Decisions

Theory 3
5/9/94
DECISION THEORY

Nice 'n' short, this one:-
There is no such thing as a bad decision.

What this implies
Gasp!. Horror!. Shock!. No such thing as a bad decision - full stop ?!
Well, OK, in some cases ( in simulated areas ) you can point out a bad decision, but in life, real-time, you can't. This is simply because you can't go back in time and make a different decision to see if this decision would have been a better one. Also, recreating the situation in order to do this is close to impossible remembering the fact that one minor detail could lead to a whole set of new possiblities (sommet to do with chaos theory).

An example of what I mean
This theory was stated when on a day trip to Minehead, a lovely little town in north Devon, my Dad almost collided with an on-coming truck. We escaped, but the right-hand-side wing mirror was smashed off - yes it was that close!
Anyway, I thought back to when we were on the M5, and had a choice of exits north or south of Taunton. Could it be my fault that I chose the south exit? Was this a bad decision?
Well aparently so, but who knows what would have happened if we left on the north exit, for all I know different factors may have lead us to collide head on with the truck and have a major accident, for all I know that may have been a good decision.
No-one will ever know which exit was the better choice and no-one can say whether I made a good decision or not.

Š1997 Stephen Battey
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