Irrational Economist_ Making Decisions in a Dangerous World - Erwann Michel-Kerjan [130]
I feel strongly that there is a role for international decision sciences organizations here. There is so much wrong with the world that could be improved if contending groups got together in a collegial way to try to figure out how to get joint gains. This has to done in an experimental situation, where people, as a matter of course, would take a look at the world and say what’s wrong and how it might be resolved. This could be accomplished by bringing researchers from different countries to work informally together to map out potential solutions.
An example is the remarkable speech President Lyndon Johnson gave in 1966 in which he called for the scientists of the United States and the Soviet Union to work together on issues other than military and space matters—issues that plagued all advanced societies such as energy, environment, and health. From 1967 to 1972, I was a member of the U.S. team that negotiated with the Soviet Union and six other countries, both East and West, in establishing the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, near Vienna in Austria. The negotiation took place during the height of the Cold War and was a confidence-building gesture. I learned a lot about the theory and practice of many-party negotiations in the presence of extreme cultural differences.
When I served as the first director of IIASA, in 1972-1975, I had that very vision in mind: to bring together distinguished scholars to work on some of the toughest issues confronting the world and to challenge them to think about what new problems the world could be facing twenty years later. We did so by maintaining the importance of neutrality in our work. It is no surprise to me that IIASA is still involved in pressing global negotiations today, climate negotiations and natural disaster management being two of them.
It would be nice if (independent of political processes) there were many more international research centers like IIASA where people would discuss not the decision problems that exist today, or what the world should be like today, but rather what we should be worrying about in the future—say, over the next twenty to twenty-five years. Just imagine what could be accomplished if only people thought about this hard enough.
A FINAL WORD, TO THE NEW GENERATION
If I had one recommendation for the next generation, it is that I would like them to be much more proactive in the choice of their own careers. And when it comes to making decisions in a dangerous world, I would hope that they will conceive of new possibilities that are not being currently pursued. Aspire to be true innovators!
RECOMMENDED READING
Hammond, John S., Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa (1999). Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Raiffa, Howard (1992). “How IIASA Began” (http://www.iiasa.ac.at/docs/history.html).
Raiffa, Howard (2002). The Art of Science and Negotiations: How to Resolve Conflicts and Get the Best Out of Bargaining. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Influential Social Science, Risks, and Disasters
A View from the National Science Foundation
ROBERT E. O’CONNOR AND DENNIS E. WENGER
Although there is no shortage of grousing among social scientists who think that policy makers ignore their work, there is much evidence that the findings of social scientists continue to inform policy decisions in significant ways.1 In this chapter we discuss the influence of social scientists in informing policy makers and ultimately helping to improve public policy.
Following a broad-brush discussion of scientific knowledge and public