Pro/Con List
also Pros and Cons · Advantages and Disadvantages List
A common decision technique that lists an option's positives and negatives and informally nets them into an overall verdict.
A pro/con list enumerates an option’s pros and cons, then tries to estimate whether the pros outweigh the cons. CF treats it as the everyday, often wordless prototype of how people make decisions: even when no list is written, much intuitive deliberation works by tallying plusses against minuses.
CF’s specific objection is mathematical. Each pro or con is a factor drawn from a different dimension (price, safety, cuteness, time). Netting them out is addition, but you cannot add unlike terms (see like vs unlike terms). To make the sum work, people secretly convert every factor into a single “goodness” dimension and assign it points or weights. Those conversion factors are made up: there is no measurable rate at which cuteness converts to dollars, no answer key, and no way to check the result. So a pro/con list is a disguised weighted-factor sum inheriting the same incoherence; people usually fudge the weights to fit a conclusion they already hold.
CF notes pro/con lists need not add. Goldratt (in It’s Not Luck) used one differently: ignore the pros, attack every con, and proceed only if each con is solved. That is multiplying binary factors (each con passes or fails), not summing them, and it is consistent with CF’s pass/fail approach grounded in good enough thresholds and decisive criticism. The defect is not brainstorming pros and cons, but combining them by addition.