How do you go about making a big decision?
Some decisions are more difficult than others. What path do you choose when there isn’t a clear best choice?
Should you cut your hair — or perhaps dye it? Should you finally ask that special someone out on a date? Should you join a sports team, get an after school job or perhaps run for class president? Where should you go to college, or what should you do after high school? How do you go about making a big decision? Talk to friends? Make a list of pluses and minuses? Go with your gut? Sleep on it? Flip a coin? Would you say you are a decisive person? Or do you agonize over every possibility until you are worn out by decision fatigue?
In the Opinion essay “How to Make a Decision When There’s No ‘Right’ One,” Russ Roberts writes about an agonizing choice made by the English naturalist Charles Darwin — whether to get married or devote his life to science — and what lessons we can draw nearly 200 years later:
In 1838, Charles Darwin faced a problem. Nearing his 30th birthday, he was trying to decide whether to marry — with the likelihood that children would be part of the package.
To help make his decision, Darwin made a list of the expected pluses and minuses of marrying. On the left-hand side he tried to imagine what it would be like to be married (“constant companion,” “object to be beloved & played with — better than a dog anyhow”). On the right-hand side he tried to imagine what it would be like not to marry (“not forced to visit relatives & to bend in every trifle”).
Darwin was struggling with what I call a wild problem — a fork in the road of life where knowing which path is the right one isn’t obvious, where the day-to-day pleasure and pain from choosing one path over another are ultimately hidden from us and where those day-to-day pleasures and pains don’t fully capture what’s at stake.
There might be a mere handful of such decisions like this that we face — whether to marry, whom to marry, whether to have children, whether to switch careers and take on new responsibilities. Often there is little evidence to guide us, and what little evidence is available can mislead us.
How should we proceed, then, especially if we want to make a rational decision?
After analyzing Darwin’s detailed list of plus and minuses, Mr. Roberts writes that the rational naturalist and future evolution theorist ultimately seems to toss aside his cost-benefit analysis for a more emotional perspective:
Most of Darwin’s list seems to point him toward a life of staying single. Yet he decided to marry, seemingly putting his sober list of pluses and minuses aside, writing in a much more emotional vein:
My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working & nothing after all. — No, no won’t do. — Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London house. — Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire & books & music perhaps. — Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St.
Less than a year later, Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood. Together they had 10 children; seven survived to adulthood. And somehow, despite or perhaps because of his decision to go through life with a wife and children at his side, Darwin managed to become one of the greatest scientists of all time and forever changed our understanding of who we human beings are.
But why did Darwin ignore the calm, cerebral calculus he laid out in his journal? What’s the lesson to be learned from his decision-making process?
I have to speculate a little here, but I think he realized, as most of us do, that life is about more than just the sum of the day-to-day pleasures and pains that follow from our choices. Adding up costs and benefits — what I call narrow utilitarianism — may seem like the height of rationality. But it can easily undervalue the most important but less obvious aspects of a life well lived. A broader view doesn’t always point to marriage. It can also point to staying single or getting divorced. But the important lesson is to think about life as more than accumulating pleasure or avoiding pain.
The essay concludes:
Human beings want purpose. We want meaning. We want to belong to something larger than ourselves. The decisions we make in the face of wild problems don’t just lead to good days and bad days. They define us. They determine who we are, who we might aspire to become, who we might come to be.
And this, I think, is the key to how we approach our own wild problems. Darwin’s decision looks irrational only until we remember that the future is veiled from us and that life is about more than simple pluses and minuses. Darwin accepted, I think, that daily happiness was less important than how he thought he should live his life and who and what he wanted to become.
My advice? Learn from Darwin. Spend less time trying to figure out the best path to get to where we want to go and spend more time thinking about where we want to go in the first place.
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
How do you make hard decisions? Tell us about a choice you made and how you went about it. Looking back, do you think you used a helpful approach? Do you think you came to the right decision?
In general, do you find it a challenge to make decisions? Would you say you are a decisive person? Or, do you tend to go back and forth in your mind and struggle to make a choice? Do you later spend a lot of time wondering if you made the right call?
Have you ever had what Mr. Roberts, the essayist, calls a “wild problem”? He describes it as “a fork in the road of life where knowing which path is the right one isn’t obvious, where the day-to-day pleasure and pain from choosing one path over another are ultimately hidden from us and where those day-to-day pleasures and pains don’t fully capture what’s at stake.” If so, how did you approach and handle this decision? What is your reaction to the story of Charles Darwin and his conundrum over marrying or staying single? Like the future evolutionist, have you ever made a list of pluses and minuses? Do you think they are helpful? What do you think of Mr. Roberts’s interpretation of the story and his advice to readers: “My advice? Learn from Darwin. Spend less time trying to figure out the best path to get to where we want to go and spend more time thinking about where we want to go in the first place.” Is he right? From your own life and experiences, what advice would you give to others who struggle to make a hard decision?
