I make decisions by following these highly generalized steps:
- Gather data about the choices that I can choose between.
- Gather data about each of the choices.
- Tally up the Value of each choice and choose the choice that has the greatest Value.
- Save the Value for future decisions that may need it.
My intuition (a highly reliable source, let me tell you) tells me that everyone makes decisions in this same way. The only difference is in the variety of ways we have to weigh Values (I'm capitalizing Values in order to remind myself that I have to be more specific about this at some point), and the variety of data that we have access to as far as gathering choices and gathering data about those choices.
It seems simplistic, but for some reason my mind has been spinning for the last week on a couple of the subtleties present in this process. For example, exactly how do we "gather data". And where is the Value of each choice stored, and how is it formatted? What qualities do these Values have, and in what ways can they be manipulated (ie. do they obey rules of addition and subtraction)? Now comes the task of trying to articulate some of these daydreams.
Gathering the choices: Let's say I'm trying to figure out how I'd like to get to work tomorrow. First, I need to figure out what the options are. I delve into my memory and pull up the two most common ways for me to typically get to work: I can walk to work or get a ride from K. Normally, I would stop gathering data there, lock those two options in place, and move to the next step. After moving the next step, it becomes more unlikely that I would consider new options, as it would require that I take a step back in the process. On the other hand, sometimes I might continue to think further about options (like now), because I've decided to be a little more thorough in the hopes of exposing some of the wiring behind the process. So, I pull up the fact that I used to take the bus to work occasionally. Add that to the list. That exhausts the query of my past memory as far as finding options, but my mind's next frontier to explore is the realm of all possibility. Here, I query my mind for ways other people get to work: by bike, by carpool, by rollerblade, by Segway, by skateboard, by helicopter, by private jet, by row boat, by skipping, by jumping rope, by teleporter, by time machine, or by digging a tunnel. That's not an exhaustive list, but it will suffice. Many brain queries are set to time out after a certain period of time as it is not to our advantage to always consider every option. We would never be able to take action.
Gathering data about the choices: So I've gathered a list of possibilities. Step one, complete. Step two, I need to gather data about these possibilities. I could say that my mind quite literally draws up a table with the options and puts the options in one column, and their related qualities in the other. Attached to each quality is either a Value or another table with a list of qualities. An example of a straight Value might be when I list the qualities for driving and it has the quality of Convenience which gets a Value of '+++++' or something. An example of a nested list of qualities, each with its own Value would be when I list qualities for walking and it has Weather, and gives the options: Raining, '----', Really Cold, '----', Mild '++', Sunny '+++', Hot '--'.
Tallying up the Values: So now there's this nested list of qualities and Values (though I haven't yet talked about where the Values come from), and all I have to do is parse the table; when there are choices to be made about the Weather and stuff I can step back and gather more data about the Weather before proceeding, and then take the Value that applies, or I can mentally hold two possibilities in my head for the next round when there are fewer choices to be made and therefore more space to explore them. In the end, though, either way, I have a numerical, or at least relative, representation of all of my choices, and am able to find that which has the most +'s (or least -'s) and choose that.
Saving the decision's Value for future reference: If I was writing a script to do this, it would not be something that I'd feel would be very fast at run time (which is the same as "real time"). I'd consider caching old decisions so that I could easily retrieve certain combinations of qualities and values without having to parse it all out each time. I think my brain does the same thing. Do you ever find that, when choosing between restaurants to eat at, that certain establishments that you've never tried consistently get left out of the decision making process? Perhaps that's because that decision tree has already been saved in your memory and it would take more work to introduce new top-level choices. There's a very physical sensation of effort that occurs when you're forced to consider something new--I think that's what it feels like when our brain has to consider brand new data for the first time, and recursively make adjustments to all of the qualities and values that the new data effects.
The interesting part, to me, is that this process is completely objective. It relies entirely on the addition and comparison of Values that qualities have, and at no point to we really need to make a decision.
