Physics and decisions: an inverted perspective

摘要

In social science, we seek to understand human decisions in terms of social-psychological primitives: a decision maker or conscious self, aware of its opportunity sets, resource constraints, preferences, and somewhat contentiously, endowed with at least a spoonful of free will. Tired of swimming and reluctant to brave cold rapids, one decides to devise a bridge of logs. Without the self-conscious and the associated free will, this concept of decision would need some as yet unknown redefinition. Physics and biology face no such challenge. A rock rolling down the hillside does not decide to crush the car when their paths cross, and a peacock does not choose its beautiful feathers to attract a mate. A general optimizing principle-minimizing action subject to constraints-is sufficient to organize our understanding of such phenomena without resorting to self-consciousness, preferences, or free will.Between the two approaches-the laws-of-nature in natural science and conscious decision-making in social science, we do not have to choose one or the other to model and understand human behavior. We suggest, instead, a syncretic method to gain an understanding of human behavior in three tiers, best exemplified in physics, biology, and social sciences respectively. This note outlines our proposal, explained in more details elsewhere (Mousavi and Sunder 2019).