Whenever you make a big decision, check through this list!
For this . . . is a list of common reasons you might make a bad decision.
Whenever ya make a decision, if your decision doesn’t fall under any of these reasons, than you’re doing about as good as any normal, flawed human possibly can!
See, for history class/social science (My school calls it World Course), we’re working on coming up with ideas for a hypothetical nation called Xlandia, who just overthrew it’s monarchy.
We are to come up with ideas for a new nation. And my job is coming up with ideas.
Super exciting.
There’s this google doc of questions for coming up with ideas for Xlandia, and one of them was:
What big problems or risks do they face (stability, corruption, division, trust)?
To which my response was:
Let’s model the world in terms of Major decisions.
The problem is that, for any given Major decision, the person/people making the decision make a bad decision.
That can be fixed by replacing the people in the panel who’ll make the decision with people who will make a good decision, or by improving the people in the panel by finding a fantastic song that’ll get them to decide better (Preferably with humanism, risk-aversion, & critical thinking + systems analysis thinking/world modelling + https://www.clearerthinking.org/tools/the-decision-advisor) - but I sort of got sidetracked. The point of this was to list common big problems in important decisions, so we can solve each one. Here’s your list of big problems:
THE LIST OF REASONS PEOPLE MAKE BAD DECISIONS🔵
If your decision doesn’t fall into any of these categories/reasons, you’re doing about as good as any normal, flawed human! If it does, just try to get rid of that reason and make the decision again.
Doing whatever your party (or in-group) says (Democrat or Republican), even when they’re both wrong or both focusing on the wrong things or both villainous in different ways or focussing on things with the wrong scale (Are you doing this? If so, imagine what you would do without that in-group!)
Not coming up with clever solutions that’ll do better than your current idea (If you’re doing this, ya might be missing out on some clever solution that’ll be better than your current idea!)
Perpetuating a problem because the explanation of a problem sounds like reasons to keep the problem going For example, if you’re a landlord, you might think you should raise prices on houses and kick out families because you THINK there’s a lot of economic reasons you should, but you know it’s a problem. Those economic reasons don’t matter, if it causes a problem, it’s probably bad!
Doing the right thing feels icky
Laziness
The fact things seem WAY BIGGER when they effect you compared to if you pretended that they just effected someone else out there workin’ on the same stuff & bothered by the same things.
Would you toothbrush every day if it meant your teeth would be just as dirty but some random person would have slightly cleaner teeth? Is that worth the time-commitment?
Wanting to restore some former glory or get to some weird vision of the future or otherwise fulfil some dream that you’ve romanticized so much without even thinking if it’s AT ALL a good idea first
This example seems contrived, but it’s actually likely exactly what Putin is doing with trying to “Restore the Soviet Union”, What Xi is trying to do with “Making it the age of China” (Where China is a developed global superpower that isn’t beholden to anybody, for some reason, whatever that might be), & it’s plausibly what Sam Altman is doing !!!
Just wanting money for the heckovit
Forgetting to see others as truly, deeply human
Dumb phycology getting in the way of the true potential of people who agree with the logic of doing something, but for some stupid fucking phycological reason they don’t do it
People hearing a really good idea, getting really excited about it, and then I forget to send a good follow-up email & they never do anything about it!!
People forgetting to consider that they might be asswholes from the perspective of someone else - TAKEAWAY: A great way to quick-check if you’re making a bad decision is if some third-person might see you as an asswhole for doing it, OR for not doing something!
They didn’t use systems-analysis/world-modelling to MAKE SURE they came up with A FANTASTIC clever idea that’s good for all parties! (Which is always gonna be getting all parties to moral compromise and have a summit where they agree on a common goal to do the most good).
. . . And other than that, assuming you’re dodging & weaving all those other things-that-could-turn-your-decisions-and-your-life-to-be-actively-making-things-worse, if you’ve dodged & weaved ALL of them, then SURELY you’ll probably make a good decision!!! I really can’t see how, if your honestly not falling trap to any of these, I can’t see how else you could make a terrible decision.
Whenever you make a decision, check if you’re falling into any of these categories! If you are, you could be being actively evil! If NOT, you’re probably making the BEST decision you can, as a human-with-a-human-brain-who-can’t-optimize!
DEAR ME, AND ALL READERS: THIS IS HOW YOU SHOULD MAKE DECISIONS.
Howdy!
Whenever you make a big decision, check through this list!
For this . . . is a list of common reasons you might make a bad decision.
Whenever ya make a decision, if your decision doesn’t fall under any of these reasons, than you’re doing about as good as any normal, flawed human possibly can!
See, for history class/social science (My school calls it World Course), we’re working on coming up with ideas for a hypothetical nation called Xlandia, who just overthrew it’s monarchy.
We are to come up with ideas for a new nation. And my job is coming up with ideas.
Super exciting.
There’s this google doc of questions for coming up with ideas for Xlandia, and one of them was:
To which my response was:
Let’s model the world in terms of Major decisions.
The problem is that, for any given Major decision, the person/people making the decision make a bad decision.
That can be fixed by replacing the people in the panel who’ll make the decision with people who will make a good decision, or by improving the people in the panel by finding a fantastic song that’ll get them to decide better
(Preferably with humanism, risk-aversion, & critical thinking + systems analysis thinking/world modelling + https://www.clearerthinking.org/tools/the-decision-advisor) - but I sort of got sidetracked. The point of this was to list common big problems in important decisions, so we can solve each one. Here’s your list of big problems:
THE LIST OF REASONS PEOPLE MAKE BAD DECISIONS🔵
If your decision doesn’t fall into any of these categories/reasons, you’re doing about as good as any normal, flawed human! If it does, just try to get rid of that reason and make the decision again.
(Are you doing this? If so, imagine what you would do without that in-group!)
(If you’re doing this, ya might be missing out on some clever solution that’ll be better than your current idea!)
For example, if you’re a landlord, you might think you should raise prices on houses and kick out families because you THINK there’s a lot of economic reasons you should, but you know it’s a problem.
Those economic reasons don’t matter, if it causes a problem, it’s probably bad!
The fact things seem WAY BIGGER when they effect you compared to if you pretended that they just effected someone else out there workin’ on the same stuff & bothered by the same things.
Would you toothbrush every day if it meant your teeth would be just as dirty but some random person would have slightly cleaner teeth? Is that worth the time-commitment?
Wanting to restore some former glory or get to some weird vision of the future or otherwise fulfil some dream that you’ve romanticized so much without even thinking if it’s AT ALL a good idea first
This example seems contrived, but it’s actually likely exactly what Putin is doing with trying to “Restore the Soviet Union”, What Xi is trying to do with “Making it the age of China” (Where China is a developed global superpower that isn’t beholden to anybody, for some reason, whatever that might be), & it’s plausibly what Sam Altman is doing !!!
I really can’t see how, if your honestly not falling trap to any of these, I can’t see how else you could make a terrible decision.
Whenever you make a decision, check if you’re falling into any of these categories! If you are, you could be being actively evil! If NOT, you’re probably making the BEST decision you can, as a human-with-a-human-brain-who-can’t-optimize!
DEAR ME, AND ALL READERS: THIS IS HOW YOU SHOULD MAKE DECISIONS.