Harold Lewis

"Much of the uncertainty in individual decision making comes from not knowing what we really want to achieve through the decision, and from our tendency to exaggerate both potential losses and potential gains. People buy lottery tickets and play the slot machines at casinos, despite the fact that the casino owners and the lottery managers aren’t in business to give away money.…Hopeful gamblers (and the writers of lottery advertising) are fond of pointing out that, after all, someone does win. That’s exaggeration of potential gain, because it doesn’t mean that you have a realistic chance of winning. On the other side of the coin, exaggerated fear of harmful effects keeps some parents from immunizing their children against disease, leads them to throw away their electric blankets, and makes them demand that schools root out harmless asbestos in the walls, which would usually have been better left alone. We are terrified of trivial risks, and spend billions in futile efforts to control them. That’s exaggeration in the other direction. Both expectations of gain and fears of loss are far too often overblown, to the detriment of balanced decision making."

"The better is the worst enemy of the plenty good enough."

"So the road to a decision involves five steps, each simple enough: list of the actions you can take (a decision is just a choice among possible actions, including the action of taking no action at all); list the reasonably conceivable consequences of each of the various actions, as best you can guess them; assess, as best you can, the chance (or odds, or probability) that any particular consequence will follow from any particular action (this is an issue we need to get into—the one most people gloss over); find a way to express your objectives, how much you wish for (or dread) the various possible consequences; and finally put it all together in such a way that it can lead to a rational decision."

"People seem to flinch at the word probability—it has too many syllables. Besides, it sounds mathematical, and it’s become politically correct in our country to be proud of not knowing any mathematics. (We’re already paying the price for that.)"

"Someone once said that he had made many mistakes in life, but never because he knew too much."

"There may be people who know more than you, and can therefore do a better job of predicting the odds. If you can find one to help you out, do so. But steer clear of phoney prophets, like astrologers, palmists, and readers of crystal balls. (We may have lost some readers on that sentence. Polls continue to show that an appalling and disturbing fraction of Americans still believe in that baloney.)"

"The laws of probability are mighty powerful, and they never sleep. If this were more widely understood there’d be a lot less crowing about good luck, and a lot less guilt about bad luck. And we’d have a more civilized world. Some things really do happen by chance, and there is little we can do to change that."

"The fact that self-interest can work against the common good is far-reaching, and no general solution is known."

"Despite the babbling of the creationists, evolution is inevitable in a competitive world, and it does work."

"It is always a good strategy for two players to join forces (or conspire) against the third, and to settle their own differences when he has been done in. With suitable variations, that lesson applies to games with more and more players, to say nothing, alas, of life."

"In our modern societies, in the United States and elsewhere, there are simply too many ways to stop things, and too few to keep them going. As recently as forty years ago, in this author’s direct memory, that wasn’t true. (If the Interstate Highway System were to be proposed now, it wouldn’t stand a chance.)"

"Decision making by large groups can never lead to venturesome decisions."

"Those who proclaim so loudly and self-righteously that diversity strengthens a society will have trouble finding historical support for the view."

"Proportional representation makes it harder to trample a minority, but correspondingly harder to effectuate the desires of the majority. Take your choice. It comes down, as usual, to the ends you seek."

"Money is a society’s effort to reduce everything to a common measure, and get us away from trading clamshells for pottery."

"It doesn’t matter what the winners do when elected—the promise gets them the job, memories are short, and incumbency leads to tenure."

"The real point is that unless we improve the attractiveness of distant gratification, it doesn’t stand a chance of competing with instant gratification."

"More often than we would like, those who are governed have a little say about how they are governed, and decision-making authority with any group is simply seized by a subset of individuals, or a political party, or an army, with a little underlying rationale beyond a lust for power. (That lust is deeply ingrained in the human race, has a long history, and will not be magically erased by sermonizing.)"

"Humans are not as different from other animals as we sometimes wish."

"On a global level, there is no threat to human survival greater than that posed by world overpopulation—paradoxical though that may seem—and it is abundantly clear that consensus decision making is ineffective for dealing with that. Some kind of “solution” is nonetheless unavoidable, and is certain to be ugly. To say that there is no visible world leadership on that transcendental question is to understate the case. Optimists on the population problem don’t measure progress in terms of a decrease in population, or even a decrease in the rate of increase, but in terms of a decrease in the rate of increase of the rate of increase."

"As far back as the earliest biblical times, the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applied to thy friends and neighbors—all bets were off when dealing with tribal enemies. Especially when they had other religious predilections."

"The common good is always in conflict with concern for individuals, and it doesn’t help rational decision making to pretend otherwise. Besides, the common good and the common want may themselves have little to do with each other."

"The thrust of education has turned against achievement, and toward preserving the self-esteem of non-achievers."

"Voting is no way to answer technical questions, though it may give pleasure to the voters. This author, a physicist, would hate to see the validity of the theory of relativity put to a vote. If that sounds elitist, it should. It is an unpopular but sound principle that you ought to know something about a subject before you earn the right to express an opinion about it. The schools now teach the opposite—but your view is as “valid” as anyone else’s, no matter how little you know. That not only encourages self-esteem, it rewards sloth."

"In summary, the common good as a standard for decision making sounds virtuous, but it is not simple, not easily implementable, and certainly not universally applicable."

"No one knows how to make the government directly responsible to the taxpayers, while still using taxes for the common good even when the taxpayers may not be quite on board. The conundrum frustrates virtually all modern democratic governments. The dilemma is far worse in an era of mass communication, in which the complexity of many of the problems simply exceeds the taxpayers’ individual capabilities (to say nothing of the legislators’) to make informed judgments, and the media of communication reduce all subjects to caricatures and sound bites. Informed choice then becomes a pipe dream. (Perhaps it is heresy to say that, but honesty requires that it be said.)"

"The basic ailment afflicts more than the use of taxes; it affects all matters in which the unaffected or uninformed are the decision makers for all of us."

"And, of course, our federal budget is well over a trillion dollars a year, and we have no requirement that any member of Congress (or the president, for that matter) have any experience in or knowledge about financial management. Or indeed anything at all. Nor do the few candidates who flaunt their economic expertise find it an effective selling point."

"The political process, as we see it in the United States, is intolerant of uncertainty, and thereby forces politicians (and some experts) to lie, simply to be heard. The advantage goes to the official or politician who is sure of himself, even when wrong. When we reward dishonesty, we all pay the price. If not now, later."

"This author is a supporter of at least minimal literacy requirements for voting—having illiterate people vote may seem perfect democracy, but it leads to bad decisions—and he has been called many unflattering names as a result. But unless we bring some skills to the public decision-making process we will make terrible and costly mistakes. It is not a simple world we live in, and our survival as a nation or society is not guaranteed by any natural law."

"The Constitution still leaves apportionment to the politicians most affected by it, in clear conflict with common sense, and congressional salaries are still left in the hands of the beneficiaries, again in clear conflict with common sense. Two hundred years, and no progress."

"All of this is well known to military operations analysts, mostly civilians, but is resisted by far too many high-ranking officers. It sounds sort of, well, mathematical, and that’s not macho."

"Although anything can happen, it usually won’t."

"It is a fallacy of human perception to see patterns that aren’t there, and to see order where there is none."

"It turns out that you can’t do better than a chance in ten of multiplying your bankroll by a factor of ten, even with the very best strategy. That’s a general rule for fair (or almost fair) games: the probability of achieving your objective before going broke is exactly the inverse of the amount by which you want to increase your fortune."

"No one should be embarrassed at having to look things up in a book—it’s a great habit to develop."

"This is a general feature of all such sports. Though all managers and professionals speak wisely of streaks, and of batting slumps, and hot hands in basketball, the evidence is routinely consistent with the view that there are no such things, and that observers are notoriously bad in judging whether something is random or has a systematic pattern."

"It is fashionable in modern America to sneer at mathematics, nowhere more so than in sports."

"Baseball, the most statistics-afflicted sport there is, is fair game for amateur decision-making buffs to second-guess, and it is truly amazing (at least to this author) how many of the hallowed traditions don’t stand up to reasonable scrutiny."

"People who claim there is no such thing as native intelligence are nuts."

"The practice of law must once have been different—though George Washington was president of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, more than half the attendees were lawyers. Yet the Constitution is both readable and a marvelous achievement in balancing conflicting interests, while still producing a blueprint for a functioning government. If the government seems dysfunctional now, it is our fault, not theirs."

"It is said that nature abhors a vacuum (a saying that has always struck this author as unusually dumb—since the vast majority of the natural universe is in fact a splendid vacuum, nature must in fact love a vacuum), but any perceived voids in the law books do tend to get filled in due course."

"Philosophy is the misuse of a terminology which was invented for just this purpose."

"Our decision rules determine which way we tilt, but we should not comfort ourselves with the fantasy that both unwanted outcomes can be avoided—in the face of genuine uncertainty, that’s just not possible. If you want to acquit all the innocent, you will also acquit some of the guilty. If you want to convict all the guilty, you will convict some who are innocent. You can’t have it both ways."

"This author freely admits to the shame of being a professor, and even to the worse shame of having a Ph.D.—the price of youthful indiscretion—so he is instantly rejected for jury service when the facts are made known to the lawyers in the case. If not by one side, then surely by the other—it depends on which one has the weaker case, and therefore places more value on confusing the jury."

"Honorable lawyers will tell you that it is the function of a lawyer to help the jury or the court to follow the truth, wherever it may lead, but lawyers with that as their prime objective will soon have few clients. Most lawyers will tell you that their real obligation is to present the best possible case for the clients who are paying them—quite a different goal."

"There is still a Flat Earth Society, so imagine the existence of a Bibipent Society, devoted to the notion that 2 + 2 = 5. Such a society might well have filed suit to stop the schools from teaching 2 + 2 = 4 as if it were a fact, and require them to present it as “only theory,” with 2 + 2 = 5 as an alternative possibility, deserving equal time. They would doubtless say that the purpose of a school is to educate, not to indoctrinate. (Does all this sound familiar? That’s the way it is with creationism and evolution.)"

"Where it really matters to us, as in choosing a surgeon to remove an inflamed appendix, we tend to forsake democracy for expertise. But not in jury trials."

"Rational decisions are impossible unless you make clear at the outset just what it is that you want to accomplish, and what you want to avoid."