Abstract
Some people make good decisions intuitively; they somehow feel, somehow know, and what is right to do. They use no conscious analysis, but at some hidden level of intellect, future scenarios are painted, alternatives are generated, considered, played out against the scenarios, and are accepted or rejected. For those talented in the art, the decisions may prove insightful and marvelous; those that are not mutter about hasty conclusions and ill-conceived actions. Is the ability to make good decisions an innate skill that can be improved with training and practice? Perhaps.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Not to be confused with Superforecasters, a term coined by Philip Tetlock to describe people who make more accurate forecasts than average people.
- 2.
In the 1930s in his parapsychology lab at Duke, Dr. Joseph Rhine used decks of cards, each card with one of five symbols on it’s face. These were known as Zener decks and graduate students were asked to identify the next card to be turned up, either as a test of precognition or telepathy. Hubert Pearce, one of the students once made 25 consecutive correct guesses, a full run of the Zener deck. See: Mcrobbie (2016).
- 3.
From an Unfinished Essay by T. Gordon and Rushworth Kidder Titled “Our Moral Future.” Kidder Was the Leader of the Institute for Global Ethics; He Died in 2012 at Age 67.
References
Bayer, Dave, and Persi Diaconis. 1992. Trailing the Dovetail Shuffle to Its Lair. Annals of Applied Probability 2 (2): 294–313. https://doi.org/10.1214/aoap/1177005705. https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aoap/1177005705. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
Biello, David. 2007. Back to the Future: How the Brain “Sees” the Future. Scientific American, January 2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/back-to-the-future-how-th/. Retrieved February 20, 2018.
Calvin, William, and George A. Ojemann. 1994. Conversations With Neil’s Brain: The Neural Nature for That Language. Perseus Books. http://www.williamcalvin.com/bk7/bk7ch16.htm. Retrieved January 5, 2018.
Damasio, Antonio. 1994. Descartes’s Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam, revised penguin addition 2005.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. 1890. Sign of the Four, Chapter 1, p. 92. From https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes.
Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking Fast and Slow, Paperback edition. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Mcrobbie, Linda. 2016. How One Man Used a Deck of Cards to Make Parapsychology a Science. Atlas Obscura, December 27. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-one-man-used-a-deck-of-cards-to-make-parapsychology-a-science. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
Nicholson, Nigel. 1998. How Hardwired Is Human Behavior? Harvard Business Review, July–August 1998. https://hbr.org/1998/07/how-hardwired-is-human-behavior. Retrieved February 20, 2018.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gordon, T.J., Todorova, M. (2019). Decision Making: The Talent for Decisions. In: Future Studies and Counterfactual Analysis . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18437-7_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18437-7_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-18436-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-18437-7
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)