Seriously, I don't know of anyone who made a bad decision. I am sure I have never made a bad decision. But yes, so many of my decisions have truly been poor.
As humans, I guess we do exhibit strong hindsight bias or outcome bias. We routinely judge the merit of a decision based on the final outcome often months, years or decades later. I have myself fallen into this trap numerous times and killed myself by tracing bad events to a decision and thinking “What a fool I was – I should have known better”.
This bias is quite cruel to agents whose decisions have wider impact on society. Politicians and corporate leaders get convicted and thrown to prison for making “bad decisions” whose impact may have played out over decades. Professional sports present the perfect stage to observe this bias every day. Modern day coaches and captains get ridiculed in the press after a game is lost for making awful decisions. (Armchair) experts rush in to proclaim how the writing was on the wall when the decision was made.
Let’s not ignore the flip side to this bias too. Favorable events also get attached to “good decisions” often made a long time back and heroes are made out of that.
One way to reduce this uncertainty is to carefully codify the rules how decisions would be made in certain situations and then follow them rigorously. The hope is if the outcomes turn bad, public would be forgiving since the decision making process was transparent. But then anything that can be codified should be automated. No one needs ‘experts’ to follow set rules. It does not matter even if the rules require analyzing a million complex patterns. In fact, the more the patterns, the more reliable and consistent will be algorithmic decision making. Today simple chess playing programs in personal computers defeat humans without a sweat. Don't want to get into how AI is breaking into all the “human frontiers” each passing year.
That leaves those situations which are truly random and chaotic as the only remaining playing field for the human decision makers. It is scary. It takes tremendous courage to make decisions in such setting especially if the impact is broad. And here is where the game of reward and risk comes into play. The truly brave ones (call them risky, reckless, arrogant, whatever) who do not chicken out to make decisions in this random game are the ones who get rewarded with high office. Most of them know deep inside that that their ‘act’ of decision making have little bearing on the final outcome. It will only be by chance that things will fall in place. Knowing all this, still they are willing to play this high risk, adrenaline filled game. May be that's why they get handsomely rewarded too.
It requires one to conquer fear to make decisions detaching the mind from thinking disastrous outcomes. Kids excel in this. They hardly think of outcomes when they do their mischief. A good thrashing now and then helps them grow up. Adults are no different; being bold and decisive in ambiguous situations is the only thing that separates men from the boys.
As humans, I guess we do exhibit strong hindsight bias or outcome bias. We routinely judge the merit of a decision based on the final outcome often months, years or decades later. I have myself fallen into this trap numerous times and killed myself by tracing bad events to a decision and thinking “What a fool I was – I should have known better”.
This bias is quite cruel to agents whose decisions have wider impact on society. Politicians and corporate leaders get convicted and thrown to prison for making “bad decisions” whose impact may have played out over decades. Professional sports present the perfect stage to observe this bias every day. Modern day coaches and captains get ridiculed in the press after a game is lost for making awful decisions. (Armchair) experts rush in to proclaim how the writing was on the wall when the decision was made.
Let’s not ignore the flip side to this bias too. Favorable events also get attached to “good decisions” often made a long time back and heroes are made out of that.
One way to reduce this uncertainty is to carefully codify the rules how decisions would be made in certain situations and then follow them rigorously. The hope is if the outcomes turn bad, public would be forgiving since the decision making process was transparent. But then anything that can be codified should be automated. No one needs ‘experts’ to follow set rules. It does not matter even if the rules require analyzing a million complex patterns. In fact, the more the patterns, the more reliable and consistent will be algorithmic decision making. Today simple chess playing programs in personal computers defeat humans without a sweat. Don't want to get into how AI is breaking into all the “human frontiers” each passing year.
That leaves those situations which are truly random and chaotic as the only remaining playing field for the human decision makers. It is scary. It takes tremendous courage to make decisions in such setting especially if the impact is broad. And here is where the game of reward and risk comes into play. The truly brave ones (call them risky, reckless, arrogant, whatever) who do not chicken out to make decisions in this random game are the ones who get rewarded with high office. Most of them know deep inside that that their ‘act’ of decision making have little bearing on the final outcome. It will only be by chance that things will fall in place. Knowing all this, still they are willing to play this high risk, adrenaline filled game. May be that's why they get handsomely rewarded too.
It requires one to conquer fear to make decisions detaching the mind from thinking disastrous outcomes. Kids excel in this. They hardly think of outcomes when they do their mischief. A good thrashing now and then helps them grow up. Adults are no different; being bold and decisive in ambiguous situations is the only thing that separates men from the boys.
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