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Every purchasing decision involves a trade-off between what I call fidelity and convenience. Fidelity is the total experience of something - how great the experience is. Convenience is how easy it is to get something. A live concert is a high fidelity way to experience music; an MP3 file is a high convenience way to experience music. Depending on the situation, one or the other is probably pretty appealing. What's not appealing is something that offers neither.
We of the richer societies, who have had access to more energy than we have the experience to wield intelligently are making decisions we are not qualified to make almost every time we enter the voting booth, go to the grocery store or step into a car show room. We do not know what is "normal." Because our whole life and in some respects a generation or two before us have only known this era of fossil fuel exploitation and resource grabbing; we call this normal.
The aspirations of democracy are based on the notion of an informed citizenry, capable of making wise decisions. The choices we are asked to make become increasingly complex. They require the longer-term thinking and greater tolerance for ambiguity that science fosters. The new economy is predicated on a continuous pipeline of scientific and technological innovation. It can not exist without workers and consumers who are mathematically and scientifically literate.
During a time of surplus, a time of peace before 2001, it was much easier to try and find middle ground. We were running surpluses. But during a time when we're careening into bankruptcy and failing miserably on our foreign policy it's just not the same old "find consensus, go along to get along, be pragmatic, come together" place that it was. I think that some very hard decisions and very hard choices have to be made. They won't be popular, but they're necessary.
Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.
F irst and foremost I am a drummer. After that, I'm other things... But I didn't play drums to make money. I played drums because I loved them... My soul is that of a drummer... It came to where I had to make a decision - I was going to be a drummer. Everything else goes now. I play drums. It was a conscious moment in my life when I said the rest of things were getting in the way. I didn't do it to be come rich and famous, I did it because it was the love of my life.
The people at the label were great but at the end of the day our visions didn't match up and I knew I had to do it my way. The potential success that could come with signing with a major label didn't quite outweigh how important it was for me to make my music the way I knew it needed to be made. It was a hard decision to make, but I've never regretted it for a second and it's only become more clear to me after making and releasing Stairwells that it was the right one.
If we have come up with a creative decision and somebody comes up with another idea, you do have to get into the depths of it and ask: "Is it a better idea? Or is it a different idea?" That can be hard. But that's the type of conversation the director and I will have, or as part of our creative groups. So with that in mind, it's hard to keep a budget in line. It's like in life, if you've ever built anything for the first time you're usually better at it the second time.
The fear among economists across the political spectrum that was - was that we were rapidly plummeting towards a second Great Depression. So, in the weeks and months that followed, we undertook a series of difficult steps to prevent that outcome. And we were forced to take those steps largely without the help of an opposition party, which, unfortunately, after having presided over the decision-making that had led to the crisis, decided to hand it over to others to solve.
When you're offered a job to serve your country, you step back and assess. And once I spoke with President Trump and told him what I thought I needed to be successful - which was to be a Cabinet member; to be on the National Security Council, where I could be a part of the policy decisions; and to be able to say what I wanted to say - how do you not do that job? He was incredibly supportive. He's continued to be. I love a good challenge, and this certainly has been that.
In my opinion, those politicians are making decisions based on calculations related to polling numbers and strategic political agendas. But if they are to talk about refugees in a human way - far from how this would affect their careers or individual comforts - and if they, for a second, look at a mother, sitting on a road somewhere, holding her children, shivering with cold, and crying because they are hungry, I'm sure there is a part of their humanity that would shiver.
We are not here to advocate abortion. We do not ask this Court to rule that abortion is good or desirable in any particular situation. We are here to advocate that the decision as to whether or not a particular woman will continue to carry or will terminate a pregnancy is a decision that should be made by that individual. That, in fact, she has a constitutional right to make that decision for herself and that the state has shown no interest in interfering with that decision
If one writing contributed more than any other to the framework in which this work Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions developed, it would be an essay entitled 'The Use of Knowledge in Society,' published in the American Economic Review of September 1945, and written by F. A. Hayek . . In this plain and apparently simple essay was a deeply penetrating insight into the way societies function and malfunction, and clues as to why they are so often and so profoundly misunderstood.
