How to measure the success of an action ?

Context

We have seen that it is important to connect people's actions as closely as possible to long-term consequences. However, it is also necessary for this connection to occur quickly enough to allow people to judge the effectiveness of their actions.

Question

How can we judge the success of an action from the perspective of the common good in the long term ?

Study

Evaluations in psychology

To better understand the evaluation of an action, let’s look at how it works in our mind.

(Dis/)pleasure

It brings us (dis/)pleasure even before obtaining the result. For example, if we are on our way to meet friends, we will experience pleasure in anticipation while traveling.

Importance

It’s important, for instance, if we are doing a task without knowing whether it’s good for us or not, we will think about it to try to determine it.

Uncertainty

We manage uncertainty: sometimes we are unable to evaluate precisely. For example, if we meet a new person and don't know if it's a good thing. In this case, we are aware of the uncertainty, and the result of our evaluation includes information about possibilities. For instance, a woman on a date with a seemingly nice man who makes a joke referencing violence might assess that there is a risk this person could have violent tendencies.

Multiplicity

Evaluations involve our entire mind: we gather all the information on the subject, even when it seems unrelated. For example, when evaluating group work, if the smell in the room brings back good memories, it will be automatically considered unless our consciousness intervenes to correct the criteria.

Resource management

They rely on heuristics (or "fast thinking") when time is limited, or the evaluation needs to be low-energy (when the subject is of little importance). Often, there are unknowns that we cannot resolve within the time or energy constraints.

Constraints

Realism

Imagine that we always deviate in the same direction in judgment (e.g., by neglecting the limited quantity of a resource), this leads to a deviation from the goal of the common good. Therefore, it is necessary to avoid deviations. This doesn’t imply precise evaluation, but just that statistically, there shouldn’t be a deviation consistently in the same direction.

Quick evaluation

Knowing whether what we are doing is heading in the right direction is important, both psychologically and to improve. For example, if we are selling food, getting feedback motivates us and helps us improve. That's why it's good to have frequent evaluations.

Reevaluation

If we were to be content with not reevaluating, it would encourage not genuinely considering the future, as we would only seek to meet the standards of the moment. For example, if we build a bridge and conduct an evaluation after 5 years, this encourages designers to achieve good results for 5 years later, thus straying from the long term.

Uniformity

The more evaluations depend on the individuals conducting them, the less meaningful they are. They should be as closely linked as possible to representations of the collective mind.

Resource management

An evaluation can be more or less costly or urgent, so the process needs to be adjusted to respect the constraints.

Motivations

To ensure evaluations are fair, appropriate motivations must be provided.

Example of the Bridge

Let’s take the example of a bridge construction project. We know there are many aspects to evaluate, such as:

• Financial cost
• Ecological cost
• Aesthetics
• Savings in travel (time, energy, accident risk, etc.)
• The increase in traffic (creating a new road tends to increase traffic as people take advantage of this ease to travel).
• The impact on local areas (expropriation, etc.)

We can see that various elements of very different natures must be assembled. Yet, this is something we regularly do, either individually or in groups. To do it collaboratively, there are different ways, such as:

• Averaging the evaluations
• Reaching a consensus within a group
• Following a pre-established method.

But if we want decisions to be made by the collective mind, we must consider collective representations. This is the only way to ensure evaluations truly reflect collective thought. For example, if we averaged the evaluations, it would be subject to local variations and various biases.
More concretely, we could imagine a method of evaluation that takes into account the various elements. This doesn’t preclude human appreciation but formalizes it. For instance, the method could consider people's opinions.

The advantage of such a system is that, being more formal (and thus more explicit compared to personal evaluations), it becomes improvable. For example, if someone finds the evaluation inadequate, they can propose another method and demonstrate that it better serves the common good in the long term.

Example of a Crime

The bridge example can be complex but includes many formalizable elements. It is interesting to take an example where human appreciation plays a greater role.

One might think that a crime committed against a single person is a particular act and, as a non-collective act, only negligibly affects the common good in the long term (to the extent of about 1/7 billion). However, damage to humanity that is not taken into account leads to a deviation from the goal of the common good in the long term. In this case, it could lead to the proliferation of crimes.

The judge determines a penalty, not the evaluation of the act concerning the common good in the long term. As the two are closely related, we can consider that the factor of harm done against humanity is crucial in determining the penalty.

We know that an evaluation method already exists: a judge uses the legal framework to have a range of possible penalties and uses it to make their own evaluation based on the context. Thus, we find the same process as for the bridge (a method provided by society). But here, the human and cultural factors play a greater role, and we know that depending on the country, penalties for the same crime can differ greatly.

We can note that the evaluation of damage against humanity involves two factors: the consequences of the act itself and the increased risk of generalization. For example, if someone disposes of toxic products that contaminate the groundwater, the consequences are already significant, but the generalization would be absolutely catastrophic. And we know that criminal acts encourage others to commit them, so the perpetration of an act is also, even if unintentionally, an incitement to do the same.

Thus, without delving into the study of actions to stop crimes, we can imagine an initial phase of evaluation of damage to humanity. It would include, as with the bridge, representations that make the work systematic and almost uniform across judges. These representations could take into account local factors (local culture, climate, etc.).

The difference with the current system would be:

• A two-step judgment (rather than one currently) that could be conducted by different specialists:
  • Evaluation of the damage
  • Evaluation of the measures to be taken
• For the evaluation of damage, a much more methodical framework. Anyone can improve it when they find it poorly designed from the perspective of the common good in the long term. This still leaves room for the human aspect, for example, in evaluating the sincerity of the accused.

Answer

The evaluation is based in all cases on representations conceived by the collective mind and constantly improved to align with the goal of the common good in the long term. Additionally, the energy put into the evaluation is adapted according to the stakes.

Furthermore, evaluations must be regularly updated (depending on the stakes and possible changes) to avoid deviations from the goal of the common good in the long term.

See the study for more details.