It sounds neat, but I think it is not psychologically feasible.
I agree with this. At least in a lot of contexts, you pick a side, write your bottom line, and then see how it goes. I think being rational, for people who think like me anyway, means being open to needing to toggle one’s views frequently, in case you’re wrong.
A little while ago, I needed to decide something that was important, complex, and it was unlikely, unfortunately, that events would ever give feedback one way or the other, as to whether I made the ‘right’ choice, due to the complexity and the fact there was risk and incompletely disclosed values involved.
Nevertheless, the decision was really important and the decision was weighing on me. I observed over a couple days how I made the decision. First,I chose one of the two decisions, rather randomly, just because I needed to choose already. And then I imagined defending it. “Owning” the decision and feeling responsible for it was an important step in the motivation to come up with the best arguments I couold. I imagined my family, my coworkers and my friends second-guessing me, and I kept arguing and arguing with them in my head. After a few hours of dedicated mental role play, I felt exhausted. This decision was way to difficult to defend. It would be easier, I thought, to just go the other way. So I (more half-heartedly) considered the other decision, and imagined defending that one. It turned out to be easier to defend, and some of the arguments struck me as especially compelling, so that in the end my mock-trial arguments convinced me. I felt (and feel) good about my decision, different then the one I began with.
It struck me, at the time, how similar this was to the court system. Certainly, they knew what they were doing with that. It also struck me that imagining the counter-arguments of friends and family was somewhat less effective because it tended to direct me towards making the decision that felt least ‘shameful’ rather than the one that would be most likely to ‘win’. But due to the convolution of the problem with values, this seemed necessary.
Sometimes the decision is easier. I can just look at the facts and decide. But I don’t know how often this is the case with decisions that are both really important and somewhat ‘messy’, as they tend to be in real life when they involve people and values and not just, for example, optimizing something with respect to a single factor.
I agree with this. At least in a lot of contexts, you pick a side, write your bottom line, and then see how it goes. I think being rational, for people who think like me anyway, means being open to needing to toggle one’s views frequently, in case you’re wrong.
A little while ago, I needed to decide something that was important, complex, and it was unlikely, unfortunately, that events would ever give feedback one way or the other, as to whether I made the ‘right’ choice, due to the complexity and the fact there was risk and incompletely disclosed values involved.
Nevertheless, the decision was really important and the decision was weighing on me. I observed over a couple days how I made the decision. First,I chose one of the two decisions, rather randomly, just because I needed to choose already. And then I imagined defending it. “Owning” the decision and feeling responsible for it was an important step in the motivation to come up with the best arguments I couold. I imagined my family, my coworkers and my friends second-guessing me, and I kept arguing and arguing with them in my head. After a few hours of dedicated mental role play, I felt exhausted. This decision was way to difficult to defend. It would be easier, I thought, to just go the other way. So I (more half-heartedly) considered the other decision, and imagined defending that one. It turned out to be easier to defend, and some of the arguments struck me as especially compelling, so that in the end my mock-trial arguments convinced me. I felt (and feel) good about my decision, different then the one I began with.
It struck me, at the time, how similar this was to the court system. Certainly, they knew what they were doing with that. It also struck me that imagining the counter-arguments of friends and family was somewhat less effective because it tended to direct me towards making the decision that felt least ‘shameful’ rather than the one that would be most likely to ‘win’. But due to the convolution of the problem with values, this seemed necessary.
Sometimes the decision is easier. I can just look at the facts and decide. But I don’t know how often this is the case with decisions that are both really important and somewhat ‘messy’, as they tend to be in real life when they involve people and values and not just, for example, optimizing something with respect to a single factor.
The small-scale version of this is the “coin test”.
You have a choice with two outcomes. Flip a coin. If it comes up heads, pick the first outcome; tails, the second outcome.
And if you don’t like your pick, just switch to the other one.
Often, it’s not so much about the actual decision as it is about avoiding responsibility for error. The coin test forces you to choose.