[[Adam Kucharski]] poignantly distinguish three response to tackle disagreement between what we *could* do (based on research evidence) and what we *should* do (preferred set of policies):[^1] 1. **The problem**: What is the current reality we’re dealing with? From a policy advice perspective, it might be the equivalent of saying: ‘There’s a problem, and this is what it looks like.’ 2. **The intervention**: If there’s a problem, the obvious next step is to identify some potential solutions, and understand the implications of these options. So given a problem, it’s the equivalent of saying: ‘This is what we could do about the problem, and what the impact of those interventions might look like.’ 3. **The policy**: After identifying the situation and options to tackle it, we have a distinct final step: the decision about what action to take (if any). After all, knowing there’s a problem and what we could do about it isn’t the same as deciding what we should do about it. Knowing which level we disagree is helpful to determine what options do we have to bridge the gap. If the other end disagree on policy level but does not agree in level 1 or 2, it has no foundation or basis to produce an agreement. Therefore, a futile attempt. [^1]: https://open.substack.com/pub/kucharski/p/how-to-hopefully-disagree-about-problems?r=4efx02&utm_medium=ios