Ruth Chang suggests hard decisions are hard not because of their largeness, but because the value of each alternatives is arbitrary when comparing. In fact, value itself is ill-defined. In this case, each alternative doesn't have an intrinsic quantitative value that can be compared. Instead, value is received based on your perception, reasoning and commitment. Ultimately, you create the value. This means you can create positive and negative value to each alternative; this also means you can retract positive and negative to each alternative. You solely have this power.
If making a hard decision is based off of what we--as individuals--value, then how is it possible for us to ever make a bad decision for ourselves? Before answering this, we must first ask ourselves a series of other questions:
What causes us to view a decision as bad?
What is a bad decision?
Are our values inflexible?
What does it mean to make a decision?
Below are reasons we can conceive of why our decision is perceived as bad, but they are not necessarily reasons for why we made a bad decision.
A shift or change in our values when we made the decision initially.
A miscalculation in our values and the values we attributed to each alternative.
The opinions and values of others.
If we want technicality, we ought to first define bad independant of decision making. In most philosophical thinking, characteristics of bad include the absence of pleasure or presence of pain. The latter is most interesting when applied to decision making because a good decision can bring pain the same way a bad decision can, so the onset of pain cannot be catalyst for bad. What differentiates the pain from a bad decision from a good one is regret. In a good decision, we can take some comfort in knowing it was ultimately the right choice to make. In a bad decision, it's unclear to us if what we chose was right, often to a point where we wish we made a different choice.
The presence of regret signifies a bad decision, but the amount of regret we can have towards a decision is on a sliding scale. A decision is placed on this Sliding Scale of Regret based off the difference in value of the potential outcomes. For example, let's think about purchasing stock. We buy Stock A over Stock B for no particular reason. Stock A loses $1, Stock B earns $1. We may slightly regret not buying Stock B because we could have made $1 instead of lose it. In a different instance, we chose to buy Stock X over Stock Y for no particular reason. Stock X loses $1,000 and Stock Y earns $1,000. Not only have we lost $1,000, but we also lost the opportunity to earn $1,000 more. The decision was the same, but the outcomes were dramatically different in value and therefore our amount of regret matched the difference in the outcomes. Now that we've established a bad decision has an aptitude for regret, it begs the question: is it possible the aforementioned reasons (1-3) for a bad decision correlate to a place on the Sliding Scale of Regret?
Certainly. We can be sure of this because our premise is that regret is caused by the desire for a different alternative's outcome, which is fueled by our newfound perception of value towards that outcome.
A better question to ask is how frequently and how easily should our values change? Because values are what we find significant enough to commit to, it would be misleading for them to shift often. However, if they never changed, then could we truly say we've grown personally? There ought to be room and reason for values to change. Though at what velocity is debatable.
Perhaps we've been looking at this all wrong. Making a decision is the final mental assessment and commitment before action. What if our actions were not executed well? Or, what if they were executed well, but perceived adverse to our intentions? Do either of these situations turn our good decision into a bad one? Should execution be considered when evaluating the decision itself?
When others' input influences how we interpret the value of our decision, it intrinsically begins to influence our values. This is 1 and 3. If part of our values is to value what others think of us and that wasn't correctly calculated initially, then 2 is also a reason for the making of a bad decision. Earlier, we determined values should be flexible, so do not be fearful--only open-minded--if you find yourself in this state.
How something is executed doesn't have a direct role in determining if our decision was good or bad, but it does impact the outcome. As we've argued, the outcome influences whether or not our decision was good or bad and to what degree. This implies execution does matter a great deal.
Previously, we discussed ways to perceive if a decision we've made is bad. However, these are post-assessments we persuade ourselves of after the decision has already been made and typically after execution has occurred. We've established a bad decision is rooted in regret. Since we cannot regret something we've yet to do, this implies we cannot make bad decisions for ourselves. Or, perhaps we just cannot know the decision is going to be bad. This conclusion begs a new question: Is it possible for us to prevent ourselves from making bad decisions?
To reply you need to sign in.