Reply to By the numbers: A dispassioned evaluation of Hardy (compared to Deal and Wilson)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Ideally people will engage the points in the first post instead of devolving into screeds against uniforms or the[b] unquantified [/b]value of fitting in.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy[/quote]

OP here. There does not exist a robust theory of decisionmaking that can adequately take into account that which cannot be quantified, measured or even perceived. You are suggesting we make decisions based upon "feelings and perceptions" (don't take these words literally). While that's well-and-good, it sounds an awful lot like simply finding items to include that justify a preordained decision. (I honestly believe that this is what most people do -- myself included at times, but that doesn't mean it is how things should be. It is purely ad hoc.)

The theory implied by your post(s) is observationally equivalent to a person doing whatever he wanted to do in the first place. Data be damned. There is no updating and posterior beliefs match prior beliefs regardless of what is observed in the interim. I don't think this is what you actually want. [/quote]

Sure there are. Expert rankings,  and other methodologies to get estimates of the best outcome (or even forecasts) that reflect knowledge that exists but cannot easily be quantified.   People make decisions reflecting things like that all the time and we do not consider them irrational.    There are many factors we can perceive but not measure, or can measure  but know the measurement to be at best a poor proxy for the relevant factor.

Take someone choosing between two job offers.  Job A has a 1% higher salary, and similar (quantifiable) indicators of promotion, human capital development, etc than job B.  But the would be employee clicks with the boss at Job B, and feels comfortable with the corporate culture, while at Job A they feel tense with their new boss, one of the senior execs is someone they know dislikes them (but they have no idea what influence on them the senior exec would have) and they find the corp culture uncomfortable. I would suggest that to choose job A in that case is not rational, though all the quantifiable measures (unless we include some soft quantification) support it.

Obviously there is no way to account for what cannot be perceived. There are things that can be perceived, but not quantified, unless we use a very soff approach to what quantification means.  
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