Thursday, April 21, 2011
[Learn] Decision-Decision
Here is this young kid, put in a situation where he has 50 cents to spend on candies in a candy shop. She knows candies do not grow on trees, and the 50 cents is all she has and she knows whatever decision she makes has to be a good one. Surrounded by dozens of choices, she considered a lot of factors: how many candies are there in one bag? How big is each candy? How much would she enjoy eating that particular flavour? After narrowing down to a few options, it is even harder to choose amongst the remaining few. This would be a tortuous decision for a 6-year-old girl, and you would have imagined it's never going to be a problem a grown up adult.
In fact, kids are not the only ones having hard time choosing between options with equal perceived quality. Budian's ass illustrates a similar problem:
It refers to a hypothetical situation wherein an ass is placed precisely midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water. Since the paradox assumes the ass will always go to whichever is closer, it will die of both hunger and thirst since it cannot make any rational decision to choose one over the other.
We often find ourselves making informed decisions, whether it is about choosing to have rice or noodles for dinner, or getting up early and exercise or having a lie in. We are capable of doing various analysis like pros & cons and cost & benefit. At the end of the day, it is the decision that we have to make matter. If you completely neglect the amount of time spent on the thought process itself, you're probably better off to just flip a coin. Afterall, the reality could be more unpredictable. And the decision might not have been as 'informed' as you might have thought it was.
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