Elliott, Kevin C. and Dickson, Michael (2011) Distinguishing Risk and Uncertainty in Risk Assessments of Emerging Technologies. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Economist Frank Knight drew a distinction between decisions under risk and decisions under uncertainty. Despite the significance of this distinction for decision theory, we argue that there has been inadequate attention to the difficulties involved in classifying decision situations into these categories. Using the risk assessment of carbon nanotubes as an example, we show that it is often unclear whether there is adequate information to classify a decision situation as being under risk as opposed to uncertainty. We conclude by providing two (compatible) suggestions for responding to these difficulties: (1) treating decisions as real-world experiments; and (2) promoting broadly based deliberation about quantitative information.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | |||||||||
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| Keywords: | risk, uncertainty, carbon nanotubes, real-world experiments, deliberation, decision theory, precaution | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Confirmation/Induction General Issues > Decision Theory General Issues > Ethical Issues General Issues > Science and Society General Issues > Science and Policy General Issues > Technology |
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| Depositing User: | Kevin Elliott | |||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 02 Sep 2011 04:55 | |||||||||
| Last Modified: | 02 Sep 2011 04:55 | |||||||||
| Item ID: | 8771 | |||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Confirmation/Induction General Issues > Decision Theory General Issues > Ethical Issues General Issues > Science and Society General Issues > Science and Policy General Issues > Technology |
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| Date: | September 2011 | |||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/8771 |
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