Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense

Values, ethics, fears, and goals are often significant factors in decision-making.

Good decision-making, then, depends on all three ingredients that we have discussed: accurate information from reliable experts, a careful consideration of values, and a structure that places the authority to make the decision in the hands of those who will be affected.

When we have to make a high-stakes decision about something we aren’t expert in, or we simply don’t know what the right answer is, the first choice we make has to do with who we are going to consult with, or seek information from, to best inform that decision.

science became harder to understand, was connected to undesirable side effects, and subjected to politically partisan critiques, many people lost their trust in scientists and in “science” itself.

But our need for expertise presents us with three conundrums: First, if we don’t have specialized knowledge ourselves, how do we even start to think about what knowledge we need and who is a reliable expert in that domain? Second, assuming we have found reliable expertise, how and when do we appropriately fold in the other key elements of a decisio

we are looking for them to be experts on the facts and then participants in the values discussion.

If we don’t have a shared world, joint decision-making becomes impossible.