The first article is How to Make a Decision When There’s No ‘Right’ One by Russ Roberts. Excerpts:
"[Charles] Darwin was struggling with what I call a wild problem — a fork in the road of life where knowing which path is the right one isn’t obvious, where the day-to-day pleasure and pain from choosing one path over another are ultimately hidden from us and where those day-to-day pleasures and pains don’t fully capture what’s at stake.
There might be a mere handful of such decisions like this that we face — whether to marry, whom to marry, whether to have children, whether to switch careers and take on new responsibilities. Often there is little evidence to guide us, and what little evidence is available can mislead us.
How should we proceed, then, especially if we want to make a rational decision?"
"the cost-benefit list that Darwin constructed is less helpful than it might appear." [Roberts shows and discusses this list in detail]
"the biggest minus: If he married, he’d have less time for his scientific research and be less productive. He might not become a great scientist. Staying single seemed to be the rational option."
[on Darwin's list] "It’s all about him, which makes sense; he’d never had a partner. How would he know about the power of a shared life?"
"Similarly, what does it mean to have children? A lot more “can’t.”"
"With many wild problems, the downside is easily imagined, while the upside is veiled from us. That’s one reason wild problems are so hard to tame with the standard tools of rationality."
"the decision isn’t just about the expected day-to-day costs and benefits but more about who you are and how you see yourself."
"that there isn’t a rational route to the right decision."
"Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood. Together they had 10 children"
"But why did Darwin ignore the calm, cerebral calculus he laid out in his journal? What’s the lesson to be learned from his decision-making process?"
"life is about more than just the sum of the day-to-day pleasures and pains that follow from our choices. Adding up costs and benefits — what I call narrow utilitarianism — may seem like the height of rationality. But it can easily undervalue the most important but less obvious aspects of a life well lived. A broader view doesn’t always point to marriage. It can also point to staying single or getting divorced. But the important lesson is to think about life as more than accumulating pleasure or avoiding pain.
Human beings want purpose. We want meaning. We want to belong to something larger than ourselves. The decisions we make in the face of wild problems don’t just lead to good days and bad days. They define us. They determine who we are, who we might aspire to become, who we might come to be."
"the future is veiled from us and that life is about more than simple pluses and minuses."
"Spend less time trying to figure out the best path to get to where we want to go and spend more time thinking about where we want to go in the first place."
So it seems like Roberts says you should base your big decisions on how you see your self and what you want to become.
The second article is An Economist’s Rule for Making Tough Life Decisions: Whenever you cannot decide what you should do, choose the action that represents a change by Sarah Todd of Quartz. She discusses research of Steven Levitt. Excerpts:
"we waffle over whether or not to quit a job, change careers, start a business, or go back to school, weighing endless pros and cons. In behavioral economics, this phenomenon is known as status quo bias. People are generally predisposed to favor sticking with their current circumstances, whatever they may be, instead of taking a risk and bushwhacking their way toward a different life.
"That’s an instinct we should fight against, according to the findings of a new study by Steven Levitt, University of Chicago economist and Freakonomics co-author, published in Oxford University’s Review of Economic Studies.
The study asked people who were having a hard time making a decision to participate in a randomized digital coin toss on the website FreakonomicsExperiments.com. People asked questions ranging from “Should I quit my job?” to “Should I break up with my significant other?” and “Should I go back to school?” Heads meant they should take action. Tails, they stuck with the status quo."
"people who got heads and made a big change reported being significantly happier than they were before"
"“The data from my experiment suggests we would all be better off if we did more quitting,” Levitt said in a press release. “A good rule of thumb in decision making is, whenever you cannot decide what you should do, choose the action that represents a change, rather than continuing the status quo.”
"Status quo bias is predicated on our hesitation to make a change unless we’re sure that the benefits outweigh the risks. We’re more scared of what we might lose than we are excited about what we might gain."
So Levitt's advice is based on empirical evidence. People who did opt for a change were happier. That is not the same as Roberts' advice of basing decisions on how you see yourself.
They both mention the issue of costs and benefits, specifically what to do when we are not sure if the benefits of a change outweigh costs (if it were obvious that they did there would be no issue to discuss).
But there is one way the two theories might overlap. What if you see yourself as a person who is willing to change or thrives on change? Or you see yourself as a risk taker. Then you would be fulfilling both visions.
Related post
Frank Knight And John Stuart Mill On The Purpose Of Life And Liberty (2022)
The Pyschology & Economics Of Decision Making Under Uncertainty (With Snoopy's Version From 1966) (2013)
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