How to make hard choices | Ruth Chang — Transcript

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1. 0:12Think of a hard choice you'll face in the near future.
2. 0:16It might be between two careers --
3. 0:18artist and accountant --
4. 0:20or places to live -- the city or the country --
5. 0:23or even between two people to marry --
6. 0:25you could marry Betty or you could marry Lolita.
7. 0:28Or it might be a choice about whether to have children,
8. 0:31to have an ailing parent move in with you,
9. 0:33to raise your child in a religion that your partner lives by
10. 0:37but leaves you cold.
11. 0:39Or whether to donate your life savings to charity.
12. 0:42Chances are, the hard choice you thought of was something big,
13. 0:45something momentous, something that matters to you.
14. 0:48Hard choices seem to be occasions
15. 0:51for agonizing, hand-wringing, the gnashing of teeth.
16. 0:56But I think we've misunderstood hard choices
17. 0:58and the role they play in our lives.
18. 1:00Understanding hard choices
19. 1:02uncovers a hidden power each of us possesses.
20. 1:06What makes a choice hard is the way the alternatives relate.
21. 1:10In any easy choice,
22. 1:12one alternative is better than the other.
23. 1:14In a hard choice,
24. 1:16one alternative is better in some ways,
25. 1:18the other alternative is better in other ways,
26. 1:21and neither is better than the other overall.
27. 1:24You agonize over whether to stay in your current job in the city
28. 1:29or uproot your life for more challenging work in the country,
29. 1:33because staying is better in some ways,
30. 1:35moving is better in others,
31. 1:37and neither is better than the other overall.
32. 1:41We shouldn't think that all hard choices are big.
33. 1:45Let's say you're deciding what to have for breakfast.
34. 1:47You could have high fiber bran cereal
35. 1:50or a chocolate donut.
36. 1:52Suppose what matters in the choice is tastiness and healthfulness.
37. 1:56The cereal is better for you,
38. 1:58the donut tastes way better,
39. 2:01but neither is better than the other overall,
40. 2:03a hard choice.
41. 2:05Realizing that small choices can also be hard,
42. 2:09may make big hard choices seem less intractable.
43. 2:13After all, we manage to figure out what to have for breakfast,
44. 2:16so maybe we can figure out whether to stay in the city
45. 2:19or uproot for the new job in the country.
46. 2:23We also shouldn't think that hard choices are hard
47. 2:28because we are stupid.
48. 2:30When I graduated from college,
49. 2:32I couldn't decide between two careers, philosophy and law.
50. 2:36I really loved philosophy.
51. 2:39There are amazing things you can learn as a philosopher,
52. 2:42and all from the comfort of an armchair.
53. 2:46But I came from a modest immigrant family
54. 2:49where my idea of luxury
55. 2:50was having a pork tongue and jelly sandwich
56. 2:52in my school lunchbox,
57. 2:55so the thought of spending my whole life
58. 2:57sitting around in armchairs just thinking ...
59. 3:01Well, that struck me as the height of extravagance and frivolity.
60. 3:05So I got out my yellow pad,
61. 3:07I drew a line down the middle,
62. 3:09and I tried my best to think of the reasons
63. 3:11for and against each alternative.
64. 3:15I remember thinking to myself,
65. 3:17if only I knew what my life in each career would be like.
66. 3:22If only God or Netflix would send me a DVD of my two possible future careers,
67. 3:28I'd be set.
68. 3:29I'd compare them side by side,
69. 3:31I'd see that one was better,
70. 3:33and the choice would be easy.
71. 3:35But I got no DVD,
72. 3:37and because I couldn't figure out which was better,
73. 3:40I did what many of us do in hard choices:
74. 3:43I took the safest option.
75. 3:46Fear of being an unemployed philosopher led me to become a lawyer,
76. 3:52and as I discovered, lawyering didn't quite fit.
77. 3:55It wasn't who I was.
78. 3:57So now I'm a philosopher,
79. 3:59and I study hard choices,
80. 4:01and I can tell you, that fear of the unknown,
81. 4:04while a common motivational default in dealing with hard choices,
82. 4:09rests on a misconception of them.
83. 4:12It's a mistake to think that in hard choices,
84. 4:15one alternative really is better than the other,
85. 4:18but we're too stupid to know which,
86. 4:20and since we don't know which,
87. 4:21we might as well take the least risky option.
88. 4:24Even taking two alternatives side by side
89. 4:27with full information, a choice can still be hard.
90. 4:32Hard choices are hard not because of us or our ignorance;
91. 4:36they're hard because there is no best option.
