vii This book is a primer, a little compendium of ideas for thinking
about how decisions happen... They are presented in their starkest, least elaborate form, a first introduction to
decisions.
p.2 A rational procedure is one that pursues a logic of consequence. It
makes a choice conditional on the answers to four basic questions:
1. The question of alternatives: What actions are possible?
2. The question of expectations: What future consequences might follow from each
alternative? How likely is each possible consequence, assuming that alternative is chosen?
3. The question of preferences: How valuable (to the decision maker) are the consequences
associated with each of the alternatives?
4. The question of the decision rule: How is a choice to be made among the alternatives
in terms of the values of their consequences?"
p.3 Within rational processes, choice depends on what alternatives are considered and on two guesses
about the future: the first guess is a guess about future states of the world, conditional on the choice.
The second guess is a guess about how the decision maker will feel about that future world when it is experienced.
p.5 The most common and best-established elaboration of pure theories of rational choice is one that recognizes
the uncertainty surrounding future consequences of present action. Decision makers are assumed to choose among the
alternatives on the basis of their expected consequences, but those consequences are not known with certainty. Rather,
decision makers know the likelihoods of various possible outcomes, conditional on the actions taken.
p.10 Time and capabilities for attention are limited. Not everything can be attended to at once.
Too many signals are received. Too many things are relevant to a decision. Because of those limitations, theories
of decision making are often better described as theories of attention or search than as theories of choice. They
are concerned with the way in which scarce attention is allocated... Decision makers have limited capacities
for comprehension. They have difficulty organizing, summarizing, and using information to form inferences about the
causal connections of events and about relevant features of the world. They often have relevant information but fail to see
its relevance. They make unwarranted inferences from information available to them to form a coherent interpretation...As
decision makers struggle with these limitations, they develop procedures that maintain the basic framework of rational choice
but modify it to accommodate the difficulties. Those procedures form the core of theories of limited rationality.
p.15,16-17 Faced with a world more complicated than they can hope to understand, decision makers
develop ways of monitoring and comprehending that complexity. One standard approach is to deal with summary
numerical representations of reality, for example income statements and cost-of-living indexes. The numbers are intended
to represent phenomena in an organization or its environment: accounting profits, aptitude scores, occupancy rates, costs
of production. The phenomena themselves are elusive - real but difficult to characterize and measure... Decision makers and
professionals try to find the right answer, often in the face of substantial conceptual and technical difficulties. Numbers
presuppose a concept of what should be measured and a way of translating that concept into things that can be measured.
p.23 Not all alternatives are known, they must be sought; not all consequences
are known, they must be investigated; not all preferences are known, they must be explored and evoked. The allocation
of attention affects the information available and thus the decision.
p.23 The study of decision making is, in many ways, the
study of search and attention.
p.24 Decisions will be affected by the way decision makers attend (or fail to attend) to particular preferences,
alternatives, and consequences... Decisions happen the way they do, in large part, because of the way attention is
allocated, and "timing" and "mobilization" are important issues.
Decision makers appear to simplify the attention problem considerably.
p.78-79 Much modern thinking about decision making presumes that the expectations and willful actions of
human beings enact the future in the present. The presumption is reflected in theories of rational action and power, including
theories of strategic action... In these perspectives, change stems from imagining the future and imposing it on the
present. Visions of the future, or destinies, are confirmed by following courses of action necessary for their fulfillment.
p.141 The basic idea of decision making in the face of inconsistency is that different people want to have
different things or to fulfill different identities, and not everyone can have everything desired. As a result, individuals
(and groups) struggle, competing and cooperating with each other, trying to satisfy their individual preferences and identities.
Power is the capability to get what you want or fulfill your identity... The standard presumption
of decision making is the struggle for power and, through power, for desired outcomes. [JLJ - perhaps a power that
leads to influence, and then to control]
p.148-149 Exchange models of power address that problem [power weights cannot be independently
observed but must usually be estimated from their consequences] by focusing on a small number of factors that provide
a trading advantage in a system of voluntary exchange... The fundamental idea in an exchange model is that participants...
enter into voluntary exchange relationships regulated by some system of rules. Each participant brings resources into the
arena... The process of choice is one of arranging mutually acceptable trades within the rules.
Each individual seeks to improve his or her own position by trading with other individuals... Power
in an exchange model comes from control over resources desired by others... When decision makers have
something others want, they can exchange it for something that they want... the possession of desired resources gives
power. In order to be powerful, decision makers seek control over resources.
p.180 Rational action stems from two guesses about the world. One is a guess about the uncertain
future consequences of possible current action. The other is a guess about the uncertain future preferences by which the outcomes
of a current action will be evaluated in the future.
p.207 This book is built around two alternative visions of decision making: The first is a vision of rationality
in which actions stem from expectations of their consequences and preferences for those consequences. The second is a vision
of rule following in which actions stem from a matching of the demands of identities with a definition of the situation. Each
vision assumes that decision makers interpret their situations and their experiences, that they make sense of them in order
to make decisions. Rational actors - whether acting alone or in negotiation with other rational actors -
interpret their situations and experiences to predict future consequences of current actions and their future feelings
about such consequences. Rule-following actors - whether acting alone or in concert with other rule-following actors
- interpret their situations and experiences to identify appropriate identities and rules. They interpret history to develop
the rules they follow.
p.207 Uncertainties are reduced through the accumulation and retrieval of information.
Information systems are designed, and information is used to facilitate judgments about consequences or appropriateness. Meaning
is established in order to make decisions.
From such a perspective, decisions are important because they allocate resources
and produce measurable consequences for the decision maker. Information is meaningful if it resolves uncertainties
about preferences, consequences, situations, and identities.
p.222 Decision engineering is dedicated to producing decisions that are intelligent, but the definition
of intelligence is often left unclear. Students of decision making oscillate between process and outcome definitions of intelligence
and have never been able to resolve satisfactorily some difficult issues associated with key tradeoffs underlying the definition
of good outcomes.
p.227 Decision outcomes unfold over time. The short run is nested in the long run. Many
actions that contribute to short-run well-being are deleterious in the long run, and vice versa. Moreover, preferences
and identities change over time, partly as a result of taking actions. Are outcomes to be evaluated in terms of preferences
and identities that existed at the time of the decision or in terms of those that exist at the time at which the effects of
the decision are realized?
The complications of weighting consequences that are distributed across time constitute
a prime topic in both the psychology and the economics of choice.
p.232 Making an assessment of decision intelligence involves a judgment with respect to distant
consequences of actions taken here and now.
p.240 Decision processes presume the exploitation of knowledge. For example, rationality
involves anticipating the future consequences of present actions, as well as future preferences for those consequences
when they occur. The ability to use knowledge to anticipate consequences and establish preferences for them is essential.
p.252 Adaptive decision making is predicated upon skill at understanding the environment and responding
to it. Many adaptive strategies involve monitoring the environment, understanding its causal structure, storing inferences
drawn from that understanding, and retrieving the implications of those inferences at the appropriate times and places.
