New thoughts and discussions

This page is intended for sharing your latest Intarese related thoughts and discussion topics that are already worth disseminating among interested people, but that might not be ripe enough to deserve their own pages yet. Feel free to write and process your thoughts here, no matter how unorganized they may be. Please edit the page so that the latest thoughts and discussions come on the top of the page.

10.8.2006 A suggestion for the basic question in pyrkilo method

Participants: Jouni

The basic question: What are the rules that enable an open (non-organised, non-fixed) group of rational actors to describe environmental health risks and resolve disputes that arise during the process about the content?

At least the following groups of rules are needed:

• Rules about participation (reading, editing, creating, and moving pages)
• Rules about roles of participants (moderator, participants)
• Rules about structure (variables, links)
• Rules about drafting and fixing the focus and scope
• Rules about acceptability of contribution (relevance, consistence etc., see below)
• Rules about validation (argumentation, falsification)
• Rules about reorganising contributions (fusion, separation, budding)
• Rules about resolving disputes
  • Disambiguation
  • Voting for values

19.7.2006 Trying to define the objectives of pyrkilo method

Participants: Juha, Mikko, Jouni

The overall methodology for environmental health risk assessment should promote (or even restrict) the examination to have several high-level properties. These, and the tools and method that help to achieve the objective, are described below. The method that we develop in KTL is called the PYRKILO method, and we suggest that this, or selected parts of it, are taken into the INTARESE method as well.

Evaluating the desirability of outcomes
There is a need to perform risk assessment only if some of the possible outcomes are more desirable than others. What is desirable and what is not, is a value judgement. These can be resolved using democratic methods such as voting.

Describing the situation in a rational way
The assessment must be rational and inherently consistent. Logic and directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are the tools to promote this.

Evaluating relevance of issues
The individual pieces must be relevant for the whole assessment. This can be evaluated using argumentation theory.

Evaluating whether the issues in the assessment are probable
Low probability issues are less important for the assessment, and the tool to evaluate this is probability theory, especially Bayesian statistics, which offer some very nice tools when combined with DAGs. It should be noted, however, that 'low probability' is not a fixed number: the collision of a meteorite to the Earth may have a very low probability, but it may still be important due to its potential impact (see utility).

Evaluating the utility of actions
The utility of the outcome is a key indicator for decision-making.

Evaluating the importance of uncertainties
A value-of-information analysis is needed to estimate, whether a particular uncertainty makes it difficult to decide in a particular context.

Overall, the new pyrkilo method should have such a structure and process rules that it facilitates assessments that are in line with all of these six objectives.

• Desirability - democracy
• Rationality - logic, DAGs
• Relevance - argumentation theory
• Probability - probability theory
• Utility - decision theory
• Importance of uncertainties - value-of-information analysis

How does the first version of the pyrkilo tool look like?

• It is a systematic collection of relevant and structured information.
• It does not compute anything. All computing is done with other tools, and results are uploaded to the tool.
• It is based on Mediawiki program.
• It is an open-access system, but for a limited group of people. In this sense, it could look much like this Intarese Wiki site.
• It has a prespecified structure for assessments, variables, and variable attributes.
• It has a prespecified categorisation systems for a) variables, b) tasks and processes.
• It has procedural rules for how to link variables to each other.

--Jouni 14:23, 19 July 2006 (EEST)

4.7.2006 thoughts after the ISSA argumentation conference

Computer aided or web-based argumentatio applications to look into:

• Belvedere (?)
• Questmap (http://www.compendiuminstitute.org/tools/questmap.htm)
• Argumentum (http://www.argumentum.ch)
• Argunet (http://www.denkartist.de/argunet)
• more?

Some names with potentially useful ideas/research on argumentation (pragma-dialectics, epistemology...):

• Gábor Kutrovátz, Eotvos University of of Budapest
• Ralph H. Johnson, Univeristy of Windsor
• Dan Cohen, Colby College
• Robert C. Rowland, University of Kansas
• Michel Dufour, University Sorbonne Nouvelle
• Christoph Lumer, University of Siena
• Fabio Paglieri, University of Siena

Co-operation potential???

• Gábor Kutrovátz, Eotvos University of of Budapest
• Sara Rubinelli, University of Lugano
• David M. Berube, University of South Carolina NanoCenter

Mikko 16:59, 4 July 2006 (EEST)

21.6.2006 technical issues in using Wiki

Mikko Pohjola

To make the Wiki working environment clear, useful and effective we must agree on certain kind of code of conduct and build the system in a way that it guides the users to right kinds of action in using it. In brief it is a question of:

• effective design of the system
• good user guidance to
  • the technical questions
  • use of the method
• (minimal) control of the system

The first bullet, design, actually includes the second bullet, because the guidance is given in/by the system. Also the ways to minimize the need of control are in the design of the system. Since the environment is fixed in using Wiki, the design then means (a) how to make best use of the existing properties of Wiki (b) for the needs of environmental health risk assessment. Therefore the design is first methodological and second technical.

The methodology is now starting to take shape (Help:Writing pyrkilo risk assessments) in a way that it is about the time to take the technical issues into more detailed scrutiny. Open questions concerning this that require consideration in near future are at least e.g.:

• use of categories to group the pages
  • operational environment -related
  • substantially relevant
  • managerial (project management etc.)???
• use of templates to "standardize" the appearance
  • attribute tables
  • pre-framed pages
  • sharing content
• control of hierarchy???
• user guidance
  • technical
  • methodological

1.6.2006 On argumentation analysis for risk assessment

Participants: Jouni & Mikko

• the role of argumentation analysis in risk assessment is to fill the gap between explicit modelling/calculation and unstructured discussion
  • helps e.g. in making complicated models easier to intrepret by non-experts and brings out the essentials of a discourse
• the primary goal concerning argumentation analysis' utilization for risk assessment is to make it a common, easy-to-use, a priori method for risk assessors
  
• also use of argumentation theory as an a posteriori method for reconstructing discourses afterwards can be fruitful
  • this line of use is probably necessary in explicating the usefulness of the method
    
• discussion in Science about health risks/benefits of salmon shall be made an example for using argumentation analysis in risk assessment
• in this example the assessor (as an "outsider") chooses the focus and scope of the argumentation analysis
  • if the basic standpoint of the analysis, and thus the point of view, is chosen solely based on the first article by Hites et al., it would be difficult to fit all the replies in the same picture (the disagreement space varies in settings Hites vs. Rembold, Hites vs. Tuomisto, etc...)