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Topic: Evidence & Process

Definition: How public decisions should be made: on evidence, with scorecards, and with a view to the wider world.

Topic Metrics
Importance: not scored yet | Evidence Depth: 0 findings cited | Controversy: 0% of beliefs argued both ways

3 beliefs and 62 pages beneath them. Every number on this page is read from one of those pages; nothing here is typed.

What this page does. It gives every belief about this topic one fixed address, so the thousand ways of saying the same thing collapse into a single entry and the real reasons to agree or disagree can be counted and weighed by evidence instead of by how often they get repeated. The address has three parts, one per table below: Direction (which way it runs), Claim Strength (how absolute), and Specificity (where it sits on the general-to-specific tree). Same address means the same claim, so it merges; nearly the same address gets the redundancy discount.

📊 Continuum 1: Direction (Oppose ↔ Support)

Which way the belief runs, from total opposition (-100%) to total support (+100%). The Belief Score column is a separate thing: how well the belief holds up once its arguments are scored, not which way it points. A claim can sit at +100% and still score badly.

Position	Core Belief / Claim	Top Underlying Argument	Belief Score
-100% (Strongly Oppose)	Nothing here yet.
-50% (Skeptical)	Nothing here yet.
0% (Neutral/Nuanced)	Nothing here yet.
+50% (Supportive)	Public policy should be driven by data and measurable outcomes rather than by ideology.	Policies with measurable outcomes can be corrected when they fail, and policies without them cannot.	+0.00
+100% (Strongly Support)	America should strengthen its global leadership by modeling a strong, functioning democracy at home.	The credibility of its democratic model is America's primary geopolitical asset.	+0.00
Not labelled yet (no position typed)	America should adopt a comprehensive scorecard that measures national progress across human development, economic vitality, environmental health, and social cohesion, not just GDP.	GDP measures economic activity, not human well-being, and its own architect warned against using it as a measure of welfare.	+0.00

💪 Continuum 2: Claim Strength, How Absolute the Claim Is (Modest ↔ Total)

How absolute the claim is, from a hedged "sometimes" to a flat "always," independent of which way it runs and of whether it is true. Two beliefs match on this axis when they are equally bold.

Claim Strength	Pro Belief at This Strength	Anti Belief at This Strength	Scope & Telltale Words
Modest (20%) Hedged	Nothing here yet.	Nothing here yet.	Narrow. "Some," "tends to," "in certain cases."
Moderate (50%) Standard	America should adopt a comprehensive scorecard that measures national progress across human development, economic vitality, environmental health, and social cohesion, not just GDP. America should strengthen its global leadership by modeling a strong, functioning democracy at home.	Nothing here yet.	Definite but bounded. "Clearly," "generally." Where most serious arguments live.
Strong (80%) Broad	Public policy should be driven by data and measurable outcomes rather than by ideology.	Nothing here yet.	Near-universal. "Across the board," "fundamentally."
Total (100%) Maximal	Nothing here yet.	Nothing here yet.	Total, zero limits. "Always," "never." One counterexample sinks it.

Key insight: The strongest arguments on either side usually live at Moderate (50%), not Total (100%). Attacking only the Total versions is a straw man. Engage the best version of the opposing argument, not the loudest.

🌳 Continuum 3: General to Specific, with Branching Subcategories (General ↔ Specific)

The same topic holds claims at every altitude, from a sweeping worldview down to one line-item policy. A general belief branches into subcategories, and each subcategory holds the specific beliefs beneath it. A belief only merges with another that shares its branch and its rung, so a worldview never gets double-counted with the policy it implies.

Rung / Branch	Pro-Topic Belief	Anti-Topic Belief
Most General (Worldview)	America should adopt a comprehensive scorecard that measures national progress across human development, economic vitality, environmental health, and social cohesion, not just GDP. 0.50 Public policy should be driven by data and measurable outcomes rather than by ideology. 0.50 America should strengthen its global leadership by modeling a strong, functioning democracy at home. 0.50	Nothing here yet.

📜 Assumption Stack Behind Each Position

Not a fourth axis. Continuum 3 sorts beliefs by altitude; this takes each stance and lists the assumptions a person must accept to hold it, which is how a fight at the bottom gets traced to its real root higher up.

To Hold Position	You Must Accept These Assumptions (General to Specific)
-100% to -50% (Strongly Oppose)	Nothing here yet.
-20% to +20% (Nuanced/Mixed)	Nothing here yet.
+50% to +100% (Strongly Support)	Nothing here yet.

⚖ Core Values Conflict

Advertised values each side claims, and the motivation critics attribute.

Values Supporting This Topic	Values Opposing This Topic
Nothing here yet.	Nothing here yet.

⚡ The Engagement Landscape (Passive ↔ Active)

A map of who will act, not a matching axis. It measures how far a person will go to act on a belief, which is a fact about the person, not the belief, so it never feeds the three-part address above. A casual supporter and someone willing to go to prison hold the same belief.

