[lit-ideas] Decisions, decisions

From: Eric Dean <ecdean99@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:05:57 +0000
Phil Enns writes, "...to talk of decision-making necessarily requires reference 
to social circumstances."  

I would add that not only does it require reference to social circumstances, it 
makes reference to responsibility and to the aspects of the notion of 
'consciousness' that are inextricably connected to the notion of 
responsibility.  Entities which cannot have responsibility for something cannot 
be said to have made decisions in the same sense in which people make 
decisions.  A boulder rolling down a mountain side does not 'decide' to kill 
anyone, whereas Oedipus did 'decide' to kill someone, though not explicitly his 
father.  

Moreover, it makes reference to a notion of different possible futures which, 
to my way of thinking, is inextricably entangled with the notion of the 
perpetuation of the social structures within which the possible futures are 
defined.  If I decide to have fish tonight for dinner rather than something 
else, that implies that there was a future in most ways continuous with the 
present in which I ate something other than fish.  Not only do those imagined 
alternative futures have most elements in common with the present, including 
most social elements, but the present act of considering alternative futures is 
itself something which the considerer's present social structures define, it's 
a role (I say with great trepidation) in the socially-manifested game of 
deciding.

One other comment on this thread.  Robert Paul wrote: "There's no a priori 
reason why an 'optimal' solution to a problem should take any more effort or 
cost more than a solution that's only good enough."  I think I understand what 
Robert's getting at, but there are in fact perfectly reasonable definitions of 
'optimal' and 'good enough' such that 'optimal' is demonstrably far more 
difficult to obtain than good enough.  There's a class of relatively common 
business problems that demonstrably have mathematically optimal solutions but 
where all known techniques for solving for those mathematically optimal 
solutions are intractably difficult using currently known analytical 
techniques.  In this case 'optimal' means 'best overall outcome' given some 
preferential weighting among the variables that are used to describe the 
possible outcomes, and 'good enough' means 'an outcome I can accept'.

One of these, or so an operations-research friend of mine once told me, is the 
problem of where to place a set of warehouses given that they all have to be 
within a certain range of sizes.  The fact that there is a minimum size of the 
warehouse puts a constraint on the mathematics of optimization such that the 
then-current techniques (this was in the mid-80's) for solving the relevant 
equations made them intractable.  The decision-maker has the choice of hiring 
some more mathematicians to work harder at an approximation of an optimal 
solution or taking an outcome he or she is willing to accept as 'good enough'.  

Having said all that, though, all such problems I've encountered in my career 
always have a variable the reasonable range of which can swamp the effects of 
everything put together.  Even if you had an optimal warehouse placement all 
figured out for Wheaties, it would be dependent on the demand pattern for 
Wheaties, and if all the left coasters decided Wheaties weren't organic enough 
for them (oh, oops, didn't mean to be casting any regional aspersions there...) 
all the calculations would be for naught.  Which I suppose brings my example 
all the way back to Robert's example of the runner training just to be able to 
finish the Marathon.  Perhaps the wise business person recognizes that 
'finishing' is nine points of the game as it were.

Anyway, enough for now.

Regards to one and all,
Eric Dean
Washington DC
[lit-ideas] Decisions, decisions

Other related posts:
