timing, using a thirty-year transition module, permitted even marginal
synchronization. The combination was thus disqualified. This would not rule
out the possible adequacy of combinations using modifications of the same
factors, however, since minor variations in a proposed final condition may have
disproportionate effects on phasing.
2. Edward Teller, quoted in War/Peace Report (December 1964).
3. E.g., the highly publicized "Delphi Technique" and other, more sophisticated
procedures. A new system, especially suitable for institutional analysis, was
developed during the course of this study in order to hypothecate mensurable
"peace games"; a manual of this system is being prepared and will be submitted
for general distribution among appropriate agencies. For older, but still useful,
techniques, see Norman C. Dalkey's Games and Simulations (Santa Monica,
Calif.:Rand, 1964).
SECTION 8
1. A primer-level example of the obvious and long overdue need for such
translation is furnished by Kahn (in Thinking About the Unthinkable,p.102).
Under the heading "Some Awkward Choices" he compares four hypothetical
policies: a certain loss of $3,000; a .1 chance of loss of $300,000; a.01 chance
of loss of $30,000,000; and a .001 chance of loss of $3,000,000,000. A
government decision-maker would "very likely" choose in that order. But what
if "lives are at stake rather than dollars?" Kahn suggests that the order of choice
would be reversed, although current experience does not support this opinion.
Rational war research can and must make it possible to express, without
ambiguity, lives in terms of dollars and vice versa; the choices need not be, and
cannot be, "awkward."
2. Again, an overdue extension of an obvious application of techniques up to
now limited such circumscribed purposes as improving kill-ammunition ratios
determining local choice between precision and saturation bombing, and other
minor tactical, and occasionally strategic, ends. The slowness of Rand, I.D.A.,
and other responsible analytic organizations to extend cost-effectiveness and
related concepts beyond early-phase applications has already been widely re-
marked on and critized elsewhere.
3. The inclusion of institutional factors in war-game techniques has been given
some rudimentary consideration in the Hudson Institute's Study for
Hypothetical Narratives for Use in Command and Control Systems Planning
(by William Pfaff and Edmund Stillman; Final report published in 1963). But
synchronization. The combination was thus disqualified. This would not rule
out the possible adequacy of combinations using modifications of the same
factors, however, since minor variations in a proposed final condition may have
disproportionate effects on phasing.
2. Edward Teller, quoted in War/Peace Report (December 1964).
3. E.g., the highly publicized "Delphi Technique" and other, more sophisticated
procedures. A new system, especially suitable for institutional analysis, was
developed during the course of this study in order to hypothecate mensurable
"peace games"; a manual of this system is being prepared and will be submitted
for general distribution among appropriate agencies. For older, but still useful,
techniques, see Norman C. Dalkey's Games and Simulations (Santa Monica,
Calif.:Rand, 1964).
SECTION 8
1. A primer-level example of the obvious and long overdue need for such
translation is furnished by Kahn (in Thinking About the Unthinkable,p.102).
Under the heading "Some Awkward Choices" he compares four hypothetical
policies: a certain loss of $3,000; a .1 chance of loss of $300,000; a.01 chance
of loss of $30,000,000; and a .001 chance of loss of $3,000,000,000. A
government decision-maker would "very likely" choose in that order. But what
if "lives are at stake rather than dollars?" Kahn suggests that the order of choice
would be reversed, although current experience does not support this opinion.
Rational war research can and must make it possible to express, without
ambiguity, lives in terms of dollars and vice versa; the choices need not be, and
cannot be, "awkward."
2. Again, an overdue extension of an obvious application of techniques up to
now limited such circumscribed purposes as improving kill-ammunition ratios
determining local choice between precision and saturation bombing, and other
minor tactical, and occasionally strategic, ends. The slowness of Rand, I.D.A.,
and other responsible analytic organizations to extend cost-effectiveness and
related concepts beyond early-phase applications has already been widely re-
marked on and critized elsewhere.
3. The inclusion of institutional factors in war-game techniques has been given
some rudimentary consideration in the Hudson Institute's Study for
Hypothetical Narratives for Use in Command and Control Systems Planning
(by William Pfaff and Edmund Stillman; Final report published in 1963). But
