Informatics Perspectives on Decision Taking, a Case Study on Resolving Process Product Ambiguity

Abstract

A decision is an act or event of decision taking. Decision making always includes decision taking, the latter not involving significant exchanges with non-deciding agents. A decision outcome is a piece of storable information constituting the result of a decision. Decision outcomes are typed, for instance: plan, command, assertion, or boolean reply to a question. Decision outcomes are seen by an audience and autonomous actions from the audience is supposed to realize the putting into effect of a decision outcome, thus leading to so-called decision effects.Decision outcomes are supposedly expected by the decider. Using a model or a theory concerning the causal chain leading from a decision outcome to one or more decision effects may support a decision taker decision taker in predicting plausible decision effects for candidate decision outcomes.Decision taking is positioned amidst many related notions including: decision making, decision process, decision making process, decision process making, decision engineering, decision progression, and decision progression production.

Personal Multi-threading

“…Below I will not allow that threads are interrupted by other threads. 4 External interrupts may occur, and such interrupts may trigger a so-called contemplating phase of the interrupted thread (say t) after with a switch to another thread (perhaps an interrupt handler) may take place. If resumption of t is envisaged a pseudo-switch to t followed by a pseudo-switchback (pseudo-resumption) may be considered.…”

“…2. Outcome oriented decision taking (OODT from [4]) is used to conceptualize the notion of a decision.…”

“…I will not say that a switch performed by agent A indicates that A has taken the decision to engage in a thread switch. Following the terminology of OODT (outcome oriented decision taking, see [4,5,7]) decision taking requires a protocol which terminates with the production of a decision outcome. Putting the decision outcome into effect must cause the switch if the switch is to be understood as resulting from decision taking.…”

“…The restriction to the same progression of actions (see[23] where the notion of a progression is preferred over the notion of a sequence in the setting of actions) was inserted by the present author. Moreover, I would prefer the following rephrasing of this statement: "a strategy refers to a premeditated progression of actions in a context where alternative premeditated progressions of the same actions are possible" 4. In multi-tasking, however, a task may interrupt another task from the same multi-task, and the interrupting task may subsequently cause the resumption of the interrupted task.…”