![]() Hard choices are hard not because of us or our ignorance they’re hard because there is no best option. Even taking two alternatives side by side with full information, a choice can still be hard. It’s a mistake to think that in hard choices, one alternative really is better than the other, but we’re too stupid to know which, and since we don’t know which, we might as well take the least risky option. ![]() … I can tell you that fear of the unknown, while a common motivational default in dealing with hard choices, rests on a misconception of them. In hard choices we tend to prefer the safest option. After all, we manage to figure out what to have for breakfast, so maybe we can figure out whether to stay in the city or uproot for the new job in the country. Realizing that small choices can also be hard may make big hard choices seem less intractable. The cereal is better for you, the donut tastes way better, but neither is better than the other overall, a hard choice. Suppose what matters in the choice is tastiness and healthfulness. ![]() You could have high fiber bran cereal or a chocolate donut. Let’s say you’re deciding what to have for breakfast. We shouldn’t think that all hard choices are big. You agonize over whether to stay in your current job in the city or uproot your life for more challenging work in the country because staying is better in some ways, moving is better in others, and neither is better than the other overall. In a hard choice, one alternative is better in some ways, the other alternative is better in other ways, and neither is better than the other overall. In any easy choice, one alternative is better than the other. What makes a hard choice hard is the way alternatives relate. ![]() And that’s why hard choices are not a curse but a godsend.” - Ruth Chang How to Make Hard Choices “Far from being sources of agony and dread, hard choices are precious opportunities for us to celebrate what is special about the human condition, that the reasons that govern our choices as correct or incorrect sometimes run out, and it is here, in the space of hard choices, that we have the power to create reasons for ourselves to become the distinctive people that we are. In her recent TED talk (video below), she talks about how we make hard choices and in the process offers a framework for making decisions consistent with who we truly are. Her work focuses on how we make the decisions that shape our lives. from Harvard Law School and dipping her toe into the legal world, she went off to Oxford University to study philosophy. Ruth Chang is a philosopher at Rutgers University with an interesting background. ![]()
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