“Many of life's decisions are hard. What kind of career should you pursue? Does your ailing mother need to be put in a nursing home? You and your spouse already have two kids; should you have a third?such decisions are hard for a number of reasons. For one the stakes are high. There's also a great deal of uncertainty involved. Above all, decisions like these are rare, which means you don't get much practice making them. You've probably gotten good at buying groceries, since you do it so often, but buying your first house is another thing entirely.” NeedsShouldFirstsKindMeanDoeTwoHardReasonHomeKidsMotherHouseDecisionDealsNumbersCareersPracticeInvolvedThirdsPursueUncertaintyBuyingStakesSpouseNursingGroceriesNursing Home Author:Steven Levitt
“The broadening of the economic order which came to be seated in the individual property owner... dramatized by Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana Territory... "The supremacy of corporate economic power... consolidated by the Supreme Court decision of 1886 which declared that the Fourteenth Amendment protected the corporation... [the New Deal, leading to], within the political arena, as well as in the corporate world itself, competing centers of power that challenged those of the corporate directors.” WorldWellsPoliticalOrderIndividualDecisionDealsEconomicDirectorsCourtPropertySupremeCorporateCorporationsOwnersTerritoryAmendmentsProtectedSupreme CourtCompetingArenaSupremacyLouisianaEconomic PowerNew DealCorporate WorldEconomic OrderCourt DecisionFourteenth Amendment Author:C. Wright Mills
“Someone in the society has to deal with the reality that there are finite resources and we're making trade-offs, and be explicit about that. When the car companies were found to have a memo that actually said, "This safety feature costs X and saved Y lives," the very existence of that memo was considered damning. Or when you made it reimbursable for a doctor to ask, "Do you want heroic care at the end-of-life," that was a death panel. No, it wasn't a death panel! It was asking somebody to make a decision.” WantMadeSaidEndsRealityCareAsksFoundDecisionDealsExistenceCompanyCarCostResourcesDoctorsAskingSafetyTradeSavedMade ItFeaturesHeroicFiniteEnd Of LifeExplicitTrade OffsMemos Author:Bill Gates
“The deep paradox uncovered by AI research: the only way to deal efficiently with very complex problems is to move away from pure logic.... Most of the time, reaching the right decision requires little reasoning.... Expert systems are, thus, not about reasoning: they are about knowing.... Reasoning takes time, so we try to do it as seldom as possible. Instead we store the results of our reasoning for later reference.” WayTryingLittlesProblemMovingDecisionResultsDealsKnowingPureResearchLogicComplexesStoresExpertsReasoningReachingParadoxArtificial IntelligenceTake TimeRight DecisionComplex Problems Author:Daniel Crevier
“Some fine men are in Congress, too few, trying to do a responsible job. But they are surrounded and almost neutralized by a greater number whose instinct is to make a deal before they make a decision.” MenTryingJobsDecisionDealsNumbersGreaterFineResponsibleInstinctCongress Book:Unbought and Unbossed Source: Unbought and Unbossed
“Decision-making is difficult because, by its nature, it involves uncertainty. If there was no uncertainty, decisions would be easy! The uncertainty exists because we don't know the future, we don't know if the decision we make will lead to the best possible outcome. Cognitive science has taught us that relying on our gut or intuition often leads to bad decisions, particularly in cases where statistical information is available. Our guts and our brains didn't evolve to deal with probabilistic thinking.” IfsThinkingKnowsWould BeEasyDifficultDecisionDealsBrainCasesInformationTaughtAvailableIntuitionEvolveUncertaintyOutcomesGutsDecision MakingCognitiveTaught UsBad DecisionCognitive ScienceDecisions We Make Author:Daniel Levitin
“I like to see what happens to people when they're thrown into really crappy situations. I think it's really interesting to watch what decisions they make, how they deal with the feelings they have.” PeopleThinkingFeelingsHappensDecisionInterestingDealsSituationWatchesThrownReally Interesting Author:Luke Mitchell
“We deal with all varieties of information. Somebody's always upset no matter what we do. We have to make a decision; otherwise there's a never-ending debate.” MatterDecisionDealsInformationNo Matter WhatDebateVarietyUpsetNever Ending Author:Sergey Brin