Optimal or not; depends on the task Evans, Nathan J.; Bennett, Aimée J.; Brown, Scott D.
Psychonomic bulletin & review,
06/2019, Letnik:
26, Številka:
3
Journal Article
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Decision-making involves a tradeoff between pressures for caution and urgency. Previous research has investigated how well humans optimize this tradeoff, and mostly concluded that people adopt a ...sub-optimal strategy that over-emphasizes caution. This emphasis reduces how many decisions can be made in a fixed time, which reduces the “reward rate”. However, the strategy that is optimal depends critically on the timing properties of the experiment design: the slower the rate of decision opportunities, the more cautious the optimal strategy. Previous studies have almost uniformly adopted very fast designs, which favor very urgent decision-making. This raises the possibility that previous findings—that humans adopt strategies that are too cautious—could either be ascribed to human caution, or to the experiments’ design. To test this, we used a slowed-down decision-making task in which the optimal strategy was quite cautious. With this task, and in contrast to previous findings, the average strategy adopted across participants was very close to optimal, with about equally many participants adopting too-cautious as too-urgent strategies. Our findings suggest that task design can play a role in inferences about optimality, and that previous conclusions regarding human sub-optimality are conditional on the task settings. This limits claims about human optimality that can be supported by the available evidence.
The ocean is the next frontier for many conservation and development activities. Growth in marine protected areas, fisheries management, the blue economy, and marine spatial planning initiatives are ...occurring both within and beyond national jurisdictions. This mounting activity has coincided with increasing concerns about sustainability and international attention to ocean governance. Yet, despite growing concerns about exclusionary decision-making processes and social injustices, there remains inadequate attention to issues of social justice and inclusion in ocean science, management, governance and funding. In a rapidly changing and progressively busier ocean, we need to learn from past mistakes and identify ways to navigate a just and inclusive path towards sustainability. Proactive attention to inclusive decision-making and social justice is needed across key ocean policy realms including marine conservation, fisheries management, marine spatial planning, the blue economy, climate adaptation and global ocean governance for both ethical and instrumental reasons. This discussion paper aims to stimulate greater engagement with these critical topics. It is a call to action for ocean-focused researchers, policy-makers, managers, practitioners, and funders.
•There has been inadequate attention to social justice and inclusion in ocean science, management, governance and funding.•This paper reviews injustices and exclusions across key ocean policy domains and argues for greater attention to these issues.•The social sciences can increase understanding and help develop robust and evidence-based solutions.•We need to learn from past mistakes and identify ways to navigate a just and inclusive path towards sustainable oceans.•This is a call to action for ocean researchers, policy-makers, managers, practitioners, and funders.
Under appropriate conditions, community-based fisheries management can support sound resource stewardship, with positive social and environmental outcomes. Evaluating indigenous peoples’ involvement ...in commercial sea cucumber and geoduck fisheries on the central coast of British Columbia, Canada, we found that the current social-ecological system configuration is relatively ecologically sustainable according to stock assessments. However, the current system also results in perceived inequities in decision-making processes, harvesting allocations, and socioeconomic benefits. As a result, local coastal resource managers envision a transformation of sea cucumber and geoduck fisheries governance and management institutions. We assessed the potential robustness of the proposed institutions using Elinor Ostrom’s common-pool resource design principles. Grounded in the region’s legal, political, and historical context, our analysis suggests that greater local involvement in these invertebrate fisheries and their management could provide more benefits to local communities than the status quo while maintaining an ecologically sustainable resource. Our research highlights the importance of explicitly addressing historical context and equity considerations in social-ecological system analyses and when renegotiating the institutions governing common-pool resources.