92. 4:41Now, if there's no best option,
93. 4:43if the scales don't tip in favor of one alternative over another,
94. 4:48then surely the alternatives must be equally good.
95. 4:51So maybe the right thing to say in hard choices
96. 4:54is that they're between equally good options.
97. 4:56But that can't be right.
98. 4:57If alternatives are equally good, you should just flip a coin between them,
99. 5:01and it seems a mistake to think,
100. 5:04here's how you should decide between careers,
101. 5:06places to live, people to marry:
102. 5:08Flip a coin.
103. 5:11There's another reason for thinking
104. 5:12that hard choices aren't choices between equally good options.
105. 5:18Suppose you have a choice between two jobs:
106. 5:21you could be an investment banker
107. 5:24or a graphic artist.
108. 5:27There are a variety of things that matter in such a choice,
109. 5:30like the excitement of the work,
110. 5:32achieving financial security,
111. 5:34having time to raise a family, and so on.
112. 5:36Maybe the artist's career puts you on the cutting edge
113. 5:41of new forms of pictorial expression.
114. 5:44Maybe the banking career puts you on the cutting edge
115. 5:46of new forms of financial manipulation.
116. 5:50(Laughter)
117. 5:51Imagine the two jobs however you like,
118. 5:54so that neither is better than the other.
119. 5:57Now suppose we improve one of them, a bit.
120. 6:00Suppose the bank, wooing you,
121. 6:03adds 500 dollars a month to your salary.
122. 6:06Does the extra money
123. 6:07now make the banking job better than the artist one?
124. 6:12Not necessarily.
125. 6:15A higher salary makes the banking job better than it was before,
126. 6:19but it might not be enough
127. 6:20to make being a banker better than being an artist.
128. 6:25But if an improvement in one of the jobs doesn't make it better than the other,
129. 6:29then the two original jobs could not have been equally good.
130. 6:33If you start with two things that are equally good,
131. 6:36and you improve one of them,
132. 6:37it now must be better than the other.
133. 6:40That's not the case with options in hard choices.
134. 6:45So now we've got a puzzle.
135. 6:47We've got two jobs.
136. 6:49Neither is better than the other, nor are they equally good.
137. 6:53So how are we supposed to choose?
138. 6:55Something seems to have gone wrong here.
139. 7:00Maybe the choice itself is problematic, and comparison is impossible.
140. 7:06But that can't be right.
141. 7:07It's not like we're trying to choose between two things that can't be compared.
142. 7:12We're weighing the merits of two jobs, after all,
143. 7:15not the merits of the number nine and a plate of fried eggs.
144. 7:20A comparison of the overall merits of two jobs
145. 7:23is something we can make,
146. 7:25and one we often do make.
147. 7:29I think the puzzle arises
148. 7:31because of an unreflective assumption we make about value.
149. 7:36We unwittingly assume that values like justice, beauty, kindness,
150. 7:42are akin to scientific quantities, like length, mass and weight.
151. 7:49Take any comparative question not involving value,
152. 7:52such as which of two suitcases is heavier.
153. 7:55There are only three possibilities.
154. 7:58The weight of one is greater, lesser or equal to the weight of the other.
155. 8:04Properties like weight can be represented by real numbers --
156. 8:07one, two, three and so on --
157. 8:09and there are only three possible comparisons
158. 8:12between any two real numbers.
159. 8:15One number is greater, lesser, or equal to the other.
160. 8:20Not so with values.
161. 8:23As post-Enlightenment creatures,
162. 8:25we tend to assume
163. 8:27that scientific thinking holds the key to everything of importance in our world,
164. 8:33but the world of value is different from the world of science.
165. 8:36The stuff of the one world can be quantified by real numbers.
166. 8:40The stuff of the other world can't.
167. 8:43We shouldn't assume that the world of is, of lengths and weights,
168. 8:48has the same structure as the world of ought,
169. 8:50of what we should do.
170. 8:52So if what matters to us --
171. 8:55a child's delight, the love you have for your partner —
172. 8:58can't be represented by real numbers,
173. 9:01then there's no reason to believe
174. 9:03that in choice, there are only three possibilities --
175. 9:07that one alternative is better, worse or equal to the other.
176. 9:12We need to introduce a new, fourth relation
177. 9:16beyond being better, worse or equal,
178. 9:20that describes what's going on in hard choices.
179. 9:23I like to say that the alternatives are "on a par."