Will any club dominate again? Are any club set up to dominate again? When you look at the clubs that have dominated they've usually got a core five, six or seven players who can stay there for 10 to 15 years. There is a continuity with the management. I'm not quite sure at the moment that I'm seeing the decision making at any of the top clubs to be able to suggest that domination is actually achievable again. Maybe in the future, but I'm not quite sure it'll happen very soon.
The obvious one, in a market system, in a really functioning one, whoever's making the decisions doesn't pay attention to what are called externalities, effects on others. I sell you a car, if our eyes are open we'll make a good deal for ourselves but we're not asking how it's going to affect her [over there.] It will, there'll be more congestion, gas prices will go up, there will be environmental effects and that multiplies over the whole population. Well, that's very serious.
…There are times when something is asked of us, and we find we must do it. There is no calculation involved, no measure of the necessity of the thing itself, the action that must be performed. There is simply an acknowledgment that we will do the thing in question, and then the thing is done, often at considerable personal cost. " "What goes into these decisions? What tiny factors, invisible, in the jutting edges of personality and circumstance, contribute to this inevitability?
We also need to look at precedent before making these decisions. Instead of listening to Muammar Qaddafi's rhetoric, we should look at how he's behaved. The fact is he's been making concessions recently. He gave up his nuclear weapons. He allowed hundreds of Americans to evacuate Tripoli. Did he crack down on his people who revolted? Yes, but that's not so unusual. For me, it's always a failure of diplomacy. Our willingness to immediately turn to a military solution is disturbing.
I think some people had, probably, a time in their life where they were good at two things and they had to make a big decision. For me, it was never like that - I just skied every day of my life and kind of made the right steps in the right direction, and so there wasn't really a choice of like, "What should I do?" I remember when I was like 10 years old, I was just wanting to be in the Olympics and wanting to compete in the World Cup, and there was never another choice in my head.
In any institution-factory, university, health center, or whatever-there are a variety of interests that ought to be represented in decision-making: the work force itself, the community in which it is located, users of its products or services, institutions that compete for the same resources. These interests should be directly represented in democratic structures that displace and eliminate private ownership of the means of production or resources, an anachronism with no legitimacy.
Imposition of the death penalty is arbitrary and capricious. Decision of who will live and who will die for his crime turns less on the nature of the offense and the incorrigibility of the offender and more on inappropriate and indefensible considerations: the political and personal inclinations of prosecutors; the defendant's wealth, race and intellect; the race and economic status of the victim; the quality of the defendant's counsel; and the resources allocated to defense lawyers.
We should simply accept the fact that the way machines make decisions is different, and rather look at the result. If machines are providing results that we are looking for, you would mind how much human understanding was used in the process. And more likely we should look for the way of combining human skills and machine skills. And that, I believe, is the future role of humanity, is just to make sure it will be using this immense power of brute force of calculation for our benefit.
There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.
Though it's hard to be completely certain about things like this, I have a suspicion that only someone with deep freedom (one who makes decisions for reasons that are his own) and who's also a moral being (can experience goodness) can have a meaningful friendship with God. If friendship with God and sharing in His happiness are good things (and it seems they are), then making a creature who could enjoy these things is also a good thing, even if it comes with a liability. There's a risk.
When you put party over principles, you can't avoid tripping over your own hypocrisy and contradictions eventually. The GOP establishment refused to stand up to Trump during the primary because they wanted his voters in order to beat Hillary Clinton. Then he won the primary, and then the general, and the GOP both times decided it was better to cling to their grasp at power, to cling to Trump and all he stands for, a decision that should destroy the party or drag it down for a generation.
A government is a compulsory territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) and, implied in this, a compulsory territorial monopolist of taxation. That is, a government is the ultimate arbiter, for the inhabitants of a given territory, regarding what is just and what is not, and it can determine unilaterally, i.e., without requiring the consent of those seeking justice or arbitration, the price that justice-seekers must pay to the government for providing this service.
In a democracy, every ordinary citizen is effectively a king--but a king in a constitutional democracy, a monarch who decides only formally, whose function is merely to sign off on measures proposed by an executive administration. This is why the problem with democratic rituals is homologous to the great problem of constitutional monarchy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to maintain the appearance that the king effectively makes decisions, when we all know this not to be true?
