Rudin's Law

Badger

Badger

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Rudin\'s Law

In a crisis that forces a choice to be made amongst alternative courses of action,most people will choose the worst one possible. Discuss.

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Re: Rudin\'s Law

I think this is similar to the 50-50-90 rule, which states that in any situation where you have a fifty percent chance of choosing the best option you will choose the wrong one ninety percent of the time.

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Re: Rudin\'s Law

A learned man once taught me that....

When two choices present themselves you can plan, evaluate, discuss, re-evaluate, take advice, calculate, ponder, consider, or you can toss a coin.

One can take forever one takes seconds, the odds on getting the right answer are very similar.

He also maintained that the secret was to get the best out of the worst decision.

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Re: Rudin\'s Law

It's not quite the same thing but this thread reminded me of something I heard on the radio not long ago.

Somebody has conducted a study on the effectiveness of football clubs who have changed their manager. They looked at frequency of manager change, performance before and performance after. The conclusion was that statistically changing the manager had absolutely no effect on the position of the club in whatever league they happened to be.

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Only 2 things to worry about

There are only two things you ever need to worry about:
- Am I going to live?
- Am I going to die?

If you're gonna live you have nothing to worry about.

But if you're gonna die you only have two things to worry about:
- Am I gonna die in a long while?
- Am I gonna die soon?

If you're gonna die in a long while you have nothing to worry about.

But if you're gonna die soon you only have two things to worry about:
- Am I gonna go to Heaven?
- Am I gonna go to Hell?

If you're gonna go to Heaven you have nothing to worry about.

And if you're gonna go to Hell you'll be too busy catching up with old buddies you won't have time to worry any more.

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Re: Rudin\'s Law

There is a story of a civil servant during WWII who reckoned that he had the best record of correct decisions of anyone in the service. His job was to look at suggestions sent in by the public for methods by which the war might be better progressed. He reckoned that only about 1% of these had any merit at all, so by saying "No" to all of them he had a 99% accurate record.

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Re: Rudin\'s Law & Percentages

The only law for survival is to get at least 51% of the decisions right quantatively.

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Re: Plans

I was told on a course that the reason for having a plan was that at least then you had something to change.

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The trouble with plans .....

.... is that failure creeps up on you in a slow, painful and very visible way that makes you utterly miserable as it becomes obvious you're gonna fail.

But if you have no plan then failure comes as a complete suprise, almost a revelation, with no long drawn-out misery!

Hey presto.

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Re: Rudin\'s Law

This is probably correct - wouldn't the word 'Crisis' be key here? Crisis would suggest that a snap decision needs to be made and those are the very worst sorts. All my good decisions are the ones I have planned and considered - all my bad ones are the poorly thought out or rushed ones.

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Claymore
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Re: Rudin\'s Law

Wouldn't Sod's Law come in to play in these circumstances?

For example, let's suppose you are on a lee shore in a gale when your mast falls down. You have 30 seconds before the boat hits the rocks. You could either: go forward to drop the anchor, or go below to start the engine.

Sod' Law would ensure that if you chose the first option the chain would jam in the hawse pipe, or if you decided on the other option, the engine would fail to start.

Either way your decision would appear to have been a bad one because having not attempted the other option you would not know that that would have failed too.


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Re: Rudin\'s Law

Well .. definition of a good decision? Peresumably a succesful outcome .. how do you define success. I would argue thatt often the so called bad decisions are made when there is no possibility of desired success from any of the feasible paths of action. In that light the bad decision was the one that got you into that unforeseen or foreseen but risk assessed as being an acceptable level of risk. EG I have seen yachts motoring on the inside passage at st Albans on a lee shore. Engine fails .. decision is seen as anchor or get sails up .. the bad decision was actually to motor along in tghe first place without their sails up or giving themselves sufficient sea room ... all IMHO of course .. and are'nt we all guilty of it occasionally?

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Re: Rudin\'s Law

.... from which you must conclude that there is no such thing as a bad decision because IF you could replay time every other decision would turn out to be equally bad.

And 'bad' is only a relative measure so if all decisions are shown to be equal then we might as well ditch the concept of 'good' and 'bad' decisions and just go to the pub. Now that IS a good decision.



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Oh God!

You're sounding like a yachtmaster instructor - have you been approached - is it to be Jamesie - Yachtmaster with Oak Leaves and Cluster?
Will you still speak or get that far up yourself that we won't know what you are on about and only converse with the chosen melifluous ones - Yerman Jermain etc?

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Claymore
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Re: Oh God!

Indeed Mr Claymore, a word to the wise or a pearl before swine. Sounds more like the latter in your case.

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Generally speaking

it's regarded as a bad idea to start motoring if the stick has gone over the side, cos there's likely to be an awful lot of steel wire and ropey bits just waiting to wrap the prop.

So it's grease the hawse pipe and anchor.

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Re: Rudin\'s Law

The worst choice possible is usually to dither and not act (or to act indecisively). There is probably a range of decisions that, executed decisively, are OK. The "perfect decision" is a philosophical abstraction, unattainable in practise.

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