Risk Dilemma's »

MARK JABLONOWSKI is a professional risk manager, analyst and researcher with over thirty years of experience. During this time he has published over fifty papers in a variety of scholarly and professional publications, on the subjects of risk management and the economics of risk. He has also served as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Hartford (West Hartford, Connecticut, USA). Mr. Jablonowski is founder and principal of IntuitiveRisk, a center for the study of high-stakes risk.

This book identifies the pitfalls of applying precautionary strategies to high-stakes risks that have already become entrenched. Precaution must be applied on a precautionary basis, considering alternative paths to progress that maintain natural risk levels. This requires a radical rethinking of the way we define and achieve progress.

1 A Review of High-Stakes Decision Criteria 1

Formalizing risky decisions 1

The expected value criterion 3

Decision criteria when probability is unknown or irrelevant 5

Conditions for indifference between fatalism and precaution 7

App A Fuzzy representation of danger 10

2 Finding Alternatives to Risk 15

The preactionary approach 16

Identifying alternatives using backcasting 18

Backcasting under uncertainty 22

Backcasting versus backtracking 24

Maintaining the balance of life 26

Contrasting the "post-fact" approach 28

Cost/benefit and post-fact risk management 29

Avoiding mechanistic precaution 32

Risk acceptance - risk avoidance - risk anticipation 34

3 Risk Avoidance: All or Nothing 36

How risk grows 36

Why prioritization fails 39

Pragmatic arguments for not adding risks 40

Satisfying the burden of proof 41

A possibilistic model of catastrophic potentials 42

Is there a "natural" level of risk? 45

On the notion of "selective fatalism" 47

Selective fatalism and dilemmas 50

The "tolerability" compromise 52

4 Precaution in Context 56

The hallmarks of precaution 56

Context and risk acceptance criteria 58

The problem of valuation 60

Inter-contextual effects of precaution 61

Alternatives assessment across contexts 65

The need for coordinated goals 66

5 A Reassessment of Risk Assessment 68

Using risk assessments the right way 69

Identifying high-stakes risks and their mechanisms 70

Decision theoretic models 75

Integrating fuzzy risk thresholds 78

6 Can We Avoid Risk Dilemmas? 81

The only two options 82

Facing the paradox of progress 83

Risk dilemmas and self-interest 85

The prospect of "infinite disutility"89

The need for a wider approach to science 91

Radical rethinking 93

Science to the rescue? 96

The dangers of giving up 100

7 Summary and Conclusion (of Sorts) 102

Understanding high-stakes decision processes 103

Making precaution work 104

How do current regimes compare? 106

Doing the right thing 109

Who will lead the way? 113