Thursday, November 3, 2011

Disastrous Decisions

In the article "Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions," Jared Diamond explains the decisions different societies make that lead up to horrible outcomes, hence the name of the article. Diamond states three different points on why societies make bad decisions. These points are: failure to anticipate a problem happening, perceiving or falsely perceiving a problem after it has already arrived, and failure to even attempt to solve the problem once it has been perceived. When reading this I pictured a snowball effect in which all of these bad decisions are related and would snowball until it got too large to reverse any problem. Diamond states that the last point is the most surprising and it also was to me. I felt like Diamond did a good job explaining all his points and feel like he did so thoroughly and gave good examples for each. I found this to be an interesting read altogether.

1 comment:

  1. I agree that the last point is very surprising. Although it makes sense when viewed from a humanistic behavior perspective, it just doesn't seem right that people recognize a problem and let it happen anyway.

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