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Humans are great a ranking from a low number of choices. Too many choices or of similar quality and our ranking mechanisms break down.
When faced with a difficult decision, it probably doesn't matter which choice you take. Emotionally it's difficult to accept this. But logically it's easy: - If one of the two choices was clearly better, it would be an easy decision - But it is difficult. Therefore, neither of the two choices is clearly better. - Therefore, it doesn't matter much which you choose. This doesn't work for people who feel irrational regr…
"Clarity" is dependent on what level of information you already have and what analysis you've already done.
In some circumstances, you've already done whatever investigation, research, and thinking can reasonably be done. If the choice is still hard, then the choice is likely to be of similar value either way and you may as well choose arbitrarily.
But in other circumstances, there's still investigation, research, or thinking that can be done (at a level of effort which is reasonable based on the importance of the decision.) In that case, one choice or the other may become clearly better if you are patient and diligent in the decision-making process. So be as patient as the decision warrants.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's difficult or impossible to tell if you made the right choice though, so you have no way of knowing if you should regret your decision. If I visit the store and there are two boxes of cereal, or two deodorants, or two digital cameras, and I buy one of them, I start to feel unsure. It doesn't matter if the cereal I bought tastes good or bad, I'll always wonder if the other option would have been better. Until I ta…
The answer is to stop caring and satisfice. Optimizers are never happy.
Being unhappy and unsatisfied is the main reason we have the technology that currently exists. If people were satisfied traveling by horse, the automobile wouldn't exist. If people were satisfied with 480p, the HD television would never have been a worthwhile venture. Being continually unsatisfied is what causes us to strive higher.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answer is to stop caring and satisfice. Optimizers are never happy.
I don't know if it's that simple, it's only human to question things in life, and it's one of the main reasons we've come so far in the first place. Being unhappy and unsatisfied is the main reason we have the technology that currently exists. If people were satisfied traveling by horse, the automobile wouldn't exist. If people were satisfied with 480p, the HD television would never have been a worthwhile venture. Be…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's difficult or impossible to tell if you made the right choice though, so you have no way of knowing if you should regret your decision. If I visit the store and there are two boxes of cereal, or two deodorants, or two digital cameras, and I buy one of them, I start to feel unsure. It doesn't matter if the cereal I bought tastes good or bad, I'll always wonder if the other option would have been better. Until I ta…
The answer is to stop caring and satisfice. Optimizers are never happy.
When faced with a difficult decision, it probably doesn't matter which choice you take. Emotionally it's difficult to accept this. But logically it's easy: - If one of the two choices was clearly better, it would be an easy decision - But it is difficult. Therefore, neither of the two choices is clearly better. - Therefore, it doesn't matter much which you choose. This doesn't work for people who feel irrational regr…
There are endless ways for a decision to actually be hard. One is where the type of impact between options is different and difficult to compare. The difficulty may arise due to: uncertainty, complexity, lack of knowledge, value judgements, brutal trade-offs etc.
i) "Should I stay to treat to the ebola victim or leave with my family?" is hard because it involves value judgements, predictions, risks. It questions who you are. ii) "Should our startup be tightly integrated with facebook?" is hard because the potential impact is massive and requires substantial investigation to understand.
The very attempt to compare options can involve costs and feedback loops e.g. should I pay for an investigation, should I prototype this, should I wait for more info etc. The actions you take to compare options can change the available options. A single decision becomes a nested web of other decisions.
In the most general sense, making a decision is like devising a strategy. Is creating a good strategy easy or hard?
p.s. I'm working on this problem
When faced with a difficult decision, it probably doesn't matter which choice you take. Emotionally it's difficult to accept this. But logically it's easy: - If one of the two choices was clearly better, it would be an easy decision - But it is difficult. Therefore, neither of the two choices is clearly better. - Therefore, it doesn't matter much which you choose. This doesn't work for people who feel irrational regr…
> "neither of the two choices is clearly better" "Clarity" is dependent on what level of information you already have and what analysis you've already done. In some circumstances, you've already done whatever investigation, research, and thinking can reasonably be done. If the choice is still hard, then the choice is likely to be of similar value either way and you may as well choose arbitrarily. But in other circums…
A problem is difficult when its potential consequences are serious and the best option is not obvious. But the best option can be non-obvious for two very different reasons: either it requires a lot of information and thus a lot of work to gather that information (like choosing a medical treatment), or it depends on randomness or other variables outside your control and understanding (like choose your lottery numbers, assuming someone gives you a lottery ticket).
For the latter case, it's pretty clear that you can choose randomly and shouldn't worry about your decision. For the former case, it's reasonable to "worry" in the sense that you should feel an urgency to gather the required information efficiently. Of course, it's not really that simple, because you have to optimize the cost of gathering information against the potential cost or gain from the decision itself. Also, the two reasons from the last paragraph are more like a continuum, because "randomness" is often effective randomness, i.e. you can't feasibly predict the outcomes despite them being deterministic.
When faced with a difficult decision, it probably doesn't matter which choice you take. Emotionally it's difficult to accept this. But logically it's easy: - If one of the two choices was clearly better, it would be an easy decision - But it is difficult. Therefore, neither of the two choices is clearly better. - Therefore, it doesn't matter much which you choose. This doesn't work for people who feel irrational regr…
Well your reasoning is a bit of a shortcut, and Ruth Chang[0] goes all the way down the rabbit hole, without having to resort to third world country fallacies. [0]: http://www.ted.com/talks/ruth_chang_how_to_make_hard_choices
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if it's that simple, it's only human to question things in life, and it's one of the main reasons we've come so far in the first place. Being unhappy and unsatisfied is the main reason we have the technology that currently exists. If people were satisfied traveling by horse, the automobile wouldn't exist. If people were satisfied with 480p, the HD television would never have been a worthwhile venture. Be…
If people were satisfied with horses and 480p, we'd be just as happy with those as we are with cars and 1080p. In fact, these decades and centuries of technological advancement hasn't, empirically, resulted in any enhancement in happiness anyway, because we're trapped on the hedonic treadmill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if it's that simple, it's only human to question things in life, and it's one of the main reasons we've come so far in the first place. Being unhappy and unsatisfied is the main reason we have the technology that currently exists. If people were satisfied traveling by horse, the automobile wouldn't exist. If people were satisfied with 480p, the HD television would never have been a worthwhile venture. Be…
If people were satisfied with horses and 480p, we'd be just as happy with those as we are with cars and 1080p. In fact, these decades and centuries of technological advancement hasn't, empirically, resulted in any enhancement in happiness anyway, because we're trapped on the hedonic treadmill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
I never said any of this technology enhances our level of happiness. I just said as a species, being constantly unhappy could be one of our greatest strengths. Otherwise, we might be sitting in a cave, smiling at each other until an asteroid removed us from existence.