4. Select the Criteria
It helps to think of any policy story (see Step 8) as having two interconnectedAbut
separable plor lines, the analytical and the evaluative. The first is all about
facts and disinterested projections of consequences, while the second is all about
value judgments. Ideally, all analytically sophisticated and open-mlnded persons
can agree, more or less, on the rights and wrongs in the analytical plot and on
the nature of its residual uncertainties. But this is not true with regard to the
evaluative plot-where we expect subjectivity and social philosophy to cavort
more freely. The a&ytical will reason about whether X, Y, or Z is likely to
happen, but it is in the evaluative plot that we learn whether we think X or Y
or Z good or bad for the world.