Comparison-Class Review Memo¶
Audit record — instantiates Feasible-Alternative Comparator Calibration
Records, for a given decision, what comparison class each objection actually used and flags where a comparator drifted between aspiration, diagnostic, and decision roles.
The nirvana move is often invisible in the moment because the comparator keeps changing jobs — an ideal invoked to diagnose a weakness is quietly reused to reject the option, without anyone announcing the switch. Comparison-Class Review Memo is the documentary record that catches this after the fact. Anchored to a specific decision question, it walks back through the objections raised and writes down, for each, what it was actually compared to and in what role that comparator was serving — aspiration, diagnostic benchmark, or decision baseline. Where a single comparator slid between roles, the memo flags the drift. Its defining act is retrospective bookkeeping of the comparison class, not live intervention: it neither builds the option set nor renders the verdict. It produces an auditable trail showing whether the decision's comparisons stayed honest.
Example¶
A company's board has just rejected an acquisition, and the deal team writes a comparison-class memo before the reasoning cools. It restates the decision question: should we acquire this target at the offered price, given our capital and integration capacity? Then it audits the objections one by one. "The target's margins are below best-in-class" — comparator: an industry-leading peer; role as raised: diagnostic, useful for spotting weakness. But the memo notes that in the final discussion this same peer was invoked as the reason to walk away — a silent slide into a decision baseline, even though that peer was never actually for sale. "Integration will be messy" — comparator: a frictionless bolt-on; role: an aspiration no real acquisition meets.
The memo's output is a one-page ledger: each objection, its comparator, the role it played, and a flag on the one comparator that drifted from diagnostic to decision without justification. It does not reopen the deal. But it leaves an honest record — and if the board later asks "did we reject this because a real alternative was better, or because it wasn't the imaginary perfect target?", the answer is written down rather than reconstructed from memory.
How it works¶
- Anchor to the decision question. Restate what was actually being decided, so every comparator can be judged against the question it was supposed to serve.
- Log each comparator and its role. For every objection, record what it compared the option to and whether that comparator functioned as aspiration, diagnostic benchmark, or decision baseline.
- Flag role drift. Mark any comparator that changed jobs mid-argument — especially an aspiration or diagnostic ideal that ended up doing rejection work.
- Leave the trail, not a verdict. Emit the ledger as an audit artifact; it documents the comparison discipline rather than re-deciding the case.
Tuning parameters¶
- Audit timing — contemporaneous (written as the decision happens) or retrospective. Real-time catches drift live but adds process weight; retrospective is cheaper but memory-limited.
- Role taxonomy granularity — how finely comparator roles are distinguished. Three roles (aspiration / diagnostic / decision) is the workable minimum; finer schemes catch more but burden the reviewer.
- Coverage depth — auditing every objection or only the decisive ones. Full coverage is thorough but slow; decisive-only is faster but can miss a quiet drift that tipped the call.
- Disclosure scope — whether the memo is internal record-keeping or a published rationale others can contest. Publishing raises the honesty stakes and the drafting care.
When it helps, and when it misleads¶
Its strength is accountability: it makes the comparison class legible and reviewable, so a decision can be checked for whether it rejected an option against a real alternative or against a shape-shifting ideal. Its central target is equivocation[1] — the same term or benchmark used in two senses within one argument — which is exactly how a diagnostic ideal smuggles itself into the decision seat.
Its failure mode is the audit that arrives too late to matter or is written to justify rather than examine. A memo composed to defend a decision already made will tidy the record instead of testing it, and role labels can be assigned self-servingly. It also does no good if no one reads it. The guarding discipline is to write the memo against a fixed decision question, assign comparator roles by how each was used rather than how it was later described, and treat a flagged drift as a reason to reopen the reasoning, not merely to annotate it.
How it implements the components¶
Comparison-Class Review Memo fills the audit components — the ones that leave a reviewable trail of how the comparison was actually run:
comparison_class_audit_record— its core artifact: the logged ledger of every comparator used, its role, and any drift between aspiration, diagnostic, and decision baselines.decision_question_frame— it anchors the audit to the specific decision on the table, so each comparator is judged against the question it was meant to serve.
It does not build the option roster — that is Feasible Option Inventory's feasible_option_set — and it does not itself quarantine idealized comparators in real time; that live exclusion is Ideal Comparator Filter's ideal_comparator_quarantine. The filter acts during the decision; this memo records, afterward, whether the discipline held.
Related¶
- Instantiates: Feasible-Alternative Comparator Calibration — the memo is the archetype's accountability layer, documenting whether comparisons stayed on feasible ground.
- Consumes: Ideal Comparator Filter — it audits, after the fact, whether the filter's quarantine of idealized comparators actually held.
- Sibling mechanisms: Feasible Option Inventory · Ideal Comparator Filter · Status Quo Costing Sheet · Shared-Burden Comparison Table · Best Feasible Alternative Test · Defect/Disqualifier Sort · Feasibility Sensitivity Probe
Editorial Notes¶
Form Classification¶
Form family: Record, Log & Register
Rationale: Records, for a given decision, what comparison class each objection actually used and flags where a comparator drifted between aspiration, diagnostic, and decision roles, making its operative form a durable record, ledger, register, or trace whose value depends on preserving actual state or history.
Independent corroboration: The frozen evidence defines Comparison-Class Review Memo as 'Records, for a given decision, what comparison class each objection actually used and flags where a comparator drifted between aspiration, diagnostic, and decision roles', so its operative form is Record, Log & Register.
Review outcome: Independent reviewer agreement; high confidence.
Origin Attribution¶
Primary origin: Philosophy
Origin pattern: Cross-disciplinary synthesis
Present-day reach: Multi-domain
Rationale: Informal logic established detecting equivocation when a benchmark silently changes meaning or argumentative role.
Related originating lineages:
- Economics & Finance — Policy evaluation contributes the distinction between ideal aspiration, diagnostic counterfactual, and feasible decision baseline.
- Rhetoric — Argument analysis supplies the memo form for exposing strategic comparator shifts across a decision.
Review resolution: Informal logic supplies the defining diagnosis: a comparator equivocates by changing argumentative roles. Rhetorical review and economic feasible-alternative analysis both materially shape the source's decision memo, so both are retained as alternate lineages within an encyclopedia synthesis.
Encyclopedia synthesis: The exact catalogued form synthesizes established practice rather than reproducing a single standard historical label.
Review outcome: Reconciled after independent review; high confidence.
References¶
[1] Walton, D. N. Fallacies Arising from Ambiguity. Applied Logic Series 1, Springer Dordrecht (1996). Defines equivocation as an ambiguity fallacy in which a term changes sense within an argument. registry ↩