Averting Catastrophe: Decision Theory for COVID-19, Climate Change, and Potential Disasters of All Kinds
Cass R. Sunstein
Jun 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by David Marantz
headphones
Audiobook
3 hr 48 min
Unabridged
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
Want a 22 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline.
Add
About this audiobook
The world is increasingly confronted with new challenges related to climate change, globalization, disease, and technology. Governments are faced with having to decide how much risk is worth taking, how much destruction and death can be tolerated, and how much money should be invested in the hopes of avoiding catastrophe. Lacking full information, should decision-makers focus on avoiding the most catastrophic outcomes? When should extreme measures be taken to prevent as much destruction as possible? Averting Catastrophe explores how governments ought to make decisions in times of imminent disaster. Cass R. Sunstein argues that using the "maximin rule," which calls for choosing the approach that eliminates the worst of the worst-case scenarios, may be necessary when public officials lack important information, and when the worst-case scenario is too disastrous to contemplate. He underscores this argument by emphasizing the reality of "Knightian uncertainty," found in circumstances in which it is not possible to assign probabilities to various outcomes. At once an approachable introduction to decision-theory and a provocative argument for how governments ought to handle risk, Averting Catastrophe offers a definitive path forward in a world rife with uncertainty.
About the author
Cass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. He is the author of Nudge (with Richard H. Thaler), Noise (with Daniel Kahneman and Olivier Sibony), The World According to Star Wars, and Wiser (with Reid Hastie).
David Marantz is an actor living in New York City. He has narrated eighty-five-plus titles since his first in 2011. He won an AudioFile Earphones Award for The Mind Club by Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray, and was nominated for an Audie Award for his contribution to the short story collection Rip-Off!
Rate this audiobook
Tell us what you think.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
