On Coconuts in Foggy Mine-Fields: An approach to studying future-choice decisions

uncertainty, respectively. Fourth, the presence of coconut uncertainty essentially implies the breakdown of decision-theoretic and forecasting models and demands a new approach for future-choice decisions. Whereas I cannot offer a new approach – or an intellectual breakthrough – I can suggest a heuristic principle and metaphor that may help us deal with some of the issues. Perhaps by discussing their advantages and disadvantages, we might illuminate some of the problems of future-choice decisions and, at the least, set an agenda for future research. The beauty of decision theory Like many graduate students of my generation – and some of our predecessors – I was totally seduced by statistical decision theory. Based on the rigorous analytical framework provided by such eminent scholars as John von Neumann, Oskar Morgenstern, Bruno de Finetti, and L. J. Savage – and interpreted so brilliantly by Robert Shlaifer, Howard Raiffa, Ralph Keeney and others – we had in our hands a tool for making decisions that was not only theoretically sound but capable of