Kinds
The three kinds, side by side
Empirical, value and interest. What each one is, what settles it, and the four-second question that tells them apart.
Claims this part is about, and what each was answered with
Teams that sit together ship faster
Empirical→A studyWork should be something you go to
Value≠A studyA statement about what work is, answered with a productivity paper
The lease runs to 2031 and the rent review falls next year
Interest→A statement about who paysSaid once, in a finance update
three claims · one empirical, one value and one interest · one was answered with the wrong kind of answer
One claim of each kind, from the twenty-four counted here.
Six claims, one pair of each kind
Teams that sit together ship faster
Empirical→A studyRemote workers put in longer hours than office workers
Empirical·Nothing; it was never answeredWork should be something you go to
Value≠A studyA statement about what work is, answered with a productivity paper
Showing up for each other is part of what a team is
Value→A statement of what mattersAnswered in its own kind
The lease runs to 2031 and the rent review falls next year
Interest→A statement about who paysSaid once, in a finance update
The travel time and fares fall entirely on the employee
Interest·Nothing; it was never said out loudsix claims · two empirical, two value and two interest · one was answered with the wrong kind of answer · two were never answered at all
Six of the twenty-four claims counted on this site. One further claim was left undrawn: the kind of the claim or of the answer could not be read, and this panel is entirely about whether the two agree.
One question, asked of a claim before you answer it, settles what your answer should be made of. It takes a moment and it is almost never asked, because by the time a claim has landed the argument is already moving.
What would have to be true for this to be settled?
Three answers are possible, and which one you get tells you what kind of claim you are holding.
The three
- Empirical. Something measurable would have to come out one way rather than another. "New starters take longer to become productive remotely" is this kind. It might be true or false; the point is that the world could tell you.
- Value. Nothing measurable would settle it, because it is a statement about what matters. "Work should be something you go to" is this kind. That does not make it wrong, unserious or a smokescreen. It makes it a different sort of thing.
- Interest. It is settled by naming who bears a cost. "The lease runs to 2031" is this kind. These are the shortest claims, the easiest to check, and on this record the least often said out loud.
What each one can be answered with
| Kind | Settled by | Not settled by |
|---|---|---|
| Empirical | Evidence that measures the thing claimed | Any principle, however good |
| Value | Another value, or a trade somebody accepts | Any study, however large |
| Interest | Naming the cost and who bears it | Either of the above |
The second row is the one that goes wrong most often, and it is worth stating plainly: answering a value claim with a study is not a weak argument but a category error. It cannot work even in principle, and it reliably makes the other person feel they have not been heard — which they have not.
The test applied to six real claims
Worth doing slowly once, because the sorting is faster than it looks and most people get it right on the first attempt.
"Teams that sit together ship faster." What would settle it? A comparison of comparable teams on comparable work. Empirical.
"Remote workers put in longer hours." Same shape: timesheets would do it. Empirical.
"Work should be something you go to." What measurement would make this false? There is none. Somebody who holds it is not making a prediction; they are saying what a job is for. Value.
"Showing up for each other is part of what a team is." The same, from the other direction, and held just as sincerely. Value.
"The lease runs to 2031 and the rent review falls next year." What would settle it? Reading the lease. Interest — and note how much cheaper it is to settle than anything in the other two rows.
"The travel time and fares fall entirely on the employee." Also interest, also cheap to settle, and on this record never said at all.
Three things the sorting is not
It is not a ranking. Empirical claims are not the serious ones and value claims are not the soft ones. An argument with no value claims in it would be an argument about nothing anybody cares about.
It is not about who is right. An empirical claim can be false. A value claim can be one most people would reject. The sorting tells you what would bear on it, not whether to accept it.
It is not about motives. An interest claim is not a confession. "I would rather not spend two hours a day travelling" and "the building costs us four million a year" are both perfectly respectable things to say, and the trouble on this record is not that people said them but that they mostly did not.
What the record showed
Of twenty-four claims made in one consultation, nine were empirical, ten were about values and five were about who pays. Twelve of the twenty-four were answered in a kind that cannot settle them.
Nobody involved was arguing in bad faith. The sorting had simply never been done, by anybody, at any point in eleven weeks.
Where the sorting changes what happens next
A worked exchange, because the difference is in the reply rather than in the analysis.
A: We need people in three days a week. A company is a place, not a login.
B: The research on hybrid productivity does not support that.
B has answered a value claim with a study. A will not be moved, and will not be able to say why not, and the exchange will repeat in three weeks in the same words.
Sorted, B's reply is different:
B: That is a real difference between us, and I do not think either of us is going to produce a study that settles it. Can I say what matters most to me, and then can we look at what is actually in dispute that evidence could touch?
Nothing has been conceded. The disagreement is intact. What has changed is that it is now a disagreement about the thing it is about, and a disagreement about the thing it is about can be traded over.
The one that gets skipped
Of the three kinds, interest claims are the ones most likely to be sorted correctly and least likely to be spoken.
Everybody on this record could have told you that the lease was a factor and that travel costs fall on the employee. Nobody needed a framework to work that out. The sorting is not what was missing; the saying was.
Which is why the third kind gets its own part of this site, and why the practical advice there is not about recognising a cost but about how to put one into a room without it landing as a complaint.