You might ask, but the Values themselves are subjective. I may give walking in the rain a '+++' or a '---', that's up to me. True... but that brings me to my next hypothesis. I think Values are merely approximations for saved results from previous decisions. When I think of walking in the rain, I instantly have an initial negative reaction, but if I so desired I could reparse this decision and find nuances in it, for example, if I wanted to add in the quality of Childhood Nostalgia, I might be able to sway the total value to the positive, and walk in the rain knowing that it would bring me some sort of pleasure by conjuring up memories when I have had fun in the rain. Doing so, I now have two values for walking in the rain, one which is negative, and will probably be used for most run-of-the-mill walking-in-the-rain decisions, and another which is positive, and which I can pull up for special occasions, when I'm willing to put in a little more effort in recalling my past. If I were to choose how to get to work tomorrow, I might re-parse the decision tree to take this into account, but knowing that I'm rarely in the mood to exercise my imagination too much in the morning, I'd probably still employ the negative value. This process of caching old queries by assigning them a relative Value allows us to make a lot more decisions per day than we might otherwise be able to--on the other hand, it forces us to rely on the quality of our past decisions in order to hope that we might continue to make good decisions. Also, as you can see, the values aren't subjective. Subjectivity is an illusion caused by the way our brain saves past decisions (perhaps you could call them Opinions). At some point, the Opinions were arrived at objectively, but now they appear to be merely Values that we have, that are a part of us and which help define us.
Something bothers me about this, though. It makes us look as if we are truly objective creatures, always relying on data rather than whim. I think that this is because data goes bad. The longer you cache a Value without reparsing it and taking new things into consideration, the higher its chances are that it no longer correctly represents that actual Value you would assign it if you were to reconsider the decision with new updated data. At the same time, the longer you cache a Value, the more difficult it becomes to reparse it, because there is much more data gathering that must now take place before you can update it to its current state. Also, it must be mentioned, our brains, so accustomed to pulling up the saved Value, will not easily be retrained to look deeper than it had to in the past.
Have you ever experienced someone who has suddenly been presented from the results of a large decision? Becoming a Christian, for example, deciding that there IS a God. Suddenly, a fundamental Value has been reset and almost every decision has to be reparsed, because can you really rely on saved Values that are made on the assumption that there is no God? The first few weeks of being a Christian are memorable because of the number of Values that get reset. Same with when you move to a new city--your brain has to re-evaluate all the decisions about how to get to work, what to eat for dinner, etc. It is an exhausting, and very refreshing, time. It is something that we long for occasionally, wondering how much more alive we felt when we first moved to the new city or first started our new life together. I think this emotion is fundamentally tied to this process.
There are times when people react to new information by covering their ears. Why is this? Could it be that we are not fully in control of this decision making process... that sometimes new information can, by its mere introduction, force our brains to throw out saved Values and reparse them based on this new data? This feels like even more evidence to support the fact that our decisions are not made subjectively, but objectively. There is a pressure to keep things saved for as long as possible in order to save energy, but there is also a process in place that forces us to reconsider decisions when we know for a fact that new information is available. It's on this thin balance between efficiency and accuracy that we occasionally try to mediate processes, forcing certain decisions to remain static and others to be re-evaluated. But is this all we have? Is consciousness merely the emergence that occurs at the cusp of these two forces? If so, I don't think that that's much of a consciousness at all.
And this takes me to the second thing I've been thinking about, which is an exploration of what these forces that try to find balance actually are. What keeps me from, instead of walking home, walking to Tacoma and starting a new life there, unknown to everyone that currently knows me? I believe that at the moment, if I parsed that decision, it would come out negative. I would not be able to go. Which is the same thing as not wanting to go. I'm stuck in a Catch-22... if I actually did want to go (meaning that I was already intuitively aware that I might be able to parse this decision and arrive at a positive number) I could gather data in such a way that was biased towards walking to Tacoma, and inevitably I would be able to find that data because it had to be there in the first place in order for me to "want" to find it. It merely becomes just an exercise of articulating the actual qualities that, when added up, provide a positive number... even though that positive number was already there in my subconscious (where most decisions are made). In other words, by ourselves, there is no way to force ourselves to change our minds without outside help. Outside help is the key. That's where the unknown forces lie that can provide additional data to us that forces us to re-parse our decisions and come to a new one.
This is getting long, so I'm going to think about this more and talk about it later.
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