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The broad sweep of knowledge needed for decision making is brought to bear through various systems of coordination of the scattered fragmentary information possessed by individuals and organizations. This very general sketch of the principles, mechanisms, and pitfalls involved is a prelude to a fuller consideration of the use of knowledge in decision-making processes in the economic, legal, and political spheres, each having its own authentication processes and its own feedback mechanisms to modify decisions already made. Much discussion of the pros and cons of various "issues" overlooks the crucial fact that the most basic decision is who makes the decision, under what constraints, and subject to what feedback mechanisms. This is fundamentally different from the approach which seeks better decisions by replacing "the bad guys" with "the good guys"-that is, by relying on differential rectitude and differential ingenuity rather than on a structure of incentives geared to the normal range of human propensities. #52 | | |
The discussion thus far has emphasized premeditatedly-formed and hierarchically-structured decision-making units. These are not the only, nor necessarily the best, decision-making units, nor even the most pervasive kind of decision-making units at a given time and place. Some alternative decisionmaking units and processes include (1) trial by combat, which is seldom sanctioned today for individual decision making, but is still the ultimate decisionmaking mechanism between sovereign nations, (2) various arrangements spontaneously evolved by the participants, such as competitive bidding in economic markets or mutual benevolence in groups bound together by religious, artistic, tribal, or other affinities, and (3) premeditated arrangements in which those subordinated to the power of others in one sense are, in another sense, the ultimate arbiters of the fate of their hierarchical superiorsas with democratically elected governments, or with governments operating in the shadows of their own military forces which are both willing and able to depose them. None of these decision-making processes are mutually exclusive. A typical American, for example, lives in a family unit whose internal decisions are based on personal feelings, works in a hierarchically-structured organization whose use of inputs and volume of output are determined in a spontaneously evolved market, is subject to laws established by a government whose members are chosen and removable by the electorate and which conducts its relations with other governments in an atmosphere dominated by their respective capacities for armed combat or mutual annihilation. #53 | | |
The interaction of various decision-making processes makes it all the more necessary to understand the respective principles of the different individual processes. The continual evolution of decision-making units and decisionmaking processes likewise makes it all the more necessary to understand the effects of different kinds of processes, so as to know where we are headed if current trends continue. #54 | | |
just as decision-making units and processes vary enormously, so too do the various kinds of decisions. For example, some decisions are binary decisions-yes or no, war or peace, guilty or innocent-while other decisions are continuously variable incremental decisions: using more or less gasoline, paying higher or lower wages, living a more relaxed or more hectic life. Some decisions are once-and-for-all decisions-suicide, loss of virginity, burning a Rembrandt painting-while others are readily reversible decisions: turning off a television program that is not interesting, cancelling a subscription, ceasing to purchase a given brand of consumer goods or ceasing to use certain cliches, etc. Decisions may also be made individually or as "package deals." One can buy onions, bread, and canned goods in the same store or in different stores, but in choosing between political candidates, one must choose one candidate's whole package-his fiscal policy, environmental position, foreign policy, civil liberties views, etc.-as against the whole package of his opponent's positions on the same subjects. #55 | | |
The kind of decision is not tied to the particular subject matter (i.e., shoes, food, or education) so much as to the particular decision-making process: economic processes, legal processes, political processes, etc. What this means is that as certain kinds of decisions are moved from one kind of decisionmaking unit to another, it is not merely a case of a different group of people or processes making the decision; the nature of the decision itself can change. That is, what was once a continuously variable decision may become a binary decision. Prior to public schooling and compulsory attendance laws, for example, the decision a family made was how much schooling to purchase for their children; afterwards, the only decision was whether or not to obey the compulsory attendance laws. Before it became a federal crime to carry a letter in competition with the post office, the individual letter-writer could choose among various possible carriers, but afterwards the only decision was whether to communicate in the form of a letter or in some other form. #56 | | |
Decisions also differ with respect to whether they are instantaneous or sequential. An instantaneous decision occurs completely at a given point in time, even if a long period of consideration preceded it, while a sequential decision occurs at various points in time as reactions to previous parts of the decision entail additional adjustments, improvisations, or reinforcements. The basic difference between them is that one decision is made completely on one occasion, while the other decision occurs piecemeal over a period of time. With sequential decision making, all the knowledge which is finally available to the decision maker is not initially available when the sequence of decisions begins, and the course of action followed may be wholly different from what it would have been if all the knowledge had been available at the outset, or if any decision could have been postponed until after all the facts were in. #57 | | |
Many early supporters of the Vietnam war came ultimately to the position that it was not worth the cost, after the full cost had been revealed by time, and that early official estimates of prospective casualties and prospective outcomes were either grossly mistaken or deliberately misleading. Another contemporary example of sequential decision making in a very different area is the progression from the Supreme Court's Brown decision in 1954 that the state cannot classify students by race for differential treatment to its controversial "busing" position in which that is what it requires states to do. Years of opposition to desegregation of the public schools led to progressively tighter judicial control, designed to overcome the various strategies of opposition, delay, and evasion-ultimately arriving at a point the opposite of the court's original premise or intention. In an earlier era, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain conducted a foreign policy designed to avoid war with Hitler through relatively small concessions, but the ultimate result of an unanticipated series of crises and concessions was to so shift the balance of power in Hitler's favor as to make war inevitable. #58 | | |
None of these sequential decisions was the result of a "society" that was stupid in the light of information now available in retrospect, but rather of piecemeal decisions which acquired a momentum of their own, and of the individual decision makers who were unequal to the unfolding complexities inherent in sequential decision making. Praise or blame is not the point. What is important is to understand (1) when a situation facing us is part of a sequential decision making process, and what that implies, and (2) to understand when our own institutions set up sequential decision-making processes when there is an alternative decision-making process available. For example, Chapter 9 will analyze the criminal justice system as a series of sequential decisions presented to the young criminal in such a way as to lead more people to persist in a life of crime than would do so if all the knowledge of prospects and penalties were made fully available to them at the outset. #59 | | |
In addition to considering decision-making processes, we need to consider decision-making costs. These costs are not simply the salaries of decisionmaking officials during the time when they are pondering what to do. Clearly the cost of evaluating intelligence reports on Japanese intentions to bomb Pearl Harbor was not simply the pay of the military functionaries who handled these reports. The cost of those processes included one of the largest military catastrophes in American history, and the loss of life and material not only at Pearl Harbor but in a series of major military defeats in the months that followed, in the wake of the crippling and near-annihilation of the American Pacific Fleet on December 7, 1941. The point here is not to condemn, or even to evaluate, the decision-making process as it existed in the military at that time. The point here is to emphasize that the cost of any decision-making process must be assessed in terms of the full consequences entailed by alternative decision-making processes. Such processes cannot be judged by narrowly conceived economic or financial criteria. As we shall see in Chapter 3, even economic decision making cannot be evaluated narrowly in money terms alone. #60 | | |
The chapters that follow will consider the use of knowledge in economic, legal, and political institutions, the nature of the intellectual process and the role of intellectuals as a social class in influencing trends in modern society. Some disturbing implications of those trends will then be weighed. #61 | | |
