Employing evidence to make policy is an unnatural act

--- Robert Shea, in conversation with Bob Hahn on the Two Think Minimum podcast, "Robert Shea on Evidenced Based Policy’s Impact and Potential," June 29, 2020,

From the transcript:

Hahn: So how does that differ from how things work in Washington or other places around the world today? I mean, don’t politicians and civil servants use evidence? What’s the big deal here?

Shea: Yeah, you must’ve gotten this a lot too when you told people you worked on the commission on evidence-based policymaking, oh my god, we need a commission for that? That’s not what we do every day? No, employing evidence to make policy is an unnatural act. Today, politics, emotion, anecdote are more likely to drive policy than evidence. This whole movement, the evidence movement is all about trying to more and more get policymakers to look at data and evidence, and use it in their policy making.

"Boundaries are border wars waiting to happen"

--- Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making (Third Edition, 2011) p. 184-84

Quote in context, from the last two pages of the book

In a world of continua, [conceptual] boundaries are inherently unstable. Whether they are conceptual, physical, or political, boundaries are border wars waiting to happen. At every boundary, there is a dilemma of classification: who or what belongs on each side? In politics, these dilemmas evoke intense passions because the classifications confer advantages and disadvatages, rewards and penalties, permissions and restrictions, or power and powerlessness.

. . .

Boundary tensions mya be the curse of our existence as thiiking and communal beings but political argument is our privelege. It allows us to fight our border wars with imagination and words.

"Problem definitions are stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end, involving some change or transformation"

--- Deborah Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making (Third Edition 2011) p. 158

Quote in context:

In politics, narrative stories are the principal means for defining and contesting policy problems. We don’t usually think of a policy as literature, but most definitions of policy problems have a narrative structure, however subtle. Problem definitions are stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end, involving some change or transformation. They have heroes and villains and innocent victims, and they pit the forces of evil angst the forces of good. Stories provide explanations of how the world works. These explanations are often unspoken, widely shared, and so much taken for granted that we aren’t even aware of them. They can hold a powerful grip on our imaginations and our psyches because they offer the promise of resolution for scary problems.

Stone's footnote to this paragraph cites Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Knopf, 1976).

"Google loves challenging old business models with new technology ideas"

--- Mark Sullivan in his PC World piece on 10 Feb 2010 "Google Challenge to US Broadband Might Actually Change Things"

In context:

The announcement comes right on the heels of the federal government releasing the first round of funding for broadband networks to rural and underserved areas. It appears to be intended as an adjunct to the FCC’s own Broadband Plan, as if to say: “See, you can do it like this.”

Google loves challenging old business models with new technology ideas. Today’s announcement is the search giant’s opening salvo in a challenge to US broadband, which is monopolistic, slow and sees openness as a threat to profits.

...

I sincerely hope the tech and telecom communities rally around what Google is trying to do here. The planned fiber networks are not big enough to excite the suspicions among privacy conspiracy junkies that Google is only running the networks to collect more data about us, and as a new platform for its advertising business.

If the network goes national, those will be important questions to explore. For now, though, Google has a rare opportunity to put real pressure on large ISPs like AT&T and Comcast to sell more bandwidth for less money.

I can get behind that.

More a more neutral report, see the Wall Street Journal, "Google Jolts Telecom Rivals", 11 Feb 2010.

If nothing else, this is PR genius of the caliber we've come to expect of Google. Huge bang for little buck.