Dealing with uncertainty

Writing in the April Scientific American about Shaping the Future, Steven W. Popper, Robert J. Lempert and Steven C. Bankes argue that scientific uncertainty often becomes an excuse to ignore long-term problems, such as climate change. It doesn't have to be so:

The trouble now is that the world faces a number of challenges, both long- and short-term, that are far from well understood: how to preserve the environment, ensure the future of Social Security, guard against terrorism and manage the effects of novel technology.

These problems are simply too complex and contingent for scientists to make definitive predictions. In the presence of such deep uncertainty, the machinery of prediction and decision making seizes up. Traditional analytical approaches gravitate to the well-understood parts of the challenge and shy away from the rest.

...The three of us - an economist, a physicist and a computer scientist all working in RAND's Pardee Center - have been fundamentally rethinking the role of analysis. We have constructed rigorous, systematic methods for dealing with deep uncertainty. The basic idea is to liberate ourselves from the need for precise prediction by using the computer to help frame strategies that work well over a very wide range of plausible futures. Rather than seeking to eliminate uncertainty, we highlight it and then find ways to manage it.

Big claims! See what you think.

Comments

[simon]

I would encourage the authors to study business management which has been practicing this art for a nearly a century. Business schools are easy to find given that they are located at almost every major university. Seriously, I am shocked that researchers at RAND could utter such statements. There are a multitude of tools to address the issue of uncertainty. Many developed at the RAND institute. Scenario planning, Delphi, ect.

I think that the real issue that these scientists are struggling with is how can scientists use these techniques in such a manner as to maintain the appearannce of objectivity, while pushing their values on the rest of us as science versus personal value judgments.

I would also like to note that one concept that has not been adequately appreciated in dealing with uncertainty is opportunity costs. The situation often presented is act or disaster. Not appropraite.