Conservation decisions increasingly involve multiple environmental and social objectives, which result in complex decision contexts with high potential for trade-offs. Improving social equity is one ...such objective that is often considered an enabler of successful outcomes and a virtuous ideal in itself Despite its idealized importance in conservation policy, social equity is often highly simplified or ill-defined and is applied uncritically. What constitutes equitable outcomes and processes is highly normative and subject to ethical deliberation. Different ethical frameworks may lead to different conceptions of equity through alternative perspectives of what is good or right. This can lead to different and potentially conflicting equity objectives in practice. We promote a more transparent, nuanced, and pluralistic conceptualization of equity in conservation decision making that particularly recognizes where multidimensional equity objectives may conflict. To help identify and mitigate ethical conflicts and avoid cases of good intentions producing bad outcomes, we encourage a more analytical incorporation of equity into conservation decision making particularly during mechanistic integration of equity objectives. We recommend that in conservation planning motivations and objectivesfor equity be made explicit within the problem context, methods used to incorporate equity objectives be applied with respect to stated objectives, and, should objectives dictate, evaluation of equity outcomes and adaptation of strategies be employed during policy implementation. Las decisiones de conservación cada vez más involucran objetivos ambientales y sociales múltiples, lo que resulta en contextos complejos de decisión con un alto potencial para las compensaciones. La mejora de la equidad social es uno de dichos objetivos que frecuentemente es considerado un facilitador de resultados exitosos y un ideal virtuoso por sí mismo. A pesar de su importancia idealizada dentro de la política de la conservación, la equidad social generalmente es simplificada o mal-definida y es aplicada sin crítica. Lo que constituye a los resultados y procesos equitativos es altamente normativo y está sujeto a la deliberación ética. Los diferentes marcos éticos de trabajo pueden resultar en diferentes concepciones de la equidad por medio de perspectivas alternativas de lo que es bueno o correcto. Esto puede llevar a objetivos de equidad diferentes y potencialmente conflictivos en la práctica. Promovemos una conceptualización más transparente, matizada y pluralista de la equidad dentro de la toma de decisiones de conservación, la cual reconoce particularmente en dónde pueden entrar en conflicto los objetivos de equidad multidimensionales. Para ayudar a identificar y mitigar los conflictos éticos y evitar casos de buenas intenciones que producen malos resultados, alentamos una incorporación más analítica de la equidad dentro de la toma de decisiones de conservación, particularmente durante la integración mecánica de los objetivos de equidad. Recomendamos que en laplaneación de la conservación, las motivaciones y los objetivos para la equidad sean explícitos dentro del contexto del problema, que los métodos usados para incorporar los objetivos de equidad sean aplicados con respecto a los objetivos manifestados y, si lo dictan los objetivos, que la evaluación de los resultados de equidad y las estrategias de adaptación sean empleadas durante la implementación de la política.
We analyze simulated maps of the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) experiment and recover a nearly cosmic variance limited estimate of the reionization optical depth τ. We use a power ...spectrum-based likelihood to simultaneously clean foregrounds and estimate cosmological parameters in multipole space. Using software specifically designed to constrain τ, the amplitude of scalar fluctuations As, and the tensor-to-scalar ratio r, we demonstrate that the CLASS experiment will be able to estimate τ within a factor of two of the cosmic variance limit allowed by full-sky cosmic microwave background polarization measurements. Additionally, we discuss the role of CLASS's τ constraint in conjunction with gravitational lensing of the CMB on obtaining a 4 measurement of the sum of the neutrino masses.
•Coastal communities remain on the fringes of the promised socio-economic benefits of oil development.•An intersection of four themes characterize the oil-fisheries-livelihoods nexus.•Small-scale ...fishing communities experience adverse impacts due to reduced access to ocean-based livelihoods.•The compounding pressures include pollution, dwindling fish stock, and overall marginalization.•Future research should focus on gender and cross-sectoral governance and collaboration.
A quarter of global oil production comes from offshore fields and about 60% of internationally-traded oil travels by tankers. The relationship between oil, fisheries, and coastal communities is documented primarily through case studies in individual jurisdictions and via the impacts of oil spills. Yet, the implications of oil development for fisheries and coastal communities are much broader. This study provides an extensive review of the effects of oil development in relation to four interconnected themes: 1) the environment, including marine habitats and fish; 2) small-scale fisheries and coastal community livelihoods; 3) coastal and ocean spaces, including disputes over territory and infrastructure; and 4) ocean and coastal governance processes. We map spatial overlaps between the oil sector and small-scale fisheries and point to the frequent displacement of fishers from fishing grounds due to increasing coastal traffic and infrastructure, and the catastrophic effects of oil spills on fisheries and coastal economies. Though the oil sector generally has negative impacts on fisheries livelihoods and coastal communities, these effects and their mechanisms vary across locations, ecosystems, species, and specific activities and groups. Overall, this narrative review provides a comprehensive account of the scholarship to date and points to key themes for future research, including intersections between offshore oil and gender, cross-sectoral governance, and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 14. Underpinning all of these challenges and potential solutions is a clear need for stronger integration of social and natural science knowledge, perspectives, and tools.
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