Should you cut your hair — or perhaps dye it? Should you finally ask that special someone out on a date? Should you join a sports team, get an after school job or perhaps run for class president? Where should you go to college, or what should you do after high school? How do you go about making a big decision? Talk to friends? Make a list of pluses and minuses? Go with your gut? Sleep on it? Flip a coin? Would you say you are a decisive person? Or do you agonize over every possibility until you are worn out by decision fatigue?
In the Opinion essay “How to Make a Decision When There’s No ‘Right’ One,” Russ Roberts writes about an agonizing choice made by the English naturalist Charles Darwin — whether to get married or devote his life to science — and what lessons we can draw nearly 200 years later:
In 1838, Charles Darwin faced a problem. Nearing his 30th birthday, he was trying to decide whether to marry — with the likelihood that children would be part of the package.
To help make his decision, Darwin made a list of the expected pluses and minuses of marrying. On the left-hand side he tried to imagine what it would be like to be married (“constant companion,” “object to be beloved & played with — better than a dog anyhow”). On the right-hand side he tried to imagine what it would be like not to marry (“not forced to visit relatives & to bend in every trifle”).
Darwin was struggling with what I call a wild problem — a fork in the road of life where knowing which path is the right one isn’t obvious, where the day-to-day pleasure and pain from choosing one path over another are ultimately hidden from us and where those day-to-day pleasures and pains don’t fully capture what’s at stake.
There might be a mere handful of such decisions like this that we face — whether to marry, whom to marry, whether to have children, whether to switch careers and take on new responsibilities. Often there is little evidence to guide us, and what little evidence is available can mislead us.
How should we proceed, then, especially if we want to make a rational decision?
After analyzing Darwin’s detailed list of plus and minuses, Mr. Roberts writes that the rational naturalist and future evolution theorist ultimately seems to toss aside his cost-benefit analysis for a more emotional perspective:
Most of Darwin’s list seems to point him toward a life of staying single. Yet he decided to marry, seemingly putting his sober list of pluses and minuses aside, writing in a much more emotional vein:
My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working & nothing after all. — No, no won’t do. — Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London house. — Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire & books & music perhaps. — Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St.
Less than a year later, Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood. Together they had 10 children; seven survived to adulthood. And somehow, despite or perhaps because of his decision to go through life with a wife and children at his side, Darwin managed to become one of the greatest scientists of all time and forever changed our understanding of who we human beings are.
But why did Darwin ignore the calm, cerebral calculus he laid out in his journal? What’s the lesson to be learned from his decision-making process?
I have to speculate a little here, but I think he realized, as most of us do, that life is about more than just the sum of the day-to-day pleasures and pains that follow from our choices. Adding up costs and benefits — what I call narrow utilitarianism — may seem like the height of rationality. But it can easily undervalue the most important but less obvious aspects of a life well lived. A broader view doesn’t always point to marriage. It can also point to staying single or getting divorced. But the important lesson is to think about life as more than accumulating pleasure or avoiding pain.
The essay concludes:
Human beings want purpose. We want meaning. We want to belong to something larger than ourselves. The decisions we make in the face of wild problems don’t just lead to good days and bad days. They define us. They determine who we are, who we might aspire to become, who we might come to be.
And this, I think, is the key to how we approach our own wild problems. Darwin’s decision looks irrational only until we remember that the future is veiled from us and that life is about more than simple pluses and minuses. Darwin accepted, I think, that daily happiness was less important than how he thought he should live his life and who and what he wanted to become.
My advice? Learn from Darwin. Spend less time trying to figure out the best path to get to where we want to go and spend more time thinking about where we want to go in the first place.
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
How do you make hard decisions? Tell us about a choice you made and how you went about it. Looking back, do you think you used a helpful approach? Do you think you came to the right decision?
In general, do you find it a challenge to make decisions? Would you say you are a decisive person? Or, do you tend to go back and forth in your mind and struggle to make a choice? Do you later spend a lot of time wondering if you made the right call?
Have you ever had what Mr. Roberts, the essayist, calls a “wild problem”? He describes it as “a fork in the road of life where knowing which path is the right one isn’t obvious, where the day-to-day pleasure and pain from choosing one path over another are ultimately hidden from us and where those day-to-day pleasures and pains don’t fully capture what’s at stake.” If so, how did you approach and handle this decision? What is your reaction to the story of Charles Darwin and his conundrum over marrying or staying single? Like the future evolutionist, have you ever made a list of pluses and minuses? Do you think they are helpful? What do you think of Mr. Roberts’s interpretation of the story and his advice to readers: “My advice? Learn from Darwin. Spend less time trying to figure out the best path to get to where we want to go and spend more time thinking about where we want to go in the first place.” Is he right? From your own life and experiences, what advice would you give to others who struggle to make a hard decision?
