The problems of decision-making

Question 1

Influence on decisions

Answer 1

Decisions are influenced by:
→ Natural condition
→ Social condition

Question 2

Decision-making
Kahneman

Answer 2

→ Human not perfectly rational agent
→ Illusion of certitude

Two systems of thinking
1) S1
→ Active and reactive
→ Automatic (not voluntary)
→ Monitors of environment (Survival)

2) S2
→ Slow (Rational thinking)
→ Analyze activities of S1
→ elaborating and interpreting data and formulating choices to solve problem

→ Bias

Question 3

Decision-making
Kahneman
→ Bias

Answer 3

Cognitive distortion

• Propension to certitude in an uncertain world
  → Heisenberg (Uncertainty principles)
  → Lorenz (Chaos theory)
• Origins of bias:
  → Evolutive (S1)
  → Biological (S2 is slow and difficult)
  → Physiological (mind prefer S1)
  → Context (WYSIATI) → excessive confidence

Question 4

Decision-making
Kahneman
→ Bias
WYSIATI

Answer 4

What you see is all there is

• creates biases in judgement and decision making

→ Belief bias
plausability of its conclusion

→ Confirmation bias
support argument what we think is true

→ Halo effect
to infer a feature from another (how someone is dressed)

Question 5

Decision-making
Bioethics

Answer 5

Scientific knowledge + Ethical values

Bioethics (Van Rasselaer Potter)

• Well intentioned may have catastrophic effect
• Focused in three areas
  → Experiments on humans (eugenetics)
  → Social usage of medicine
  → High-end technologies in medical clinical practice

Question 6

Decision-making
Bioethics
→ Arguments against the intrusion of ethical analysis in the scientific realm

Answer 6

→ Science is neutral
Impossible because
- moral environments (scientific are human)
- limits of objectivity (represantion of reality)

→ Freedom of research
an advancement in science
raises
an advancement in ethics

Question 7

Decision-making
Bioethics

→ Principles of bioethics

Answer 7

(Beauchamp & Childress)

→ Beneficence
→ Non-maleficence
→ Autonomy
→ Justice
→ Explicability (from machine)