"Decision Making Based on Cost & Benefit" by Nguyễn Đạt including Homework

Chú Đạt continued his talk about the topic Decision Making Based on Cost & Benefit
He recapped a few points from the previous talk, and stopped at #10; the blue text showed some examples and explanation.

Homework: every student will write down 1 or 2 topics related to Decision Making Based on Cost & Benefit that they want to be discussed about; the homework will be turned in next Sunday 18Feb18.

1.   What is a cost and what is a benefit ? Examples (not just money)
Cost: everything that we lose
Benefit: everything that we gain
Example: Learning Vietnamese language
Costs: spending time (both kids' and parents'); doing things against the children's will/interest; paying tuition (money)
Benefits: learning another language besides English; seeing other Vietnamese friends; making parents (especially the mothers) happy
2.   Cost & Benefit are not the same for each person, situation, time ....
3.   Most decision making should be based on evaluations of costs  and benefits  (not just: “We can afford it” or “I want it”…   This is the difference between babies and grown-ups)
4.   Who are more concerned about cost & benefit?
Mostly, the educated people do. Cost & benefit evaluation requires knowledge, knowing other options, and being talent
5.   Justifying a decision (benefits listing) or challenging a decision (costs listing) is easy.  (Look at the website http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html )
The story about Dihydrogen Monoxide from the link. What is Dihydrogen Monoxide? It is H2O, which is Water. If "water" one time could be brought to a official petition under the name of Dihydrogen Monoxide, anything else could be justified & challenged
6.   Making a decision (evaluating & balancing costs and benefits) is what difficult.
This step is difficult; and in some situations, the children are impacted with the parents' decision
7.   Know your options and related cost & benefit is the key to making good decisions
Example: going to the restaurant, a waitress comes to serve and starts to talk about the special of the day. If we stop her, and tell her that we already know what we want ... , we might forfeit other options which could be better choice
8.   It needs good judgement to make good decision. Good judgement is the most important factor in determining the success (or the quality of life) of a person. (Examples of celebrities, sport stars, lottery winners ...)
9.   Making good judgement requires talent as well as training and knowledge… (we decide based on what we know…).  Using knowledge and talent properly is the key!
Years ago, Vietnamese females were prohibited to learn how to read & write; they were trained to be "Công, Dung, Ngôn, Hạnh" rather than being educated academically (the parents at the time believed that if the girls had highly educated, they would read books, romantic novels ....then they tended to mess up their lives
10.  Most disagreements or conflicts are boiled down to the differences in the evaluation of cost and benefit. Differences in judgements ( for example:  teenagers vs. parents )
11. Other disagreements or conflicts are due to misunderstanding the cost/benefit and/or misunderstanding the options/needs/desires…
12. The art of negotiation is (not trying to gain as much as possible) placing valuables in the right place, time, situation; trying to give up something least meaningful to you but most meaningful to your opponent and vice versa (trying to gain what most meaningful to you but least meaningful to your opponent).  And trying to convince your opponent of the cost and benefit the way that most favorable to both you and your opponent…
13. Our decisions are affected by many factors (including culture, environment, knowledge, expertise,...). Some examples: How are oriental children raised differently than other children? (Look at the world ranking of female golfers)....
14. How are teenagers and parents different in judgements of cost and benefit?
15. What are most important (beneficial) to teenagers but not so important to parents and what are least important to teenagers but so important to parents?  Same question about cost?
16. Parents are used to making decisions for their children. They don’t realize how much their children have grown and learned…
17. Parents are over confident in how much they know about their children (we often hear: “we raise them, we know them...”)
18. Teenagers start gaining knowledge of what are going on… But can be over confident in their knowledge.
19. When we know a little about a subject, we think we know a lot; only when we learned more about that subject, we realize that we don’t know enough (for example:  translate this sentence into Vietnamese: “His father died when he was in prison”).
20. Why is auto insurance premium so high for teenagers?  Why is premium of auto insurance not based on number of years of driving experience but only based on whether the driver age is less than 25? (a 60 year old female just learned driving for the first time pays for auto insurance less than a college graduate who has been driving for 6-7 years with clean records)