Devjani Roy

Bio: Devjani Roy is an academic researcher from Harvard University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Ignorance & Climate change. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 6 publications receiving 29 citations.

Grappling with Ignorance: Frameworks from Decision Theory, Lessons from Literature

Abstract: Benefit-cost analysis (BCA), a discipline best known for guiding policy choices, can also guide personal decisions. In either application, traditional BCA tallies benefits and costs using market values or willingness to pay. When future outcomes are uncertain, as they are across a wide array of situations, BCA must call as well on the methods of decision analysis. Thus, von Neumann–Morgenstern utilities, subjective probabilities, and sequential decision strategies are brought into play. Traditional decision analysis distinguishes between risk and uncertainty. With risk, the probabilities of possible outcomes are known; with uncertainty, those outcomes are known, but not their probabilities. We introduce the concept of ignorance: a third, less tractable category. With ignorance, even the possible outcomes of decisions cannot be identified. Ignorance takes particular importance when high payoffs are associated with these unidentified outcomes, as is often the case. We identify such outcomes as consequential amazing developments (CADs). In the policy realm, the 2008 financial meltdown or the Arab Spring would represent a CAD. For an individual, a CAD might be that one’s secure tenured position had been inexplicably terminated, or that one’s trusted business partner had long been shuttling corporate secrets to a competitor. We distinguish between unrecognized and recognized ignorance. In the latter category, we identify specific cognitive biases that impair decision making. Consequential ignorance cannot be studied in a controlled laboratory setting, since its payoffs are high, its time delays often long, and merely introducing the subject would tend to give away the game. Thus we develop a descriptive understanding of ignorance drawing on great works of literature, from antiquity to the present day, positing that skilled writers understand how humans make decisions and respond to unanticipated outcomes. Shakespearean examples would be Hamlet’s ignorance of his father’s killer, and Macbeth’s lack of awareness of the tragic ramifications following his actions to seize the Scottish crown. Following this descriptive analysis, we turn to prescription. We draw on decision analysis to develop a formula for calculating consequential ignorance; it incorporates the expected magnitudes and assessed base rates for CADs. Finally, we propose a decision-analytic framework for measured decision making, given ignorance. Our recommended approach explicitly recognizes decision-making costs, and thus proposes when to use quick and intuitive as opposed to more deliberative approaches to decision, or the labels Kahneman has popularized as System 1 and System 2. Studying ignorance through literature has important implications for BCA. Given the potential for ignorance, there are two key goals for prudent decision making. First, steps should be taken to recognize when ignorance might be present. Second, efforts should be made not to respond in a suboptimal fashion when ignorance is anticipated or when a CAD springs upon us. Great literature can provide the equivalent of widespread life experience, and can help a decision maker reach both goals. At its heart, this essay represents a benefit-cost approach to dealing with ignorance. Numerous connections to BCA are made throughout.

Ignorance: Lessons from the Laboratory of Literature

Abstract: Traditional decision theory distinguishes between risk and uncertainty. With risk, the probabilities of possible outcomes are known; with uncertainty, those outcomes are known, but not their probabilities. We introduce the concept of ignorance, a third, less tractable category. With ignorance, even the possible outcomes cannot be identified. Ignorance takes importance when high payoffs are associated with the unidentified outcomes. Thus we focus on consequential amazing developments, or CADs. CADs spring upon societies as well as individuals. In the policy realm, the 2008 financial meltdown and the Arab Spring would represent CADs, major unanticipated events. For an individual, a CAD might be the discovery that a faithful spouse of many years has a secret second family, or that our trusted business partner has been pilfering corporate secrets all along. Authors depict the implications of consequential ignorance in some of the greatest of literary works: Hamlet's ignorance of his father's killer, Macbeth's unawareness of outcomes when he attempts to seize the Scottish crown, Odysseus's journey back to Ithaca involving a series of consequential adventures, all unknowable. Consequential ignorance cannot be studied in a controlled laboratory setting, since its payoffs are high, its time delays often long, and merely introducing the subject tends to give away the game. Thus we study ignorance through great works of literature, from antiquity to the present day, positing that great writers understand how humans make decisions. We distinguish between unrecognized and recognized ignorance. In the latter category, we identify specific cognitive biases at work. We provide a formula for calculating consequential ignorance that incorporates the expected magnitudes and assessed base rates for CADs. Finally, we propose steps towards measured decision making under ignorance.

The anatomy of ignorance : Diagnoses from literature

Abstract: Ignorance represents a situation in which some potential outcomes are not even identified. Often they are both unknown and unknowable. On a continuum that begins with risk and progresses through uncertainty, ignorance is the third, final, and most extreme state in the sequence. “The anatomy of ignorance,” introduces a medical metaphor. Analysis diagnoses ignorance as a malady that inflicts significant damages at the individual and societal levels. Fortunately, as with many maladies, understanding ignorance can help us recognize its presence and treat it more effectively. Primary ignorance denotes the failure to recognize that one is ignorant and that highly consequential potential outcomes loom that cannot be identified. Literary fiction leads us into truly interesting territory in terms of complex decision making with idiosyncratic variables. Learning about ignorance has important implications. Once ignorance becomes a part of the decision-theoretic discourse, decision scientists can develop methods and train decision makers to cope with it.

Waiting for Godot에 나타난 희망의 구조

Abstract: Being emblematic of our big real world, Waiting for Godot shows how and why people cannot stop hoping until the end of time If Godot is the one who will provide what the two old tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, really desire, he seems to be ever beyond their reach No matter how uncertain whether he will come or not, they never give up waiting Godot is the promise that kindles their hope at every moment of despair We can notice Godot's absolute authority and control over them comes from his very absence In fact, this play was written to tell us about the human condition that all human beings suffer this repeated delay of satisfaction and the reproduction of desire all their lives What matters in this symbolic system is not how to make the signifier meaningful but how to prolong the unsatisfactory, meaningless time The characters in this play are about to be aware how empty these symbols are Since the gap between what man hopes for and what the world actually grants is the very essence of the social structure, the contradiction between those two will be never resolved Time has stopped for those who are worn out to watch all their labors have been sterile and still have their labors unfinished Nothing real ever happens and nothing ever changes One day is a duplicate of another The two act structure of the play presents this ontological structure of the human world Meaning cannot be found in the symbolic world And hope is definitely alien to the world of this play Every evening, however, the two men renew their weary and hopeless waiting That is, people make a compromise with the world and pretend they have meanings so that they can keep on hoping This play shows the habit of waiting is the last thing they choose to protect themselves from being fully aware of the cruel truth of life

Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate?-Open Peer Commentary-Differences, games, and pluralism

Abstract: Much research in the last two decades has demonstrated that human responses deviate from the performance deemed normative according to various models of decision making and rational judgment (e.g., the basic axioms of utility theory). This gap between the normative and the descriptive can be interpreted as indicating systematic irrationalities in human cognition. However, four alternative interpretations preserve the assumption that human behavior and cognition is largely rational. These posit that the gap is due to (1) performance errors, (2) computational limitations, (3) the wrong norm being applied by the experimenter, and (4) a different construal of the task by the subject. In the debates about the viability of these alternative explanations, attention has been focused too narrowly on the model response. In a series of experiments involving most of the classic tasks in the heuristics and biases literature, we have examined the implications of individual differences in performance for each of the four explanations of the normative/descriptive gap. Performance errors are a minor factor in the gap; computational limitations underlie non-normative responding on several tasks, particularly those that involve some type of cognitive decontextualization. Unexpected patterns of covariance can suggest when the wrong norm is being applied to a task or when an alternative construal of the task should be considered appropriate.