Engagement Level	Pro-Topic: What It Looks Like	Anti-Topic: What It Looks Like
1. Preference Passive lean	Nothing here yet.	Nothing here yet.
2. Active Advocacy Engaged participant	Nothing here yet.	Nothing here yet.
3. Principled Non-Compliance Conscientious objector	Nothing here yet.	Nothing here yet.
4. Civil Disobedience Principled lawbreaking	Nothing here yet.	Nothing here yet.

Key insight: Engagement is independent of the three matching axes. Someone can hold a moderate claim (50%) about a cause they feel lukewarm toward (+40%) and still go to prison for it (Level 4).

🤝 Common Ground and Compromise

The scored cost-benefit trees read sideways. Compromise Candidates are the winnable disagreements, the ones a small likelihood shift can flip, as opposed to the symbolic value conflicts no negotiation resolves.

Shared Interests Impacts both sides want	Real Value Conflicts One side prices freedom, the other safety	Compromise Candidates A small likelihood shift flips a category's net
1. People on both sides need national prosperity, however it is defined. 2. People on both sides need effective governance. 3. People on both sides need informed decision-making. 4. People on both sides need civic engagement. 5. People on both sides need long-term sustainability. 6. Both sides need policies that actually reduce the problems they target. 7. Both sides need government spending that produces results rather than just activity. 8. Both sides need a policy process that can be explained and defended to constituents. 9. Both sides need fewer of the most obvious politically motivated policy failures. 10. Both sides need a stable, predictable international order that protects U.S. security and prosperity. 11. Both sides need alliances that hold when adversaries actually test them. 12. Both sides need less global instability and fewer of the costs that come with it, such as refugee crises, terrorism, and economic disruption. 13. Both sides need a world in which rule-of-law norms constrain even powerful actors.	Nothing here yet.	1. Present the scorecard at several levels: a simple dashboard of 5 to 10 key indicators for the general public, 20 to 30 indicators for engaged citizens, and full detail for researchers and policymakers. 2. Make the methodology transparent by using multiple data sources, publishing weighting decisions, inviting expert peer review, and focusing on trend changes more than absolute levels. 3. Put the scorecard under an independent board like the Federal Reserve, with bipartisan expert panels and open methodology, and focus on trends rather than single-year snapshots. 4. Link the scorecard to budget priorities and require impact assessments that use its metrics, so it is an action framework and not just measurement. 5. Separate the empirical question from the values question explicitly: state what the evidence shows a policy produces and at what cost, and state separately that whether the trade-off is worth making depends on how one weighs the competing values. 6. Require pre-registration of success metrics for all major government programs, so success is defined before the money is spent. 7. Make independence of evidence production a structural requirement rather than a voluntary norm: pharmaceutical companies should not be the primary funders of research on whether pharmaceutical treatments work, and industry-funded research should be labeled and discounted systematically. 8. Pursue domestic democratic reform and global leadership at the same time rather than one after the other, since electoral reform, rule of law, and institutional accountability can proceed alongside continued alliance maintenance. 9. Make domestic democratic reform an explicit part of the foreign policy story, modeling a democracy that identifies its failures, debates them openly, and reforms itself rather than managing or minimizing them. 10. Separate democracy promotion from regime change by supporting civil society, a free press, and electoral institutions in countries seeking reform, rather than using military force or covert regime change. 11. Build and demonstrate institutions at home that visibly produce better-reasoned decisions, including evidence-based tools like the Idea Stock Exchange, as the democratic model worth exporting.

⚖ The Evidence Ledger

A highlight reel of the highest-impact evidence appearing anywhere under this topic, each side sorted by score, highest first. Evidence formally attaches to specific beliefs and is scored on its own page; this is the cross-topic view.

