Issue 127. Knowing about the past cannot help people to make important decisions today.

Issue 127. Knowing about the past cannot help people to make important decisions today.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position.


    Knowledge about the past does not guarantee an outcome when applied to today's decisions. However, such knowledge informs people to make smarter decisions. 

    People who accede that knowledge about the past cannot help make today's decisions would argue that every situation is unique, and therefore, a successful decision in the past cannot be applied to achieve the same today. Take for example, the movement of stock prices. One cannot make decisions about the future from past behavior with certainty. In such a case, one cannot guarantee that a decision made today based on Company A's previous stock prices will be successful. However, many believe that being informed of past behavior will help them make smarter decisions. 

    We learn history to learn from past mistakes to make better decisions today. Granted, we will not be faced with the exact same circumstances today. However, today's quagmire will parallel at least one instance from the past. For example, take the case of the nuclear bombings that ended World War II. Because humanity observed the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the cataclysm effected by nuclear weapons, not only those in power but all of humanity knows we must take heed in deciding to employ such weapons in the future. Knowledge of what happened in the past is informing people to be more careful in making decisions. 

    Previous records of natural disasters help us to make more informed decisions today. Hurricane Sandy was a destructive force that wiped out a part of the nation, leaving many to despair. Speculators claim, however, that the extent of the damages would have been lessened if smarter measures were taken. Recently, in preparing for Storm Hercules, the government based its decisions on Sandy to be smarter in facing a forthcoming natural disaster of similar scale. 

    Even intuitive decisions are informed by knowledge formed in and of the past--a bestselling author, Malcolm Gladwell, claims in his book "Blink". Gladwell explicates that those successful decisions that were made in a blink of a second are actually a product of years, often decades, of experience. A head firefighter shouts at his crew to leave the burning house and a moment later, the whole house crumbles down. During an interview afterwards, the firefighter recalls that his decision was intuitive. He had not deliberated his decision. However, Gladwell proves that it was his years of experience as a firefighter that helped him at once to gather up knowledge of past experiences to quickly--although subconsciously--make a smart decision. 

   Although gainsayers may claim that past knowledge cannot guarantee the outcome of current decisions, learning from the past will veritably inform us to make smarter decisions.