Radical Uncertainty by Mervyn King & John Kay

Radical Uncertainty by Mervyn King & John Kay

Author:Mervyn King & John Kay [King, Mervyn & Kay, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408712580
Google: YiScDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2020-03-05T00:00:00+00:00


Communicative rationality

Had Klein discovered the reasons for the officer’s decision? That seems at first sight to be an important question, and yet it’s hard to know what it means. Or why it matters. When we touch a hot stove, we pull our hand away. Do we do so because it hurts, or because we will suffer tissue damage if we leave our hand there? The decision to down the Silkworm missile was good. In the heat of battle, the decision to fire, or not to fire, had to be made immediately. If there had been time for the officer to discuss the matter with his colleagues he would have been required to explain why he thought the object was a missile. His explanation might have been challenged, and the group might have reached agreement, or referred their continued disagreement to the ship’s captain. The experts who assessed the Getty kouros did have such an opportunity to exchange views with each other, and arrive at a consensus, both as to their views and the reasons for their views. In the case of HMS Gloucester , this consultation took place only hypothetically, and long after the event, and ‘resulting’ allows us to congratulate the officer on his judgement. Rightly or wrongly. The process of reasoning is not the same as the process of decision-making.

The element of truth in Kahneman’s ‘system one/system two’ distinction, which we described in chapter 9 , is that there is a difference between the process by which we make decisions and the ways in which we describe these decisions to other people. We need such descriptions to justify our actions – to respond to the excited questions of sports interviewers after the match, to explain our actions to the captain of HMS Gloucester , to advise the Getty curators. We need such descriptions in the process of soliciting the views of other people and, if appropriate, modifying our own views in response. We need explanations of our actions to persuade others to cooperate with us in implementing the choices we have made. Most decisions, and virtually all important decisions, are made in a social context; we engage family and friends in our household decisions and work colleagues in our business decisions. Economic life is a cooperative process, and such communication is an essential part of human action. Different people will make different judgements faced with the same information because, given radical uncertainty, many different interpretations of the same data are possible. Good decision-making involves communication and exchange of views with others. Even if the final decision is the responsibility of one person, as it was in the White House, that individual will normally benefit from a wider discussion.

Coherence and credibility – the standards by which we judge all narratives – are the criteria by which we judge the quality of communication of the reasons for decisions. And in modern western culture we apply the test of rationality – consistency with logic and reason – to such communication. The



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