Ethics and Decision Making

Totality of the Circumstances

• The concept of totality of the circumstances implies that there is no single decisive factor in determining whether behavior is illegal or unethical.
• Instead, the judge must consider multiple factors, including facts, context, and people involved.
• This approach requires the judge to examine the whole picture, rather than relying on a single piece of evidence.
• The totality of the circumstances encourages a more nuanced and comprehensive assessment of the situation.
• This concept was first introduced by Mendelsohn in 1998.

Forms of Capital

• There are four principal forms of capital that flow between countries.

Human Capital

• Refers to the flow of people around the world through:
  • Immigration
  • Migration
  • Emigration

Financial Capital

• Involves the flow of money capital across world markets through:
  • Overseas investment
  • Credit
  • Lending
  • Aid

Resource Capital

• Encompasses the flow of natural resources, parts, and components between companies and countries, including:
  • Metals
  • Minerals
  • Lumber
  • Energy
  • Food products
  • Microprocessors
  • Auto parts

Political Capital

• Concerns the flow of power and influence around the world using:
  • Diplomacy
  • Persuasion
  • Aggression
  • Force of arms
• To protect the right or access of a country, world region, or political bloc to the other forms of capital.

The Law of Small Numbers

• A study of kidney cancer incidence in 3,141 US counties reveals a pattern: counties with lowest incidence are mostly rural, sparsely populated, and located in traditionally Republican states.
• The counties with highest incidence of kidney cancer also tend to be rural, sparsely populated, and located in traditionally Republican states.

System 1 and System 2 Thinking

• System 2 thinking involves deliberate memory search and hypothesis formulation, which requires effort and is accompanied by physical responses like pupil dilation and increased heart rate.
• System 1 thinking is automatic and effortless, and it searches for causal connections between events, sometimes leading to spurious conclusions.

Statistical Relationships vs. Causality

• System 1 thinking is inept when faced with "merely statistical" facts, which change the probability of outcomes but do not cause them to happen.
• Random events behave in a highly regular fashion when collected, but do not lend themselves to explanation.

The Urn Example

• Imagine an urn filled with equal numbers of red and white marbles, with a patient person or robot drawing 4 marbles, recording the number of red balls, and repeating the process many times.
• The outcome "2 red, 2 white" occurs (almost exactly) 6 times as often as the outcome "4 red" or "4 white", which is a mathematical fact.
• Repeated sampling from an urn can be predicted with confidence, just like the outcome of hitting an egg with a hammer.