decision-making

From the Latin de - caedere meaning “to cut off,” to decide from among options is to cut off the possibility of all but the one we choose.

Decisions are made by feelings, not rational thoughts

Why Buddhism Is True examines what actually goes on in the brain when we make a decision. Brain scans refute the popular idea that decisions are made by the cerebral cortex, the seat of higher reasoning. The cortex is involved in collecting and weighing evidence, to be sure, but more in the capacity of a lawyer than a judge. The decision is ultimately made in the older, deeper affective brain regions dealing with feelings. Our reasoning makes the case, but ultimately our feelings decide for us:

Reason has its effect not by directly pushing back against a feeling, but by fortifying the feeling that does do the pushing back. Yes, that Hershey bar looks good, and the thought of eating it feels good, but reflecting on that article you read about the toll high blood-sugar takes on your body makes the thought of eating the Hershey bar guilt-inducing, and it’s the guilt, not the reflection, that does direct combat with the urge to eat the candy bar. “Reason alone,” Hume argued, “can never oppose passion in the direction of the will. Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion but a contrary impulse.” In this view, the prefrontal cortex isn’t a kind of command module that evolution invented when we got promoted from mere animals to human beings. It’s not something that finally tamed our unruly feelings and put us under rational control. No, the powers of reason embedded in the prefrontal cortex are themselves under the control of feelings. The value system embedded in the feelings, natural selection’s conception of what’s good and what’s bad, what we should pursue and what we should avoid, continues to be, more or less, the prevailing value system.

When you have a dozen reasons to do something…don’t

By invoking more than one reason, you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason. (Nassim Nicholas Taleb in Antifragile)

This article introduced me to the concept of Single Decisive Reasoning, the idea that we should only make an important decision when there is one really good reason to do so. There might be small, ancillary justifications too, but those should be ignored in order to focus on whether The One Good Reason is good enough. And if there are only small, ancillary justifications, we (or the person making the case to us) are probably fooling ourselves.

And…trees? 🌳

The type of tree known as deciduous comes from the same Latin root as “to decide.” Deciduous trees are so named because they “cut off” their leaves every autumn. Those leaves decompose and their nutrients feed the tree through its roots. I wonder if it would be possible for the choices we cut off when we make our own decisions to somehow nourish us in the future.