Judaism calls for us to honor the rhythm of human life, the demands of the human community around us, the call of the divine order as the filter and scale for the decisions that drive our own small lives. We do not rule the universe, Judaism reminds us. God does. We are not its standard or its norms. We are only its keepers, its agents, its stewards. To do right by the universe at large is the measure of a happiness framed with the entire cosmos in mind but lived in microcosms across time.
Islamist-jihadist terrorism-a plague that has spread to almost every corner of the world-creates painful dilemmas for the peoples and decision makers who confront it. Its rapid, shape-shifting advance has sometimes confounded efforts to comprehend its origins, motives, and aims. Its sophistication in exploiting liberal values poses challenges and difficulties for the Western world, and for liberal democratic states in general, in attaining effective and balanced counter-terrorism policies.
You have to accept that the moment you hand a script to a director, even if you've written it as an original script, it becomes his or her movie. That's the way it has to be because the pressures on a director are so staggering and overwhelming that if he or she doesn't have that sort of level of decision making ability, that sort of free reign, the movie simply won't get done. It won't have a vision behind it. It may not be your vision as a screenwriter, but at least it will have a vision.
It was clear to me that the White House's solemn atmosphere would not civilize Trump. But the merciless nepotism with which he conducts politics, in which he places himself and his family above the law, I wouldn't have considered that possible. And on top of that there is this reduction of complex political decisions to 140 characters. When it comes to a U.S. president, I consider the reduction of politics to a tweet to be truly dangerous. Trump is a risk to his country and the entire world.
Our sense of "open" is that the authority to make decisions about that gets distributed based on merit and understanding and participation and leadership, not solely on employment or a title or a business plan. Technical colleagues will define "open" as "open standards," "interoperable" - you can find it, search it, cut and paste it, view source, mix and match - all those things that we associate with text on the Web, that you can continue to do that with audio and video and whatever's next.
Boom and bust cycles are very difficult for businesses because you're hiring a bunch because you're planning for the future. And if the future is going to be very big, you need to hire people, or suddenly you go to boom to bust, then all of a sudden, you're kind of battening down the hatches and trying to sail, you know, through the storm, it's a different thing. So part of it is making good decisions about, well, how long is a boom cycle going to be, you know, don't plan on it going forever.
I think we underestimate the importance of kindness sometimes. We understand the power of just a little tiny bit of kindness. It could be the catalyst for something so important. Sometimes just a tiny little gesture or an acknowledgment can make all the difference in turning somebody's life around. I think it has a trickle down effect, when you pass on what you receive without even knowing it. We also underestimate our own power to make a difference with the decisions that we make, every day.
We continually make decisions in private which affect the commonweal, as the ecologists (to take but one example) have shown us. When I keep my house warmer than it needs to be, I consume fuel which might help someone else keep warm, or keep a job. When the food I eat is high on the protein chain I contribute to a maldistribution of protein around the world. When I teach my children to be primarily concerned with private gain, I diminish the ranks of public leadership in the rising generation.
I've found that in life, and certainly in music, it's all just a series of occurrences in which you are constantly assessing the potential outcome of your decisions based on past precedence. As an aside, this is apparently the defining factor in science that separates artificial intelligence from human consciousness. One thing that our brains are really good at is taking a bunch of answers and extrapolating the question, whereas in computing, you input a question and it will provide an answer.
The same individuals who are doing primary research in the role of humans on the climate system are then permitted to lead the [IPCC] assessment! There should be an outcry on this obvious conflict of interest, but to date either few recognize this conflict, or see that since the recommendations of the IPCC fit their policy and political agenda, they chose to ignore this conflict. In either case, scientific rigor has been sacrificed and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.
There are pros and cons about the policy decision whether to follow the Geneva Conventions in a war where they do not legally apply. Among the pros might be benefits for America's image, its ability to argue in future conflicts that the Conventions should be followed, and training soldiers to follow only the Geneva standards. Among the cons might be greater security and safety for our troops who capture and detain al Qaeda operatives and the ability to gather more actionable intelligence swiftly.
I suppose I like certainty as much as anyone else, but I also feel that the hidden costs are high, that we pay a heavy price for our convictions. This is a human issue as well as a writing issue - at least in the personal essay as I practice it. Any real essayist knows that certainty is an editorial decision, arrived at not through conviction but through suppression, the denial of a whole range of possibilities, of alternatives that we jettison, sometimes necessarily, in order to steady the ship.
