INST 354 Lecture 7: INST354 Lecture 7: Quality of Choice
Document Summary
If we aspire to give advice about how to make good decisions, we need to say something about what we mean by bad decisions. The quality of a decision cannot be determined unambiguously by its outcome. Moreover, we would regard the person who accepted such a wager as a poor decision maker even if he or she happened to roll snake eyes. A general who is losing a war, for example, is much wiser to engage in a high-risk military venture than is a general who is winning a war. The failure of such a venture might not reflect unfavorably on the decision-making ability of the losing general; it is more rational for the losing general to take a risk. Often the term is used in a purely egocentric, evaluative sense: As we said at the outset, good decisions are those that choose means, available in the circumstances, to achieve the decision maker"s goals.