180. 9:27When alternatives are on a par,
181. 9:29it may matter very much which you choose,
182. 9:32but one alternative isn't better than the other.
183. 9:35Rather, the alternatives are in the same neighborhood of value,
184. 9:39in the same league of value,
185. 9:41while at the same time being very different in kind of value.
186. 9:46That's why the choice is hard.
187. 9:49Understanding hard choices in this way
188. 9:52uncovers something about ourselves we didn't know.
189. 9:56Each of us has the power to create reasons.
190. 10:02Imagine a world in which every choice you face
191. 10:05is an easy choice,
192. 10:06that is, there's always a best alternative.
193. 10:09If there's a best alternative, then that's the one you should choose,
194. 10:12because part of being rational
195. 10:14is doing the better thing rather than the worse thing,
196. 10:17choosing what you have most reason to choose.
197. 10:20In such a world,
198. 10:22we'd have most reason
199. 10:24to wear black socks instead of pink socks,
200. 10:27to eat cereal instead of donuts,
201. 10:29to live in the city rather than the country,
202. 10:31to marry Betty instead of Lolita.
203. 10:33A world full of only easy choices would enslave us to reasons.
204. 10:39When you think about it,
205. 10:41(Laughter)
206. 10:42it's nuts to believe that the reasons given to you
207. 10:48dictated that you had most reason to pursue
208. 10:53the exact hobbies you do,
209. 10:55to live in the exact house you do,
210. 10:58to work at the exact job you do.
211. 11:01Instead, you faced alternatives that were on a par --
212. 11:05hard choices --
213. 11:07and you made reasons for yourself
214. 11:10to choose that hobby, that house and that job.
215. 11:15When alternatives are on a par,
216. 11:17the reasons given to us,
217. 11:18the ones that determine whether we're making a mistake,
218. 11:21are silent as to what to do.
219. 11:24It's here, in the space of hard choices,
220. 11:28that we get to exercise our normative power --
221. 11:33the power to create reasons for yourself,
222. 11:35to make yourself into the kind of person
223. 11:40for whom country living is preferable to the urban life.
224. 11:45When we choose between options that are on a par,
225. 11:48we can do something really rather remarkable.
226. 11:52We can put our very selves behind an option.
227. 11:56Here's where I stand.
228. 11:58Here's who I am, I am for banking.
229. 12:02I am for chocolate donuts.
230. 12:04(Laughter)
231. 12:06This response in hard choices is a rational response,
232. 12:10but it's not dictated by reasons given to us.
233. 12:13Rather, it's supported by reasons created by us.
234. 12:19When we create reasons for ourselves
235. 12:22to become this kind of person rather than that,
236. 12:25we wholeheartedly become the people that we are.
237. 12:29You might say that we become the authors of our own lives.
238. 12:35So when we face hard choices, we shouldn't beat our head against a wall
239. 12:39trying to figure out which alternative is better.
240. 12:42There is no best alternative.
241. 12:44Instead of looking for reasons out there,
242. 12:47we should be looking for reasons in here:
243. 12:49Who am I to be?
244. 12:52You might decide to be a pink sock-wearing,
245. 12:55cereal-loving, country-living banker,
246. 12:59and I might decide to be a black sock-wearing,
247. 13:02urban, donut-loving artist.
248. 13:06What we do in hard choices is very much up to each of us.
249. 13:12Now, people who don't exercise their normative powers in hard choices
250. 13:17are drifters.
251. 13:19We all know people like that.
252. 13:21I drifted into being a lawyer.
253. 13:23I didn't put my agency behind lawyering.
254. 13:25I wasn't for lawyering.
255. 13:28Drifters allow the world to write the story of their lives.
256. 13:33They let mechanisms of reward and punishment --
257. 13:37pats on the head, fear, the easiness of an option --
258. 13:41to determine what they do.
259. 13:43So the lesson of hard choices:
260. 13:46reflect on what you can put your agency behind,
261. 13:50on what you can be for,
262. 13:53and through hard choices,
263. 13:55become that person.
264. 13:59Far from being sources of agony and dread,
265. 14:02hard choices are precious opportunities
266. 14:05for us to celebrate what is special about the human condition,
267. 14:09that the reasons that govern our choices as correct or incorrect
268. 14:14sometimes run out,
269. 14:15and it is here, in the space of hard choices,
270. 14:18that we have the power to create reasons for ourselves
271. 14:22to become the distinctive people that we are.
272. 14:26And that's why hard choices are not a curse
273. 14:29but a godsend.
274. 14:30Thank you.
275. 14:32(Applause)