DECISION MAKING IN A VITIATED ATMOSPHERE

If there is one capability which will decide the future and competence of any person, professional, top manager or leader, it would be decision making in a vitiated atmosphere. Might be in isolated atmosphere of your domain or sphere of work, you can still decide professionally but when there is an interface with the public domain, the need for this discerning behavioural trait will again come into play. For people in the public domain, governance, politics and lots of other fields closely connected, it is a day to day issue, everyone has to grapple with. Not that the atmosphere was not vitiated earlier, but the sources were known and the intensity too, the present differentiator is that it has become all pervasive. Additionally, it has become very difficult to differentiate.

For a normal person to understand the nitty gritty of this vitiated atmosphere is not an easy task. So, the chances are that taking the inputs he thinks truthful, he goes ahead in his decision making. If the people he relies on, also get influenced in a similar manner, what advise would he be getting as an additional input? With his own truthful inputs being far from reality and so of the other supposedly reliable sources, how far can we go, what can we decide, and how long can we carry it through. The vitiated atmosphere is so carefully created, calibrated and orchestrated that it is way beyond the resources of common man to shuffle through the chaff. It is the process of downing rational thinking and decision making.

The electronic, print and newest and most dangerous, the social media are out and out in this game. They fight their own battle for survival and also support the same battle of any number of outfits; social, political and economic. With everyone becoming a publisher on the social media, it’s capability to create cacophony is immense. Added to this are our Bot brothers, who can create falsehood at a pace we cannot imagine and also at a level of precision which way beyond our rational comprehension. Deep Fakes are a perfect example of this. What can you do about it? Elections can be completely messed by only a few of these.

The social media is primarily been crafted to extract data from the user and indulge in propaganda. The unfortunate part is that the mainstream media also picks up most of its breaking news from that source. There used to be verification mechanism earlier, now there is none. The confusion gets further confounded if the person himself is spreading it directly. How will you take this? Might be a head of state. By the time his perverse agenda gets known, most of the damage is done. The biggest skill we have to teach our kids is how to do rational decision making, in this vitiated information world.

DEMOCRATISATION OF INFORMATION HAS LEAD TO A VITIATED INFORMATION REGIME. YOU NEED TO MAKE YOU OWN ESCAPE ROUTES.
Sanjay Sahay

Have a nice evening.