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To illustrate the importance of separating priority from policy, make the common assumption that fewer human deaths are preferable to more human deaths, other things equal. It follows that in the emergency room of a hospital, if a large number of persons is brought in at the same time and capacity is limited, the policy followed is to sedate the lightly injured and treat those with serious wounds. That policy tends to produce the preferred outcome very consistently. If the emergency room is located on a large warship engaged in combat, the same priority leads to quite a different policy: "Sedate the badly injured and treat those who can return to the battle."

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Individual characteristics do make a difference, even with respect to very powerful offices. The Congress of the United States may have the formal legal power to act in a particular way, but if those who currently hold seats in Congress refuse to exercise that power, the collectivity cannot act. It would be a mistake to regard the formal power as equivalent to real power. In such cases, it may take a fine sense of political judgment to determine whether or not formal power can actually be used. Perhaps the best way to think of the options available to an actor is to imagine a set of film clips, each beginning at the point where action is taken, showing all the significant effects of action as they are projected by the available theories.

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Each alternative is a future scenario that can be brought about by actions within the actor's capacity. The content of the scenarios will be different in at least some respects, major or minor. There must be at least two such alternatives for every choice; usually there are many more than two, but most are ignored. The effect of action or choice is to produce one of the film clips rather than the others, and that provides the justification for basing preferences on comparisons rather than absolute measures. Technically, the consequences of action can always be stated in the general form: alternative A (which is projected using a set of normative variables) rather than alternative B (projected using the same set of normative variables, at least one of which takes a different value in B than in A).

 Free Sample Persuasive Essay

Realistically assessed, the amount of knowledge (theory) available for projecting the effects of major collective actions is extremely limited, even in such presumably powerful fields as economics. The film clips from which choices must be made may be fairly sharp and clear in the short run, but they blur substantially over relatively short time periods. The capacity to project future effects diminishes rapidly over time. There is little chance of improving the situation drastically in the short run, particularly with respect to collective affairs. And in any event, the danger in theoretical projections lies as often in expecting or demanding too much as in having too little.

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Out of necessity, humans live fairly close to the present. Past history tends to blur quickly with time, leaving aside exceptional events, and the "lessons learned" from these exceptions tend to become distorted very quickly. Events that provide subject matter for books become in a short time only chapters in books and then paragraphs--and then they disappear altogether in most instances. The future cannot be projected very far; the past fades quickly. That must be taken as one of the "givens" in human affairs, and a major handicap it can be. But it may also be a blessing, for too much memory could be a terrible burden, and too much capacity to foretell the future could be equally disastrous.

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In making reasoned choices, the first question to be answered is always "What are the options available?" Reasoned choice proceeds from a systematic structuring of the alternatives to a comparison of their content and a solution of the particular case. The actor must be identified in order to determine capacity and thus project outcomes; a selection of normative variables is used to identify the significant consequences of each of the courses of action available. If the actor is a collective body, the legal capacity of the office or agency may provide a rough base for projecting outcomes, but there is often a significant difference between real capacity and legal capacity--and a significant gap between potential authority and the authority that is likely to be exercised.

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the risk of war may be the more reasonable choice to make. Compared to certain death, serious injury is preferable, other things equal. Nevertheless, a very strong justification for believing that death was certain would surely be necessary before serious injury would be accepted willingly. Psychologically, there is a pronounced tendency for humans to seek to deal with deadly choices by delay or procrastination. In all honesty it should be said that the strategy sometimes works, although only when expectations are actually very uncertain; in other instances, such as delaying treatment of a serious illness like cancer, the result can be lethal.

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Finally, it is worth noting that the options must be projected using the best theories available at the time when the choice is made. Those theories may prove to be very faulty, leading to outcomes that are almost wholly different from what was expected. Such errors provide evidence for criticizing and improving the theories used to make the projections, but they do not enter into the criticism of the choice. Choice is directed at a stipulated set of outcomes, which must be taken as stated--with a probability of success attached to each one. Criticism of the choice must refer to the set of outcomes at which the choice was directed, not the set of outcomes that actually appeared.

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Structurally, human actions trigger a sequence of chain reactions similar to those that follow the detonation of a nuclear device. One change leads to another, and so on through a series. Each set of outcomes is linked by an unbroken theoretical chain extending back to the original action. The set of chain reactions shown in the figure illustrates just one of the options available in a given choice. A separate set of reactions must be projected for each of the actions within the capacity of the actor. How full and complete must the chain be? Where does it come to an end? How can its adequacy be judged?

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In principle, the full consequences of any action cannot be projected, just as a complete description cannot be made of any situation. This suggests that it is very important to develop procedures for monitoring the consequences of action, especially after major decisions have been taken, to determine the consequences actually produced, and particularly to locate significant departures from or additions to the expectations on which the decision was based. In practice, that is rarely done systematically and effectively, and where data are collected, they are not always processed and inserted into the decision-making machinery.