The choices would turn on how the decisionmaker weighed competing priorities

From That Reminds Me: Examples and Analogies by Ross Guberman. The article is about the use of analogies in court arguments. What caught my attention was this.

Other times, you might weave an analogy into the body of your argument. Let’s take an example from a brief that some of the then-Justices said was the best they’d ever seen. The brief from Alaska v. EPA was written by Chief Justice Roberts, then just John Roberts, who suggested that deciding which technology is “best” for controlling air pollution under the Clean Air Act is sort of like . . . asking people to pick the “best” car:

Determining the “best” control technology is like asking different people to pick the “best” car. Mario Andretti may select a Ferrari; a college student may choose a Volkswagen Beetle; a family of six a mini-van. A Minnesotan’s choice will doubtless have four-wheel drive; a Floridian’s might well be a convertible. The choices would turn on how the decisionmaker weighed competing priorities such as cost, mileage, safety, cargo space, speed, handling, and so on.

In my business, Decision Clarity Consulting, I am working on some materials right now that highlight this issue. There are numerous categories of decision error but two of the most fundamental are poor definition of goals and poor understanding of goal trade-offs (ex: I want security and liberty, two estimable goals, but some actions conducive to security are negatively correlated with liberty). Roberts' is a good example of the definitional aspect. "Best" usually means fit-for-purpose, but it is uncommon for a group of individuals to have exactly the same purpose, as exposed by Roberts' analogy.