one scored reason on each side (an importance page: at least one interest; an interest page: both readings filled) |
Cite this page Stated at this level the principle decides nothing, because every real dispute is about what counts as "gain" and what counts as "using" the office. Idea Stock Exchange, claim page stated-level-principle-decides, truth 0.50, confidence 28%, revision 42c8344 of 2026-10-04. The revision is what makes this quotable: these numbers move as the argument is worked on, and rebuilding that revision reproduces them exactly.
Every number on this page as data: stated-level-principle-decides.json. Constants: K = 1 · UNARG = 0.5 · DEFLINK = 1 · DEFIMP = 0.5 · DEFUNIQ = 1. A reason placed under a conclusion is presumed relevant until a linkage page says otherwise; the burden is on the challenger. The neutral start for importance, the wiki's own rule.
Every value here is computed from the tables above at build time. Nothing is typed.