Problem-Solution-Evaluation
Movement Pattern
Problem→Solution→Evaluation (strengths, weaknesses, trade-offs)
Definition
A structure that extends problem-solution by adding an evaluation stage: after proposing the solution, the text honestly assesses its strengths, weaknesses, costs, and trade-offs.
Examples
Example 1
Universal basic income would eliminate extreme poverty overnight. A monthly payment of $1,000 to every adult citizen would cost approximately $3.1 trillion per year — roughly the size of the current federal budget. It would reduce bureaucratic overhead by replacing dozens of means-tested programs. It would free people to pursue education, caregiving, and entrepreneurship. Now the evaluation: it would also reduce the incentive to take unpleasant but necessary jobs, potentially driving up wages in sectors like agriculture and sanitation — which is either a feature or a bug depending on your politics. The pilot programs in Stockton and Finland showed modest improvements in well-being but no significant change in employment rates. The honest conclusion: UBI works, but not as a silver bullet. It works as a floor.
Policy analysis — the evaluation stage adds intellectual honesty
Example 2
The solution is microservices. Break the monolith into twelve independently deployable services, each with its own database, its own CI/CD pipeline, its own team. The benefits are real: faster deployment cycles, independent scaling, fault isolation. Now here's what that actually costs: a DevOps team we don't currently have — three hires at minimum. Eighteen months of migration during which we're maintaining two architectures simultaneously. A 40% increase in operational complexity. Service-to-service latency we'll spend six months debugging. Despite all of this, the alternative — continuing to maintain the monolith — will cost more within two years, because every feature takes longer, every deployment is riskier, and our best engineers keep leaving because they're bored.
Technical architecture decision — honest evaluation strengthens the recommendation
Example 3
Mexico introduced a sugar tax of one peso per liter in 2014. Purchases of sugary drinks fell 12% within two years. The UK's levy, enacted in 2018, prompted manufacturers to reformulate — sugar content dropped 44% before the tax even took effect. The evidence is clear: sugar taxes work. They are also regressive, hitting low-income families hardest as a percentage of income. They may shift consumption to equally unhealthy alternatives — juice, sweetened coffee, processed snacks. Revenue allocation is politically contentious. Despite these limitations, the net public health benefit is measurable and significant. The question is not whether sugar taxes are perfect. The question is whether imperfect action is better than none. The evidence says yes.
Health policy — the evaluation makes the proposal more credible, not less
AI Detection Note
AI often produces evaluations that are suspiciously balanced ('While there are challenges, the benefits outweigh the costs') rather than genuinely critical assessments of its own proposed solution.
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