There are insistent calls for autonomy, appeals for a new resource ethic based on the tradition of the commons, demands for the reinstatement of cultural primacy over corporate hegemony, and a rising demand for radical transparency in politics and corporate decision making. It has been said that environmentalism failed as a movement, or worse yet, died. It is the other way around. Everyone on earth will be an environmentalist in the not too distant future, driven there by necessity and experience.
I remember going to a Trump rally in South Carolina, and it was really important and it was really interesting to talk to the people who'd shown up there because they were not caricatures, and so often Trump voters, Trump supporters were being portrayed in the media, probably I'm guilty of it as well, as caricatures. Each of these people, and I talked to maybe a dozen of them, had a very particular reason why he or she was supporting Donald Trump , but these were not casual, inexplicable decisions.
It is often by a trivial, even an anecdotal decision, that we direct our activities into a certain channel, and thus determine which of the potential expressions of our individuality become manifest. Usually we know nothing of the ultimate orientation or of the outlet toward which we travel, and the stream sweeps us to a formula of life from which there is no returning. Every decision is like a murder, and our march forward is over the stillborn bodies of all our possible selves that will never be.
The Supreme Court, or any court, when they make a decision, if that's a published decision, it becomes virtually like a statute. Everybody is suppose to follow that law. Whether I decide to allow a law to become a law without my signature is simply in effect expressing a view that while I don't particularly care for this, the Legislature passed it, it was an overwhelming. vote, or maybe there were other reasons. But my decision not to sign doesn't have to be followed by everybody from that point on
So much of what I am doing in my fiction is just trying to get into interesting places in terms of language or form, places that don't bore me. And this happens via hundreds of quick micro-decisions that are done "to taste," so to speak. So the experience is one of groping toward that interesting place - trying to leap away from anything that seems boring, or about which I don't have strong opinions. Essentially trying to avoid that moment where, devoid of any strong feeling, I start conceptualizing.
The whole world population rests on women. You have to start with the woman. And the woman will make her own decisions. If you want to have five or ten children, fine. You can have big families or small families, but you have the family you feel you can afford or feed. In China the one - child policy is already finished - on its way out because the economic conditions end up producing the same effect. If people want an expensive flat in a place like Shanghai, you can't have more than one child or two.
The broadening of the economic order which came to be seated in the individual property owner... dramatized by Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana Territory... "The supremacy of corporate economic power... consolidated by the Supreme Court decision of 1886 which declared that the Fourteenth Amendment protected the corporation... [the New Deal, leading to], within the political arena, as well as in the corporate world itself, competing centers of power that challenged those of the corporate directors.
Rhetoric is useful because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites, so that, if decisions are improperly made, they must owe their defeat to their own advocates; which is reprehensible. Further, in dealing with certain persons, even if we possessed the most accurate scientific knowledge, we should not find it easy to persuade them by the employment of such knowledge. For scientific discourse is concerned with instruction, but in the case of such persons instruction is impossible.
The answer comes to me through studying the lives of the Rosa Parks and the Vaclav Havels and the Nelson Mandelas and the Dorothy Days of this world. These are people who have come to understand that no punishment that anybody could lay on us could possibly be worse than the punishment we lay on ourselves by conspiring in our own diminishment, by living a divided life, by failing to make that fundamental decision to act and speak on the outside in ways consonant with what we know to be true on the inside.
When you have weird policy decisions in the United States that then ripple out throughout the world, the rest of the world really takes it on the chin. When the U.S. decides to set their corn on fire rather than to eat it, which is what the biofuels policy basically is - then that drives up the price of corn. It drives up the price of substitutes. And all of a sudden you have a sort of spiral of food prices. And other countries don't have the resources, because they're not allowed to, to weather the storm.
There's something behind the decision to choose to lash out at a woman. The answer to how to fix internet trolling is like fixing sexism. How do you do that? I'm of the opinion that discourse helps, that changing people's minds changes people's actions. On a more practical level, I do enjoy sassing back at trolls, because I always win, because my job makes me better at arguing. If I can frustrate or embarrass a troll, then that lodges in that person's brain that trolling me is not a consequence-free hobby.
A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.