Information and Decisions

"The more we know, the more clearly we realize what we don't know."

- Dietric Dörner in The Logic of Failure (p. 99)

Dörner discusses the impact of information and knowledge on decision making. He postulates that more information can aid in improved decisions, but can also lead to paralysis.

He also discusses the impact of time, and provides a great example of how decisions changed when time constraints were placed on the decision makers. As the time allowed to make a decision is increased, people gather more information. This can be good, but can also bring someone to inaction (due to developing more questions than answers) or resignation of complexity to where they focus on a single goal. Dorner sates that good participants gather "enough" information. (p. 103). This would be interesting to test when we develop a simulation activity, e.g., what is the impact of changing how much time people have to make decisions.