The original quote said to rate each intervention by how much it helped or hurt the situation, i.e. its individual-level causal effect. None of those study designs will help you with that: They may be appropriate if you want to estimate the average effect across multiple similar situations, but that is not what you need here.
This is a serious question. How do you plan to rate the effectiveness of things like the decision to intervene in Libya, or the decision not to intervene in Syria, under profound uncertainty about what would have happened if the alternative decision had been made?
The original quote said to rate each intervention by how much it helped or hurt the situation, i.e. its individual-level causal effect. None of those study designs will help you with that: They may be appropriate if you want to estimate the average effect across multiple similar situations, but that is not what you need here.
Yes I concede that cross-level inferences between aggregate (average of multiple similar situations) and individual level causes has less predictive power than inferences across identical levels of inference. However, I reckon it's ...
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: