#decision intelligence

[conceptsnest]

EXPLORING SITUATIONAL ETHICS AND BEHAVIOR DYNAMICS: THE SENSITIVITIES OF MORAL COMPASS – CHAPTER -02

***Continued from Chapter 01 (Covered previously: What is Situational Ethics, The Meaning & Context of Agape, The Three Views Of Situational Ethics)

Link to Chapter 01:

The Four Working Principles of Situationism

Principle 1. Pragmatism

The situationalist follows a strategy, which is pragmatic. “Pragmatism” is a well worked-out philosophical position adopted by the likes of John Dewey (1859–1952), Charles Peirce (1839–1914) and William James (1842–1910). Fletcher does not want his theory associated with these views and rejects all the implications of this type of “Pragmatism”.

What makes his view pragmatic is very simple. It is just his attraction to moral views, which do not try to work out what to do in the abstract, but rather explores how moral views might play out in each real life situations.

Principle 2: Relativism

Even with his rejection of Antinomianism and his acceptance of one supreme principle of morality, Fletcher, surprisingly, still calls himself a relativist. It is just an appeal for people to stop trying to “lay down the law” for all people in all contexts. If situations vary then consequences vary and what we ought to do will change accordingly. This is a very simple, unsophisticated idea and just means that what is right or wrong is related to the situation we are in.

Principle 3: Positivism

His use of “positivism” is not the philosophical idea with the same name but rather is where any moral or value judgment in ethics, like a theologian’s faith propositions, is a decision — not a conclusion.It is a choice, not a result reached by force of logic or reasoning, rather it is a decision we take.

Principle 4: Personalism

Love is something that is experienced by people. So Personalism is the view that if we are to maximize love we need to consider the person in a situation — the “who” of a situation.

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Conscience as a Verb not a Noun

“Conscience” plays a role in working out what to do. Conscience is not the name of an internal faculty nor is it a sort of internal “moral compass”.

Fletcher refers to conscience as a verb. Imagine we have heard some bullies laughing because they have sent our friend some offensive texts and we are trying to decide whether or not to check his phone to delete the texts before he does. The old “noun” view of conscience would get us to think about this in the abstract, perhaps reason about it.

Instead, we need to be in the situation, and experience the situation, we need to be doing (hence “verb”) the experiencing. Maybe, we might conclude that it is right to go into our friend’s phone, maybe we will not but whatever happens the outcome could not have been known beforehand. What our conscience would have us do is revealed when we live in the world and not through armchair reflection.

The Six Propositions of Situation Ethics

1: Only one ‘thing’ is intrinsically good; namely, love, nothing else at all

There is one thing which is intrinsically good, that is good irrespective of context, namely love. If love is what is good, then an action is right or wrong in as far as it brings about the most amount of love.

Agapeic Calculus is a moral framework rooted in the pursuit of maximizing neighbor welfare for the greatest number of individuals within a community. Unlike conventional notions of love centered on emotional attachment or desire, this concept emphasizes the broader notion of concern for the well-being of others. In this context, "welfare" encompasses not only material prosperity but also factors such as health, happiness, and overall quality of life. By prioritizing the collective welfare of the community over individual interests, Agapeic Calculus seeks to foster a society characterized by compassion, empathy, and a commitment to the common good. In essence, it advocates for a calculus of altruism and ethical decision-making that aims to uplift and support as many neighbors as possible, thereby cultivating a more just and harmonious social order.

2: The ruling norm of decision is love, nothing else

Given our modern context and how people typically talk of “love” it is probably unhelpful to even call it “love”. For instance, we will all recall the following news item. In February 1993, Mrs Johnson’s son, Laramiun Byrd, 20, was shot in the head by 16-year-old Oshea Israel after an argument at a party in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Mrs Johnson subsequently forgave her son’s killer and after he had served a 17-year sentence for the crime, asked him to move in next door to her. She was not condoning his actions, nor will she ever forget the horror of those actions, but she does love her son’s killer. That love is agápē.

Reference:

3: Love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed, nothing else

Practically all moral problems we encounter can be boiled down to an apparent tension between “justice” on the one hand and “love” on the other. Consider a recent story:

This could be expressed as a supposed tension between “love” of family and doing the right thing — “justice”. Imagine we are trying to decide what is the best way to distribute food given to a charity, or how a triage nurse might work in a war zone. In these cases we might put the problem like this. We want to distribute fairly, but how should we do this? To act justly or fairly is precisely to act in love. “Love is justice, justice is love”.

4: Love wills the neighbor’s good when we like him or not

Agápē is in the business of loving the unlovable. So related to our enemies. Love does not ask us to lose or abandon our sense of good and evil, or even of superior and inferior; it simply insists that however we rate them, and whether we like them nor not, they are our neighbors and are to be loved.

5: Only the ends justify the means, nothing else

Any action we take, if considered as an action independent of its consequences, is literally “meaningless and pointless”. An action, such as telling the truth, only acquires its status as a means by virtue of an end beyond itself.

6: Love’s decisions are made situationally, not prescriptively

Ethical decisions exist in a grey area most of the time. No decision can be taken before considering the situation. Consider the example of a woman in Arizona who learned that she might “bear a defective baby because she had taken thalidomide”. What should she do? The loving decision was not one given by the law, which stated that all abortions are wrong. However, she travelled to Sweden where she had an abortion. Even if the embryo had not been defective according to Fletcher her actions were “brave and responsible and right” because she was acting in light of the particulars of the situation to bring about the most love.

The Criticism of Situational Ethics

John Robinson, an Anglican Bishop of Woolwich and Trinity College started as a firm supporter of situational ethics referring to the responsibility it gave the individual in deciding the morality of their actions. However, he later withdrew his support for the theory recognizing that people could not take this sort of responsibility, remarking that "It will all descend into moral chaos."

The central focus on agape as the moral guide for behavior allows to claim that an action might be right in one context, but wrong in a different context — depending on the level of agape brought about. Despite how popular the theory was it is not philosophically sophisticated, and we soon run into problems in trying to understand it.

Another problem with teleological or consequential theories is that they are based on the future consequences, and the future is quite hard to predict in some cases. For example, it may be easy to predict that if we harm someone, then it will make them and those around them sad and/or angry. However, when considering more tricky situations such as an abortion, it is impossible to tell how the child's life and its mother's will turn out either way.

Specifically Christian forms of situational ethics of placing love above all particular principles or rules were proposed in the first half of the twentieth century by liberal theologians Rudolf Bultmann, John A. T. Robinson, along with Joseph Fletcher. These theologians point specifically to agape, or unconditional love, as the highest end. Other theologians who advocated situational ethics include Josef Fuchs, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Paul Tillich.  Tillich, for example, declared, "Love is the ultimate law."

Content Curated by: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

[muchymozzarella]

Listening to the podcast with Tumblr's CEO about how Tumblr is running on debt because he believes it's worth keeping up because of how unique and good it is as a blogging platform and honestly it warms the heart

And how Tumblr may have been purchased for 3 million but at one point cost 60 million a year to run and they decided it was worth slowly fixing and honestly it warms the heart

And thinking about how Musk bought Twitter for way above its valuation when in fact he was also getting all of its debts and liabilities since Twitter was, like Tumblr, also running on debt, so he actually owes way more than 44 billion dollars and that's why he's no longer the richest man on earth and that's why he's floundering and losing his mind, and honestly it warms the heart

And about how Tumblr are happily poaching talent from Twitter and investors are looking at Tumblr as a worthwhile investment and the debt is going down in part because of Twitter's fuckup and honestly it warms the heart

[srmtechnologies]

Strategic & thoughtful decision-making has always been synonymous with prolific business outcomes, whether it is about a solution to eliminate particular problems or pursue potential game-changing opportunities. The need to continuously learn, evaluate, and make intelligent decisions amidst the information clutter & various influencing factors makes the art of decision-making fall next to rocket science for enterprises.

The prominence of technology has never been this high for enterprises when it comes to data-driven decision-making – with significant technology chunks such as Solid data engineering, advanced analytics platforms & intuitive business intelligence tools driving it.

[slingshotsimulations]

Digital Twin Technology Company

Our leadership role within the Digital Twin Consortium allows us to work alongside Dell Technologies & Microsoft to deliver highly efficient large-scale data, cloud-based data simulation.

For more information: https://www.slingshotsimulations.com/digital-twins/

[purple-slate]

What is Decision Intelligence — Here’s What You Should Know

What is Decision Intelligence?

Gartner defines decision intelligence as “a practical domain framing a wide range of decision-making techniques bringing multiple traditional and advanced disciplines together to design, model, align, execute, monitor and tune decision models and processes.”

Decision Intelligence is one of the top three technology trends that is going to create a big impact on the markets by end of 2023 as per Gartner’s 2022 report. “It’s not a technology,” says Gartner, “It’s a discipline made of many different technologies.”

The advent of big data and its allied science and technology paved the way to derive information from the humongous data that is made available from various avenues, in short, Big data. Again the question arises, with the quantitative data are we still able to get quality information? The jazzy dashboards, charts, and digital visualizations from Business Intelligence (BI ) go overboard and become information overloading for strategic decision-makers. The requirement is to get the right data, again ‘right’ is a keyword and qualifier and it depends on the business, every changing ecosystem et al.

Understanding the Importance of Data-Driven Decisions

Even if we get the quality or right information available, the decision has to be finally made by one or more humans. The final choice or decision is made by human intervention. Though choice and decision are used interchangeably, they are not one and the same. ‘Choice’ is to pick from wide varieties that are available at your disposal with little or no information, while a decision is an informed choice.

Again the question loops back to what is that ‘informed’ choice? Informed choice is alternatively called Decision Intelligence. It is a combination of science, technology, and humanity that contributes to making consistently high-quality informed decisions with the help of technology that derives information from the prevailing ecosystem.

Decisions, decisions, and more decisions. In this fast-paced environment, being able to make quick decisions gets one ahead of competitors.

Every day, in any organization across all the managerial and leadership positions, they are expected to make a multitude of decisions left, right, and center. The bigger the size of the organization, the challenges in data-driven decisions increases proportionally. The ability to respond quickly to the ever-changing environment is the primary skill for any successful leader.

Here the requirement is to provide more comprehensive decision support platforms that augment the existing 2D dashboards from business intelligence and analytics by leveraging sophisticated tools enabled by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Overcoming Biases with AI-Powered Decision Making

Every person has a circle of competence. Every decision made is the outcome of a person’s knowledge and circle of competence. If a decision is augmented with a wide variety of people’s circle of competence, the collective decision-making skill is going to be enhanced manifold.

One of the biggest challenges in a collective decision-making process is the team running into cognitive and emotional biases. This will have a big impact on the outcomes of the decisions. People will seek out data that supports their biases, more like reverse engineering. When people analyze the data, they look at it through the lens of their experience which may result in flawed conclusions. The algorithms in the decision intelligence system are not swayed by those biases, it evaluates the available facts objectively and provides an informed choice.

AI systems used in the Decision Intelligence system look at the data more closely than conventional data analytics systems and detect any unseen patterns or abnormalities. The identification and elimination of potential abnormalities will have a big impact on the decision-making process and enhance the skill with more unseen data patterns.

AI decision-making systems enhance to speed up the process entirely by processing large amounts of data that are scattered. it helps the organization to make the right decision in a shorter period of time.

Propelling 10X Organizational Growth with AI-enabled Decision Intelligence

Traditionally we have the rule-based system that gives linear growth for any organization. Even when looped back, it will be an incremental change. But for exponential growth, we need to have the edge with AI-based decision-making systems. With the machine learning systems in place, they scour for a pattern across the data with the looped back attribute and get back with a multitude of opportunities to grow exponentially. Decision Intelligence systems backed by AI systems constantly upgrade their algorithm with machine learning.

Most of the time, decision trees become complex, increasing the risks of getting decisions wrong. Decision Intelligence systems might not be able to replace all the decision-making, but they might be able to augment it. It concentrates on both the positive and negative attributes of success. While positive attributes enhance the success rate, negative attributes mitigate the failure rates.

If a company does not have real historical data to start with for implementing a Decision Intelligence system, they can look at using synthetic data. It enables companies to identify black swan events or unusual scenarios. According to Gartner by 2024, 60% of the data used for the development of AI will be synthetically generated, now it stands at 1%.

Understanding the Underlying Challenges in a Decision Intelligence System

What is decision intelligence? To know that One has to understand that the quality of the decision outcomes and the quality of decisions are not one and the same. Sometimes, a bad quality decision might bring a successful outcome if one is lucky, but it is a one-off scenario. It can’t be looped back into the decision system and can not measure the decision and its outcome. It becomes unsustainable in the longer run.

Collecting the outcomes of these decisions and linking them back to the decision-making system is challenging. But once the decision intelligence system is in place and the outcomes are looped back, the outcomes become more effective and efficient.

Another facet to the problem is with the rapidly changing ecosystem, we can’t just rely on past data to predict the future trend. Covid pandemic, which came out of the blue, became a game-changer and the majority of the decision-making attributes got changed.

Decisions purely taken by data-driven recommendations at certain times hit us hard and the need for AI-driven decision intelligence becomes paramount for an organization’s existence. But most of the time, even when AI predicts rightly, human instincts take the foreground and discard the recommendations, causing considerable loss to the organization.

Decision Intelligence is the Future of Corporate Decision Making

Is decision intelligence required for start-ups, and SMEs? The answer is obviously yes. Even to consider decision intelligence as a viable option itself is a half victory. Many might still be doing it without calling it by the name, Decision Intelligence. Recommendation engines are one miniature or subset of the DI system. They may not have the necessary attributes but comes closer to it. Let us not think of DI as a full-fledged system implemented across the organization. We can just start using DI in one of the crucial, say marketing department, and expand it to other departments.

For a decision intelligence system to be successful, the underlying strategy needs to be right. The person who implements requires an in-depth understanding of the organization, the ecosystem it operates, the resolve to evaluate both successful and failure outcomes, and the most important of all is to loop back to the decision-making process.

This post was originally published in:

[infosectrain03]

Making the proper decisions is an important part of being successful in business. Businesses that make good decisions are more likely to succeed. 

[ofswordsandpens]

ever since I heard that RR was like "we decided that since Annabeth was so smart and 6 steps ahead of everyone, it wouldn't make sense for her to do x, y, or z like she did in the book" I've been physically ill, it haunts me

[garvalhaminho]

why does every tsc male main character act like a divorced father of three w bills to pay at 17. who gave them the right.

[gambitandrogues]

Hey friendly reminder that Jesper Fahey was supposed to be attending Ketterdam University, the same place the royal family decided to send Nikolai to (and assumed he was also attending). If I see one more person dumb Jesper down to comic relief when he was smart enough to get into the same school a prince was attending, it's on sight.

[willosword]

☹️

[conceptsnest]

EXPLORING SITUATIONAL ETHICS AND BEHAVIOR DYNAMICS: THE SENSITIVITIES OF MORAL COMPASS – CHAPTER -01

Situational ethics, or situation ethics, is a teleological and consequential theory of ethics concerned with the outcome of an action as opposed to an action being intrinsically wrong as in deontological theories. The theory was principally developed in the 1960s by the Christian Episcopal priest Joseph Fletcher. He argued that sometimes moral principles could be cast aside in certain situations if love is best being served. He believed that there are no absolute laws other than the law of love, and that all the other laws were secondary. This means that all the other laws may be broken if other courses of action would result in more love. Thus, in the case of situational ethics, the ends can justify the means.

Joseph Fletcher (1905–1991), in his time, developed what he called an ethical non-system. His publication was questioned amongst the public because it legitimized the general post-war dissatisfaction with authority. The English term "situation ethics" was taken from the German Situationsethik. It is unclear who first coined the term either in German or in its English variant.

At the time it was written, it seemed to make some radical claims such as that it is not wrong to have extramarital sex, to be homosexual, or to have an abortion. All that said, Fletcher’s work is not widely discussed nor respected in philosophical circles. Fletcher called this ethical “non-system” Situationism.  

A few instances from the epic- The Ramayana- illustrate this. The Bible also has a few illustrations.

Because of its consequentialism, situational ethics is often confused with utilitarianism, because utilitarianism's aim is the greatest good for the greatest number, although situational ethics focuses more on creating the greatest amount of love and it also has different origins. Having said that, however, situational ethics can also be classed under the ethical theory genre of ‘proportionalism’, which says that 'it is never right to go against a principle unless there is a proportionate reason which would justify it’. Through situational ethics, Fletcher attempted to find a 'middle road' between legalistic and antinomian ethics.

The Meaning & Context of Agape

Our world has many definitions of love, but we most commonly think about love in a romantic sense. What if true love meant more than romance? What if there was a deeper, fuller expression of love?

The concept of agape has been widely examined within its Christian context. It has also been considered in the contexts of other religions, religious ethics, and science. For instance, in the New Testament, agape refers to the covenant love of God for humans, as well as the human reciprocal love for God; the term necessarily extends to the love of one's fellow human beings. Some contemporary writers have sought to extend the use of agape into non-religious contexts.

The Three Views Of Situational Ethics

Situational ethics relies on one principle—what best serves love. According to Fletcher, love is unconditional and unsentimental. Situational ethics is based on the golden rule "love your neighbor as yourself" and altruism, which is putting others before yourself and showing agape (a greek interpretation of love – discussed shortly) towards everyone. It agrees on reason being the instrument of moral judgments, but disagrees that the good is to be disconcerted from the nature of things. All moral decisions depend on what the most loving thing to do is.

Fletcher says there are two unattractive views in ethics: “Legalism” and “Antinomianism”, and one attractive view, which sits in between them: “Situationism”.

Legalism: Someone who is following the system of Legalism is someone who “blindly” observes moral rules without being sensitive to the situation. For example, we ought to tell the truth in all situations, even if this means that, say, millions of people die. In 2002 the religious police of Saudi Arabia refused to let a group of girls escape from a burning building because they were wearing “inappropriate” clothing, which was against the will of God. Fifteen girls died.

Reference:

‘Saudi Police “Stopped” Fire Rescue’, BBC News (15 March 2002), freely available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1874471.stm

Antinomianism: The other extreme is Antinomianism (“anti” meaning against; “nominalism” meaning law). This is the view that says that an agent can do whatever he or she wants in a situation. An “existential” view - because it is one that says that people are always free to choose what they want. Any supposed laws and rules limiting the actions of people are simply a way of trying to comfort them because they are scared of absolute freedom.

Antinomianism means the moral agent is erratic and random, is unpredictable, and any decisions taken are ad hoc. There are no laws nor guiding principles, just agents and their conscience and the institutions in which they find themselves.

Situationism: The Middle Ethics. We might think that Legalism and Antinomianism exhaust the possibilities. If we reject moral laws then are not we forced into lawless moral anarchy?

Fletcher says that there is a moral law, and hence he rejects Antinomianism. But there is only one moral law, so he rejects Legalism. His one moral law is that we ought to always act so as to bring about the most love for the most people (“Agápē Calculus”). Fletcher’s Situationism is then a teleological theory- directed at the consequences that will determine whether an action is right or wrong. Of course, any teleological theory will ask us to look at the details of the situation. What makes his view different is the centrality of “love”, or as he calls it agápē.

There can be moral principles but that these differ from laws. Principles are generalizations which are context-sensitive and which derive from the one law regarding maximizing love. For example, we might have a moral principle that we ought not to murder. This is a principle because we might think in that in general murder is wrong because it does not bring about the most love. However, it is not a law because, murder is not wrong in all situations.

For example, a situation might arise where the child of a terrorist would have to be murdered in order to get information to stop a nuclear attack. From the universal law we can only derive principles, not other universal laws.

***To be continued in Chapter 02 (Four Working Principles of Situationism, Conscience as a Verb not a Noun, Six Propositions of Situation Ethics, The Criticism of Situational Ethics, How it falls short)

Content Curated by: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

[fromtheseventhhell]

I ignore about 95% of the conversations surrounding Arya having killed people because, outside of Arya stans, people refuse to include the context of the very violent circumstances she experiences + her trauma which influences her actions. She wasn't destined to be a killer and her being forced on the run, having to survive during a war (at times on her own), having to witness countless people being tortured and murdered, being enslaved as a prisoner of war, having to witness the deaths of her family, etc. are all hugely important factors. Not to mention the times when her life is literally on the line and she has to make tough decisions to ensure her survival. The only time her trauma is acknowledged is when people are using it to prove she's "too far gone", otherwise it's essays on how she hasn't suffered that much. It's so boring how people ignore well-developed characters just to reduce them to one or two aspects of their story. And this treatment is only for certain characters; let someone mention Sansa being part of the plot to poison Sweetrobin and all of a sudden, people can understand being forced to make questionable decisions under difficult circumstances.

[requiemforthestars]

I'm a NATLA defender now, tbh. I think more people will grow to appreciate its good parts more as time goes on. I'm of course waiting to see how they wrap everything up and I'm not immune to its flaws, but I think people are so blinded by everything not being The Exact Same as the original cartoon than they're not appreciating its good parts. It's an adaptation, a companion, it's not a replacement to the original.

[slingshotsimulations]

Slingshot Simulations provides tools for the automated configuration, data science, blending, management, integration, data preparation solutions and data analysis of simulations.

https://www.slingshotsimulations.com/

[good-beanswrites]

See, Milgram said there's this kid who developed a hero complex from his video games. He got caught up in fantasies of killing the bad guy, he took justice into his own hands, and it killed someone for real. And they could have said yeah, he's a shoot-em-up game guy. He glorifies the military and oogles the tactical gear in the games. Or maybe he has fantasies of an action hero, car chases and explosions and machine guns. And that would have been such a nasty guy, yeah? I'd hate every bit of him and it could have been fine!

But no! They said he likes knights!!! Fucking knights!!! They said, he has fantasies of picking up his righteous fire sword and defeating monsters. He imagines himself in shining armor and vibrant landscapes. He's unbearably lonely and just loves the thought of leading a team of trusted adventurers who will have his back no matter what. And so now I'm screwed because I'm sitting there like FUUUUCK!! That does feel righteous!! That is the dream! I have had those exact thoughts after playing my little knight video games!! There's nothing wrong with wanting those things!! ARGGH!!

[ihaterossfromfriends]

Me when I think too hard about what the internet/lily orchard did to steven universe

[ID. cause I know tumblr's video player is shit. Jontron sitting on a couch in his basement points at the camera and says "you fuckers! YOU FUCKERS! I WILL RAIN HELLFIRE UPON YOU!" as the video and audio distorts to emphasize his frustration]