People and Nature by Moran Emilio F

Author:Moran, Emilio F.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118877418
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published: 2016-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

The human informational system probably works at various levels, depending on the level of difficulty in making choices. Decisions can be made in a climate of certainty, uncertainty, or risk. Certainty exists when one can predict what will happen in the period relevant to the decision. Uncertainty describes a situation wherein one cannot specify the probability of outcomes. Risk refers to situations where one can specify the probability distribution of several possible outcomes (Levin and Kirkpatrick 1975: 106).

Under conditions of certainty about a situation (e.g., at breakfast I have a choice between cereal or eggs, with coffee in either case), a set of simple rules or pathways may be followed in arriving at a decision between cereal and eggs (e.g., which one we had yesterday, whether one will have lunch today, one’s cholesterol level). As certainty decreases and there is a greater possibility of inappropriate or maladaptive choices, increasingly complex logic and structure must be used to help sift the information and allow for decision making under conditions of risk and uncertainty. Solutions may be elicited from the use of simulation, probability, and “judgment heuristics” (i.e., non‐probabilistic methods that make use of consensus between knowledgeable people). Effective research tools for dealing with conditions of risk have not achieved the sophistication of those dealing with uncertainty (but progress is taking place in the study of risk, e.g., Bedford 2013; NRC 1994, 1996; Platt and Huettel 2008; Wätzold 2000). Both areas offer fertile ground for new contributions given the paucity of analytical tools available and the importance of this aspect of human systems (Levin and Kirkpatrick 1975: 529–530). A decade of research on natural hazards yielded important results on why people seem to prefer risk to uncertainty (White 1974). Whereas risk involves an assessment of probabilities, uncertainty tends to immobilize people, as they have no idea of how to assess what might be the consequences of a given course of action.

Methods developed in microeconomics and in the field of management and decision theory can be usefully applied to the problem of choosing among courses of action. If one has too many choices, one may be immobilized by indecision. Thus, one of the typical responses of information flow systems is to develop rules to simplify the number of options considered. Over time, social scientists have presented a variety of theories that seek to give primacy to one factor or another. Perhaps dominant for many years has been the assumption behind the behavior of Economic Man (Nitsch 1982 (i.e., maximization of expected utility). Behavior has been simplified so that economists can focus on those aspects of behavior that are aimed at advancing the interests of nations (political economy), business (Adam Smith’s invisible hand), households (moral economy), and so forth. However, some scholars have attacked those assumptions. The key assumption that the decision maker’s objective is maximization of expected utility is useful for analysis, but does not represent the actual behavior of people. As Nitsch (1982) points out, it is not surprising that the notion

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