People, assumptions about

If you do not listen to people, you cannot expect them to listen to you. Communication is a two-way activity. Do not make assumptions about what people know, think, or want done about risks. Take the time to find out what people are thinking. Often, people are more concerned about issues such as trust, credibility, competence, control, voluntariness, fairness, and compassion than about mortality statistics and the details of QRA. Use techniques such as interviews, focus groups, and surveys to gauge what people are thinking. 

Guidelines Do not make assumptions about wliat people know,... 

The second challenge is called the argument from ignorance. Any discussion of future people and their happiness, their needs and preferences, their rights and interests, forces us to make assumptions about who those people might be and what they will be like. But realistically, we know nothing about who they will be, what they will want or need, or even if they will exist at all. Since we are ignorant of future people, we have little basis to speak about our responsibilities to them. 

COMMENT It might be advisable to stiek to more operational definitions in talking about these eompounds. One runs a risk if compounds have not been tested in people, and to refer to a eompound as hallueinogenie when it is operative. A drug diserimination test might lead you to certain assumptions about the drug that are not true. 

The emergency coordinator has decided that the appropriate emergency response to the immediate release of a toxic material is to alert people to stay in their homes, with doors and windows closed, until the cloud has passed. The coordinator has also indicated that homes 4000 m downwind must not be exposed to concentrations exceeding 0.10 mg/m3 of this material for any longer than 2 min. Estimate the maximum instantaneous release of material (in kg) allowed for these specifications. Be sure to clearly state any assumptions about weather conditions, wind speed, etc. 

Lawn chemical use is only one facet of lawn care, of course, and myriad other behaviors are relevant to understanding people s relationships with their lawns. Yet this initial result already upsets some simple assumptions about people s thoughts and actions, and raises some straightforward questions. What makes lawn people act this way What influences their behaviors How do people reconcile the complex outcomes of their decisions ... 

Did I allow unvalidated assumptions about situations or misplaced perceptions of people to affect what I did ... 

The fundamental axiom in Ainslie s theory is motivational inconsistency and ambivalence, and the theory describes the strategies people may use to handle the resulting problems. The theory therefore allows for more complex interactions between conflicting motives within the person than do the conventional utility calculus that Becker and Murphy apply. However, as opposed to Becker and Murphy, Ainslie does not base his addiction theory on any explicit assumptions about the properties of potentially addictive substances. The phenomena Ainslie describes in his addiction theory are quite general and not restricted to the addictions. Since potentially addictive substances clearly do have specific properties that other substances do not have, it would be of interest to apply Ainslie s scheme to a consumption good with such properties. 

In addition to the implications of having self-control problems, we also focus on the implications of whether people are aware of their own future self-control problems. We examine two extreme assumptions Sophisticated people are fully aware of their future self-control problems and therefore know exactly how they will behave in the future and naive people are fully aware of their future self-control problems and therefore believe they will behave in the future exactly as they currently would like themselves to behave. By systematically comparing sophisticates, naifs, and time-consistent agents (whom we refer to as TCs), we can examine the role of self-control problems in addiction and delineate how predictions depend both on self-control problems per se and on assumptions about foresight. 

We see the developed world and the developing world interact continuously through mechanisms such as the WHO, TRIPS, the various foundations and NGOs, the UN Global Relief Fund, and, most recently, through the development of the President s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEDFAR). In spite of all these interactions we do not yet see the development of a common creole. For instance, prevention in PEDFAR rests on the "ABG" model (Abstinence, Be Faithful, and, as appropriate. Correctly and Consistently, USE condoms) (PEDFAR 2004). This model derives from assumptions about how people should behave and may not be relevant to all cultures. While it is a... 

A myth that purports to explain the bitterness and nausea associated with the psychedelic cacti has gained some currency. Some people believe that the tufts and center of the peyote button contain strychnine others have made the same assumption about the core of the San Pedro. Strychnine is absent in both cases. 

These findings suggest that it is probably quite naive to make too many assumptions about people s response to labeling especially hazard labeling. Certain h3qK)theses can be raised ... 

The labeler s assumptions about what words mean should be critically evaluated before casting convention into labeling concrete. Most people probably perceive the word danger to mean danger, whereas they probably do not differentiate the meanings of caution and warning, neither of which apparently are perceived to imply much of a hazard. 

This has led many people to question assumptions about the origin and nature of the universe. 

---