Bounded Rationality

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 28th Aug 2023

We have all had moments when we “lost it”, when we allowed our emotions to take over from our rational thinking. In most cases this “switch” involves a decision e.g., if someone deliberately cuts us off in traffic, and we decide to aggressively chase them, flashing our lights, slamming our horn etc., we decided to lean in, and hand over control of events to our emotional self, and let it make the decisions for us concerning our following actions i.e., we decide not to think rationally; it is a choice we make. The term for such “thinking” is “bounded rationality”,...Click To Read More

Range

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 21st Aug 2023

I have written a lot over the years concerning de-escalation. I believe it is an extremely important skill to learn and develop as most acts of aggression/violence are a result of social interactions. Whilst we may spend a lot of time and effort devising personal safety and protection strategies to reduce the risk of being targeted by persistent and hardened offenders (which isn’t a bad thing), we may do so at the expense of thinking about and training to deal with the more likely aggressive incidents involving everyday social interactions e.g., we are far more likely to get into an...Click To Read More

Survivor Bias

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 14th Aug 2023

Sometimes when I’m presenting to a group on personal safety, there will be an individual who will claim that the advice I’m giving doesn’t match up with their experience(s) e.g., if I advise that you should always lock your front door, they will state that they always leave it unlocked and in 30 years nobody has ever broken into their house etc. In one sense it is hard to argue with someone’s experience, even if it only constitutes a sample size of one. This is one of the issues with “Survivor Bias”, we use our experiences of winning/success to blind...Click To Read More

Mantras and Dealing In Violence

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 7th Aug 2023

The vast majority of human beings have a natural aversion to kill, even in combat settings where survival depends on killing another person. However, the further away – geographically - we are, and the less personal it gets, the easier it becomes e.g., it is easier to fire a mortar round, or drop a bomb, than it is to look a person in the eyes and pull a trigger etc., even though rationally we might know the consequences of each of these actions result in the loss of life. There is a “fatigue” and stress amongst many drone operators, who...Click To Read More