{"id":16904,"date":"2015-12-23T22:50:29","date_gmt":"2015-12-23T21:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/?p=16904"},"modified":"2020-12-05T14:16:33","modified_gmt":"2020-12-05T13:16:33","slug":"decision-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/decision-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"Decision Engineering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tim Van Gelder, arguably the worlds greatest authority on critical thinking, asks &#8220;What is Decision Engineering?&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\u00a0My favorite definition of the engineer is somebody who can\u2019t help but think that there must be a better way to do this. A more comprehensive and workmanlike definition is given by Wikipedia:<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>&#8220;Engineering is the application of scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to invent, design, build, maintain, research, and improve structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes.&#8221;<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>The activities mentioned above seem to fit this very broad concept: we were engaged to help improve or develop systems \u2013 in our case, systems for making decisions.\u00a0It is therefore tempting to describe some of what we do as decision engineering.\u201d&#8230;Decision engineering is applying relevant knowledge to design, build, maintain, and improve systems for making decisions.\u201d<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\u201cRelevant knowledge can include knowledge of at least three kinds:\n<ul>\n<li lang=\"en-US\">Theoretical knowledge from any relevant field of inquiry;<\/li>\n<li lang=\"en-US\">Practical knowledge (know-how, or tacit knowledge) of the decision engineer;<\/li>\n<li lang=\"en-US\">\u201cLocal\u201d knowledge of the particular context and challenges of decision making, contributed by people already in or familiar with the context, such as the decision makers themselves.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n&#8230;in order to improve a particular decision system, a decision engineer might use approaches such as:\n<ul>\n<li lang=\"en-US\">Bringing standard engineering principles and techniques to bear on making decisions<\/li>\n<li lang=\"en-US\">Using more structured decision methods, including the application of decision analysis techniques<\/li>\n<li lang=\"en-US\">Basing decisions on \u201cbig data\u201d and \u201cdata science,\u201d such as predictive analytics<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n&#8230;In short, I like this more general definition of decision engineering (in four words or less, <strong>building better decision systems<\/strong>) because it seems to get at the essence of what decision engineers do, allowing but not requiring that highly technical, quantitative approaches might be used.&#8221;<\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/timvangelder.com\/2015\/01\/07\/what-is-decision-engineering\/\">What is Decision Engineering? | Tim van Gelder<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tim Van Gelder, arguably the worlds greatest authority on critical thinking, asks &#8220;What is Decision Engineering?&#8221;: \u00a0My favorite definition of the engineer is somebody who can\u2019t help but think that there must be a better way to do this. A more comprehensive and workmanlike definition is given by Wikipedia: &#8220;Engineering is the application of scientific, &#8230; <a title=\"Decision Engineering\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/decision-engineering\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Decision Engineering\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[130,139,3,14,42,17],"tags":[300,296],"class_list":["post-16904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-psychology","category-critical-thinking","category-engineering","category-philosophy","category-psychology","category-science","tag-processed","tag-published"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prY0k-4oE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":17531,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/michael-mauboussin\/","url_meta":{"origin":16904,"position":0},"title":"Michael Mauboussin","author":"Limbic","date":"March 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Just heard an interview with Michael Mauboussin on The Knowledge Project podcast (a Farnum Street blog production) and he was super interesting. A few quotes form the podcast. These are paraphrased: \"An expert is someone who has a predictive model that works.\" \"When it comes to decision making, Daniel Kahneman\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropology","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/science\/anthropology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":23008,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/hail-the-maintainers\/","url_meta":{"origin":16904,"position":1},"title":"Hail the Maintainers","author":"Limbic","date":"December 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I am finally clearing out some old Instapaper articles. One that I really enjoyed was Andrew Russell's examination of our civilizational obsession with \"innovation\" at the expense of maintenance and sustainable operability. This is something we in cloud services learned fairly recently. Features are increasingly\u00a0table stakes, fundamentals (e.g. availability, supportability,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Cloud Computing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Cloud Computing","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/it\/cloud-computing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17539,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/trend-is-not-destiny\/","url_meta":{"origin":16904,"position":2},"title":"Trend is Not Destiny","author":"Limbic","date":"March 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Stop and just go read the superb Farnam Street Blog on \"The Central Mistake of Historicism: Karl Popper on Why Trend is Not Destiny\".","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropology","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/science\/anthropology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The-trend-is-not-destiny-1-300x292","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/The-trend-is-not-destiny-1-300x292.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":16769,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/rise-of-the-expert-generalist\/","url_meta":{"origin":16904,"position":3},"title":"Rise of the Expert Generalist","author":"Limbic","date":"August 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Enjoyed this profile of Charlie Munger on Medium, especially the description of the Expert Generalist, a rival to the 10,000 hour specialist: The Rise Of The Expert-Generalist The rival argument to the 10,000 hour rule is the expert-generalist approach. Orit Gadiesh, chairman of Bain & Co, who coined the term,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropology","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/science\/anthropology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"NewImage","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/tshape.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":31937,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/moral-foundations-theory\/","url_meta":{"origin":16904,"position":4},"title":"Moral Foundations Theory","author":"Limbic","date":"December 29, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I was just reminded of Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory, something I first encountered in The Righteous Mind. Moral Foundations Theory was created by a group of social and cultural psychologists to understand why morality varies so much across cultures yet still shows so many similarities and recurrent themes. In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Business Psychology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Business Psychology","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/business\/business-psychology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16036,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/three-great-books-on-moral-philosophy-and-ethics\/","url_meta":{"origin":16904,"position":5},"title":"Three great books on Moral Philosophy and Ethics","author":"Limbic","date":"September 26, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"These three books go brilliantly together. Here is the order I read them in. The images link to Amazon.com kindle editions. The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene The Quest for a Moral Compass by Kenan Malik","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Contemporary Culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Contemporary Culture","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/humanities\/contemporary-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The_Righteous_Mind__Why_Good_People_Are_Divided_by_Politics_and_Religion_-_Kindle_edition_by_Jonathan_Haidt__Politics___Social_Sciences_Kindle_eBooks___Amazon_com_","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/The_Righteous_Mind__Why_Good_People_Are_Divided_by_Politics_and_Religion_-_Kindle_edition_by_Jonathan_Haidt__Politics___Social_Sciences_Kindle_eBooks___Amazon_com_.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}