Topics Rationality

Question Decisions are (usually) based on information. It seems to me that flawed information would lead to a flawed decision. Yet people with incomplete or flawed information often succeed. How is this possible?

Accepted:
September 16, 2008

Comments

First, I believe that factors other than rational assessment of information help guide decisions and greatly affect the success of human decision-making. Sociologists and psychologists probably investigate this more than do philosophers, although an approach to critical thinking championed by the Canadian philosopher Douglas Walton sheds some light on this through its emphasis on discussing critical thinking in terms of human dialogue that needs to be understood with reference to concepts like the "emotional dynamics" of a situation where two or more people are working hard together to make an important decision and of a general "context of dialogue" that involves more than the processing of information.

Factors like those may explain why individuals with perfectly good information may fail to make a good decision if their emotional dynamics are horrible, as can occur when one of the interlocutors is belligerent or when the interlocutors misunderstand each other's expectations and needs. On the other hand, two individuals who respect each other and who share a common purpose can work together successfully even on issues about which they lack perfect understanding.

As the last example suggests, the second part of my answer is that successful decision-making rarely requires perfect information handled perfectly: relatively few decisions are "high stakes" in the sense that they will fail if the decision-makers are not perfect in those ways. Since much of our knowledge about the world is incomplete, fallible, or otherwise imperfect this is a good thing: if most of our decisions required perfection of the sort you describe, humans would fail to succeed as a species.

Question Decisions are (usually) based on information. It seems to me that flawed information would lead to a flawed decision. Yet people with incomplete or flawed information often succeed. How is this possible? Accepted:September 16, 2008

Question Decisions are (usually) based on information. It seems to me that flawed information would lead to a flawed decision. Yet people with incomplete or flawed information often succeed. How is this possible?

Accepted:
September 16, 2008