Supporting Evidence (Pro)	Quality	Weakening Evidence (Con)	Quality
Simon Kuznets, GDP's architect, is quoted as saying that the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income. Historical quote from Kuznets Historical quote from Kuznets	0.50 (Nothing observed)	Research on information overload finds that adding more information yields diminishing returns. Information overload research Information overload research	0.50 (Nothing observed)
In the United States, GDP has risen while life expectancy has fallen.	0.50 (Nothing observed)	Survey-based metrics are subject to response bias.	0.50 (Nothing observed)
Stock market gains are concentrated while median household wealth is stagnant.	0.50 (Nothing observed)	GDP methodology is standardized across the world.	0.50 (Nothing observed)
Spending on environmental cleanup counts as GDP growth, so environmental damage can show up as growth.	0.50 (Nothing observed)	GDP makes historical comparisons possible.	0.50 (Nothing observed)
U.S. life expectancy declined from 2015 to 2017 and declined sharply from 2020 to 2022.	0.50 (Nothing observed)	Cochrane Reviews and meta-analyses of pharmaceutical research consistently find that industry-funded studies produce favorable results at two to three times the rate of independent studies of the same treatments. Cochrane Library Cochrane Library	0.50 (Nothing observed)
Infant mortality rates in the United States are higher than those of peer nations.	0.50 (Nothing observed)	Measuring that a policy has failed does not by itself get the policy corrected: crime prevention programs such as D.A.R.E., Scared Straight and boot camps for juvenile offenders showed no effect or harmful effects in rigorous evaluations, yet kept running for decades on political popularity. Campbell Collaboration Campbell Collaboration	0.50 (Nothing observed)
Social trust in the United States is at historic lows.	0.50 (Nothing observed)	NATO remained cohesive through Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War, all severe blows to U.S. democratic credibility.	0.50 (Nothing observed)
U.S. infrastructure is crumbling even though the U.S. economy has grown.	0.50 (Nothing observed)	Roughly 70% of U.S.-supported transitions to democracy since 1980 have failed or regressed within 10 years. National Endowment for Democracy data National Endowment for Democracy data	0.50 (Nothing observed)
Countries that use broader measures of progress, such as Bhutan's Gross National Happiness and New Zealand's Living Standards Framework, report better policy alignment.	0.50 (Nothing observed)
Studies in business and education find that performance metrics increase accountability. business, education literature business, education literature	0.50 (Nothing observed)
Happiness research finds that relationships, health, and purpose matter more than income once income passes a certain level. Happiness research Happiness research	0.50 (Nothing observed)
The UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, a standing body that reviews evidence and issues binding recommendations based on cost-effectiveness, is documented to save the NHS about 1.5 billion pounds a year compared with unevaluated adoption of new treatments, while improving patient outcomes. NICE NICE	0.50 (Nothing observed)
Education programs rated "strong evidence" by the U.S. Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse consistently outperform programs without evidence ratings. What Works Clearinghouse What Works Clearinghouse	0.50 (Nothing observed)
Police departments that use data-driven deployment (crime hotspot analysis and predictive resource allocation) achieve measurably better crime reduction per dollar than departments using traditional patrol methods, with effect sizes of 15 to 30 percent in controlled comparisons. RAND policing research RAND policing research	0.50 (Nothing observed)
Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2024 report, covering 195 countries, documents an 18th consecutive year of global democratic decline and finds that authoritarian governments explicitly cite U.S. democratic failures to justify their own practices. Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2024 Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2024	0.50 (Nothing observed)
Pew Research Global Attitudes surveys from 2021 through 2023 documented measurable declines in allied publics' confidence in U.S. democracy after January 6, with partial recovery by 2023, and a direct correlation between views of U.S. democratic health and willingness to support U.S.-led global initiatives. Pew Research Global Attitudes Survey (2021, 2022, 2023) Pew Research Global Attitudes Survey (2021, 2022, 2023)	0.50 (Nothing observed)
The finding that democracies rarely go to war with each other is the most consistently replicated result in international relations research, replicated across hundreds of studies since Doyle (1983) and Russett (1993). Russett, International Security Russett, International Security	0.50 (Nothing observed)
A 2022 Carnegie Endowment analysis found significant, measurable effects of U.S. domestic democratic performance on its capacity to build and maintain democratic coalitions abroad. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “The Costs of Democratic Backsliding for U.S. Foreign Policy” (2022) Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “The Costs of Democratic Backsliding for U.S. Foreign Policy” (2022)	0.50 (Nothing observed)

📏 Best Objective Criteria for This Topic

Agree on the yardstick before measuring. Each proposed criterion is a belief with its own page, scored on four dimensions: Validity (does it capture what we claim?), Reliability (do different observers get the same reading?), Linkage (how directly it connects to the claim), and Importance. Arguments that connect to high-scoring criteria carry more weight.

Proposed Criterion	Criteria Score	Validity	Reliability	Linkage	Importance
Nothing here yet.
Missing a criterion? Propose one in the repository with reasons for its validity, reliability, linkage, and importance.

📚 Best Media and Resources

Every work cited on a belief page in this topic, sorted by how much it moved those pages. Quality and impact are argued on the work's own page.

Title	Medium	Bias/Tone	Positivity	Claim Strength	Quality	Key Insight
Nothing here yet.

The Children column is where full subcategories from Continuum 3 go once they outgrow a row and earn their own page.

Broader (Parents)	Sub-Issues (Children)	Related (Siblings)	Opposing / Critical Views
Government	Nothing here yet.	Government ethics Elections Military Law Taxes Democracy & Rule of Law Rights & Liberty Immigration	Nothing here yet.

📬 Contribute

If you would rather use git, every cell here is a row in the repository: a belief is a page row with the topic evidence-and-process, and a cell on this page is an edges row with page evidence-and-process and one of the topic sections.

Built from revision 42c8344, committed 2026-10-04. 2173 pages. Every number above is computed from the two tables in that revision, so a reader who fetches it gets these numbers and not different ones.