Uncertainty, risk and ignorance

Abstract

The topic of uncertainty, risk and ignorance, and one may add probability, is controversial both across and within professions. While Frank Knight and Maynard Keynes both believed that risk and uncertainty are quite different objects, generations of Bayesian statisticians and economists have attacked this distinction, arguing that the logic of Bayesian calculus can tame uncertainty. What is the ecologists to do when confronted with risk analyses? What to accept and what to refute? The issue in methodological as well as normative – or political. Some of the fathers of the ecological movement have been outspoken in their warning against excesses of quantification, especially when these serve vested interests under the clothing of risk analysis. In addition, how to deal with ignorance? We offer here some simple heuristics to orient the decision; we shall make use of post normal science, uncertainty analysis, NUSAP, sensitivity analysis and sensitivity auditing.

Keywords: Knightian risk, NUSAP, sensitivity auditing, Bayesian calculus, indeterminacy, post-normal science

JEL Classification: C00