06-02-2009, 09:51 AM | #1 |
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: 東京都
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Good Decisions
Scenario 1. Jerome, 43, decides to take his usual shortcut through the park to get to work. He arrives a couple of minutes early as a result.
Scenario 2. Jerome decides to take his usual shortcut but he is mugged and subsequently shot by a desperate stranger. He dies at the scene. Often, you hear someone say something like "Boy! Sure was a good thing I did that! " or "If only I'd never done that ... " about events the outcomes of which either favored or didn't favor them. My question to you is, is the goodness of an action decided by its outcome? or is it the nature of the action itself which determines its goodness? "The ends justify the means" -- an all-too-familiar saying -- is one possible take on what I'm trying to ask you. But I don't want this to derail into a debate about unethical actions used to secure ethical end-results. Rather, this is a much more general debate. To give you some free examples, and then you're on your own:
When I come home later today, I'll be sure to offer more of my own viewpoint, but for now I'll say that I think people would do good to remember that you can pat yourself on the back for smart actions that pay off smartly, but patting yourself on the back for stupid actions that pay off smartly or for neither stupid nor smart actions that pay off smartly is foolish. Pride should be in taking a smart action which results in a smart outcome, and not in dumb actions which result in smart outcomes. Vice versa, regret is appropriate for dumb actions which lead to dumb outcomes, but you should really not beat yourself up over it too much if you do the right thing and things still don't work out.
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06-02-2009, 10:06 AM | #2 | |
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IMO, the thing you usually want to go after is chance of good thing happening/risk of bad thing happening.
For example, the student who didn't study could very well also gotten an F. Risky. Bad. The father without risk had a very small chance of dying (unless it was like FORMULA 1 WORD CUP on his yard that day) so I can't say that is unwise. Rather unlucky.
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06-02-2009, 12:29 PM | #3 | |
Archbishop of Banterbury
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I think an actions wiseness/goodness or w/e you want to call it is determined by what the outcome could reasonably be assumed to be before the action was undertaken. Specifically for the examples you gave:
1. Your action was not unwise, unless you saw the someone else attempt and fail to get a drink before you. Unless you had evidence to suggest otherwise, it was reasonable to assume that the outcome would be what you wanted, and therefore your action was wise. 2. You didn't err in judgement in buying that game. With the overwhelming support for it coming from your friends (who I assume you trust) and other sources, it was reasonable to assume you'd have enjoyed it. I had the same thing with Fable 2, by the way. 3. The student is incorrect. As he randomly filled out the bubbles, unless that is one seriously weirdly set up test then an A+ was not a likely outcome, and he couldn't reasonably expect to get one. 4. This is an interesting one. It reminds me a bit of the lottery ticket problem; whilst it's reasonable to assume that no specific lottery ticket will win (say, ticket number 489) , it's not reasonable to assume that no lottery ticket will win. Replace "lottery ticket" with "person driving" and "winning" with "crashing and dying". I still say his action was wise, despite the outcome, because just as it's reasonable to assume that no specific lottery ticket will win, it's reasonable to assume that he wouldn't crash and die. *waits patiently for health and safety people to yell at me* 5. The doctor wasn't guilty of malpractice. Based on past evidence, it was reasonable to assume that the operation gave him a higher chance of living than not having it. And as your hypothetical includes the line "despite his best efforts", I think we can safely say he tried his best to not kill him.
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06-03-2009, 06:16 PM | #4 |
The Path of Now & Forever
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Everything is a good decision or bad decision.
SCENARIO 1: It's a good thing you never died in your first 23 years of life! SCENARIO 2: I wish you never died at 22. There's a million different ways something can turn out. You could sit at home in your living room and a plane could fall from the sky and crush you. Or you could go outside and enjoy a bike ride and instead get run over by a car. Or you could live in a bomb shelter with a tin foil hat fearing an alien abduction only to realize your airtight seal on the doors has caused you to die of asphyxiation. |
06-04-2009, 10:49 PM | #5 | ||||||
我が名は勇者王!
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Say, a guy decides to go to a store and has to cross a railroad to do it. What luck, a train is coming and his shoe gets caught in the rail. However, he avoids death because his old worn shoe falls apart as he tries to pull away from the rail. Was this a good decision? It depends on Guy A's potential costs, benefits and information available. Was the benefit of going to the store by crossing the rail road greater than the costs of potentially losing his life? Let's say Guy A heard on the TV there was railroad activity that particular day. Guy A didn't even consider the possibility of getting hit by a train, so by ignoring that bit of information he made a bad decision. Applying this logic to the other examples - Quote:
The chance of a malfunction is incredibly small, and the immediate satisfaction from the soda was greater than opportunity cost of what that coin could also buy to you. Even if you didn't consider the possibility of a malfunction, it was still optimal to put the coin in the machine. However, this becomes a far more risky situation if the can failed to appear for the person preceding you. Without adjustments to information (why did it fail? Perhaps the machine is out of just that soda? Or perhaps it's a delivery problem) the % chance of a malfunction gets up. At this point, it's up to the consumer to determine if the gained surplus exceeds the cost of the coin. That's dependent on other factors like income, thirst, convenience, etc. Quote:
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Unless he went in a car. I'd call that a bad decision because gas spent, plus lost time, plus milk price is going to be a greater cost than the benefit that milk brings to the family. Then it would be a bad decision. Quote:
Details are needed to determine if it was malpractice.
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06-04-2009, 11:35 PM | #6 |
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>A patient has an aneurysm of their abdominal aorta. Left untreated, conventional medical wisdom tells us that the patient has a high chance of dying in the next two weeks. The patient is informed of this by his physician, who also tells him that the surgical procedure to correct this, while fairly simple, is also very heavy as it involves clamping the aorta on both ends whilst removing the aneurysm in between the clamps and the suturing the aorta back together. This can cause ileus or other complications, killing the patient, and occurs in 1 in 10 cases. Assume 10% is considered to be significantly smaller than the risks of keeping the aneurysm, both by the doctor and by the patient alike. The patient goes under the knife and, what do you know, he fits the 1-in-10 statistic: despite the doctor's competence and best efforts, the patient dies on the operating table. Is the doctor guilty of malpractice? In other words, if a patient dies, does that automatically render the action(s) to save his life negligent?
I just want to point out that given the fact that the patient is almost certain to die going untreated, as opposed to the 10% chance of dying during surgery. It's almost a no-brainer, the only argument I can think of is that if the patient did die during surgery, he would've had at least 2 weeks more to live. |
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