When It's Bad to Have Good Choices
81–89 of 89 posts
Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices
#82When 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…
This type of argument does not explain how to solve hard decisions, it simply says that if you know impact of each choice is similar, it is a simple decision. 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 et…
Can you provide any more information on what you are working on? I, too, am interested in this problem, so it would be great to see any attempts at a solution.
Email is in my profile, if you'd rather not share here.
Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices
#83It's me or there are a lot of articles from the newyorker which make the HN top?
Great articles make HN top, I don't care about the source.
Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices
#84Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you should read philwelch's post again. You seem to see development as an intrisic good thing, whereas philwelch does not (or at least questions it). There is a world of difference between freezing in a cave and developing 1080p/2160p/4320p.
I think people living in the modern world, with all of our technology are no more happy than a caveman sitting by a fire with his family. However, to survive as a species in the long term, we need to leave this planet. To do that, we need a number of advancements in technology. So, if we can agree the survival of the species is in our benefit, then we can agree development is considered a good thing, even if it doesn…
What's the damn point of surviving as a species on other planets? Because at that point, we'd be a different species anyway.
Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answer is to stop caring and satisfice. Optimizers are never happy.
I've seen the "satisfice rather than optimize" meme a lot recently. I think it's a pretty weak argument. The problem is that there is still a potentially massive amount of calculations and predictions (about costs, opportunity costs, trends, etc.) required to choose a reasonable acceptability threshold. If you take more time to gather this relevant information you can probably choose a better acceptability threshold.…
Opportunity cost only exists if you're an optimizer.
Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices
#87Re: When It's Bad to Have Good Choices
#88Sounds familiar. I wish the article had some sort of suggestion or hint as to what to do when you're really prone to anxiety. I have several very good options in my life right now and have made a tenative decision on what to do, but I'm finding I'm crippled by anxiety over my decision.
paulsutter gave a good answer to this elsewhere in the comments. But I would add this: All other things being equal (or roughly equal), pick one at random. Sure, there's opportunity cost, but there are also costs way beyond the time you take fretting over a decision. You said it yourself: You're "crippled" by anxiety. How is that better than making a random decision? Or just going with your gut?
In my case, its a pretty stark decision: money or time. I have an opportunity to live and work wherever I please through a long-standing partnership with a company, or make a lot (a lot) more money through one of several other opportunities but more than likely have less time to enjoy and less freedom in where I go. I feel that both my career and life path hinge very closely on my decision, but I already have very strong leanings for the former. It is more difficult because I have a lot of friends and colleagues who do not share my philosophy on having a much stronger life balance.