Harry Kreisler: Let's go back a minute, because we should say that your
training was in economics at Harvard. And as you mentioned, you were working
on decision making. But I'm hearing you say in all of this that you were a
real empiricist, that is, sort of gathering the facts about what we were
doing and what was working.
Daniel Ellsberg: I don't know if I'd describe myself that way. Yes and no. I
was a real researcher, a real analyst, as well as having been involved in
the policy process directly. My work in economics was in economic theory,
and my interest was in what's called decision theory. Decision making under
uncertainty. I wrote my honor's thesis on that, and later my Ph.D. thesis.
So I was interested both in the theory of how people do or should make
decisions faced with uncertainty, and empirical data on how that worked. And
then, when I came to the Rand Corporation, I was interested in applying that
body of concepts and that kind of interest to actual political decision
making. And I wanted to use the political decision making to inform the
theory as well. But I got increasingly involved in the policy. So, aspects
of bargaining theory, so-called game theory, adversarial relationships in
conflict under uncertainty, was my particular interest. And of course, the
question of how the president, say, would make a decision as to whether or
not to launch nuclear missiles, faced with ambiguous data from radar early
warning systems. Very much the same kind of problem as the president faced
when we had ambiguous radar and sonar data about an attack on our warships,
and he wanted to react very quickly. In form, the problem was very similar
and it was the kind of thing that I was particularly interested in.
Tom Walker
Bowen Island, BC
604 947 2213
