The Art of Decision-Making (2019)

By Joshua Rothman | Originally published in The New Yorker

The choices we make throughout our lives are not merely about our preferences; they are fundamental declarations of who we wish to become.

The Darwinian Dilemma

In July 1838, a twenty-nine-year-old Charles Darwin found himself at a crossroads. He had already returned from the H.M.S. Beagle, possessing the raw data that would eventually culminate in On the Origin of Species. However, he was currently preoccupied with a personal analytical crisis: Should he propose to his cousin, Emma Wedgwood?

Darwin feared that the responsibilities of a spouse and father might stifle his scientific ambitions. He weighed his options with a rudimentary list:

• The Risks:
  • If Emma dislikes London $\rightarrow$ "banishment and degradation into indolent, idle fool."
  • Children (if God permits) $\rightarrow$ potential distractions.
• The Rewards:
  • A domestic partner to manage the household.
  • The comfort of a "nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire and books and music."

Ultimately, Darwin concluded his notes with the phrase Marry, Marry, Marry QED.

Comparing Methodologies: Darwin vs. Franklin

In his book Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most, Steven Johnson argues that Darwin’s process was remarkably mediocre. He contrasts it with the "Prudential Algebra" utilized by Benjamin Franklin.

Decision-Making Frameworks

Franklin's method involved assigning weights to reasons and striking them out when they balanced each other:

"If I find a Reason pro equal to some two Reasons con, I strike out the three and thus proceeding I find at length where the Ballance lies."

Despite the added rigor, Johnson suggests that even Franklin's method remains heavily reliant on intuition. The ability to make "farsighted choices"—those with consequences spanning decades—is a skill that remains tragically undervalued.

The Paradox of Choice

There is a strange irony in how humans allocate their mental energy. We often apply more rigor to trivialities than to life-altering pivots.

• Low Stakes $\rightarrow$ High Deliberation: Spending weeks researching a new laptop or agonizing over a Netflix queue.
• High Stakes $\rightarrow$ Low Deliberation: Ending a long-term relationship over a few bottles of wine or moving to a new city because of a TV show's influence.

This mirrors the ancient Persians, who, according to Herodotus, would deliberate on major issues twice:

1. While intoxicated.
2. While sober.

Decision Science and the "Big" Choices

Johnson explores high-stakes scenarios, such as President Barack Obama's decision to authorize the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad. These decisions are often guided by decision science—a hybrid field of psychology, management, and behavioral economics.

Johnson posits that we should adopt these professional techniques in our personal lives. However, the author, Rothman, reflects on his own experience of becoming a father. He didn't use a spreadsheet; he didn't perform any "algebra." Instead, his transition was a slow, unintentional drift.

The Chain of Causation

In War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy suggests that we are never truly at the "start" of a decision. Instead, we are always in the middle of a causal chain.

Like Tolstoy's General Kutuzov wondering exactly when Napoleon's path to Moscow became inevitable, Rothman finds it impossible to pinpoint the exact moment he "decided" to be a parent.

Bounded Rationality and Uncertainty

The core issue, as Johnson explains, is bounded rationality. We cannot think things through perfectly because:

• We are constrained by previous choices.
• We ignore or misunderstand key facts.
• We fall prey to groupthink.
• Our minds are inherently fallible.

Complex decisions involve "conflicting objectives" and "undiscovered options." We are forced to calculate probabilities across varying levels of uncertainty. For example, one must weigh the probability of domestic strife against the probability of achieving a scientific breakthrough:

$P(\text{Success}) = \int f(\text{uncertainty}, \text{risk}) \, dt$

Ultimately, the stories we tell about our lives are often too simple to capture the actual complexity of how we change. Johnson wants us to move from being mere readers of our life stories to being the writers.

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