The title may have made you leave this site before you've even read this first sentence, but I would've been happy that you even came to this site so feel free to do what you want. Even if you want to tell everyone about how crappy this blog is..any publicity is good publicity (except if you're already someone super famous & doing something bad could alienate your agent, or pr agency). Don't forget about Flight of the Conchords (see the below entry). They really are awesome!
This week for the book club, we are going to discuss an exerpt from "Against the Gods," by Peter Bernstein You may think that this will turn into another 'does God exist,' debate, however this book is actually about the remarkable story of risk. Although it's a book designed for people with an interest in finance, there are many subjects the book covers which are good for anyone to read. (Sorry, it's late and I can't be bothered going to thesaurus.com to find a better word for good).
Here is an extract from the introduction: "There is persistent tension between those who assert that the best decisions are based on quantification and numbers, determined by the patterns of the past, and those who base their decisions on more subjective degrees of belief about the uncertain future. This is a controversy that has never been resolved.
The issue boils down to one's view about the extent to which the past determines the future. We cannot quantify the future, because it is an unknown, but we have learned how to use numbers to scrutinize what happened in the past. But to what degree should we rely on the patterns of the past to tell us what the future will be like? Which matters more when facing a risk, the facts as we see them or our subjective belief in what lies hidden in the void of time? Is risk management a science or an art? Can we even tell for certain precisely where the dividing line between the 2 approaches lies? "
Sorry for the long post...but it's intermission!
If people are interested, I might let them know how I make my decisions..otherwise I'll assume no one gives a shit and everyone thinks I'm crazy.
4 comments:
How do you make decisions? As the blogger-in-chief of this blog, you should tell your readers.
Some decisions people make though there faith in God, even though numbers and past experiences may be against them. I think this is probably a fourth kind of non-combinational decision making criteria people make.
I think in terms of using numbers to from the past in order to tell the future depends on the nature of the problem you are predicting. Some things can be modelled in such a way such that numbers can be used to make predictions about the model.
However, this leads on to an even deeper topic, what can we model. How accurate do we want the model to be. For example, people have been trying to model the human heart in order to analyse various aspects about its behaviour and function. Perhaps a model like this could be used to predict how long a person's heat will function, but it depends on the accuracy of the model.
I don't know, this is a deep topic...Not everything can be modelled though...and even if they are, the models may not be reliable...and often making reliable models involves lots and lots of data from the past...
sorry but I can't think of one situation where you can go against both logic & past experiences, and make a decision based on your faith in God.
If you are basing your decision on that, then you are applying your own logic (it doesn't matter if your logic is flawed).
Even the "don't give a shit" way of making a decision is generally a 'past experience' way of doing it.
You can use logic to reason any decision you make (just ask spock).
Note: Startrek fans are not allowed to quote any episode where spock says otherwise!
Netoru...firstly, very impressive site man...very niice...
I think decision-making depends on the situation. For e.g. if you wanted to decide what to eat for lunch, then using your past shity experience at McDonalds you perhaps wouldnt go there.
But then again some are subjective...like the decision to support the Warriors and knowing they'll win despite being on a 6 game losing streak...haha...
thanks for reading Merwin. You are right with the "choose stubbornly" approach to making decisions. You gotta support those warriors even when they were on a huge losing streak.
But would you support the NZ kings/knights/phoenix using that reasoning?
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