Without a meta description search engines synthesise a snippet from page text, which is usually a worse advert for the page than one written deliberately.
Impact is importance multiplied by the confidence tier’s weight — SPECIFICATION 1.0, RESEARCH 0.7, EMERGING 0.3, EXPERIMENTAL 0.1. Two rules backed by the same class of evidence therefore always carry the same weight, which is what makes the score reproducible rather than hand-tuned.