From Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us by Russ Roberts:
Instead of spending more time trying to make the right decision, I show you that often there is no right decision in the way we usually think of the term.
Sometimes there are no right or wrong choices, just choices. And, of course, the status quo bias of not making a choice is itself also a choice.
The ability to boil complexity down to a single number so you can make comparisons is very powerful. The mathematical name for a number that describes physical concepts like area is scalar.
A matrix is messy. Its lessons are opaque. A scalar is clean and precise. The precision makes scalars seductive. But the usefulness and accuracy of a scalar depends on how many corners have to be cut to turn a complex set of information into a single number.
It’s easy to want to summarize nebulous concepts like quality with metrics, but the more we try to reduce important multimodal things (good care, a good career, a happy marriage) into measurements, the more often our models of the world become a poor proxy for the things we really care about.
Summarizing the “Vampire Problem” as crafted and popularized by LA Paul:
In her book Transformative Experience, L. A. Paul uses the choice to become a vampire as a metaphor for the big decisions that are the focus of this book. Before you become a vampire, you can’t really imagine what it will be like. Your current experience doesn’t include what it’s like to subsist on blood and sleep in a coffin when the sun is shining. Sound dreary? But most, maybe all, of the vampires you meet speak quite highly of the experience. Surveys of vampires reveal a high degree of happiness.
But will it be good for you—the actual you and not some average experienced by others—a flesh-and-blood human being who will live the experience in real time? Ah, different question. You have no data on that one. And the only way to get that data is to take the leap of faith (or in this case, anti-faith, maybe) into Vampire World. Once you’ve made the leap and find you don’t care for an all-liquid, heavy-on-the-hemoglobin diet, you can’t go back. One of the weirdest parts of the decision, as Paul points out, is that once you become a vampire, what you like and what you dislike change. As a human, you might find narcissism repugnant. But vampires find narcissism refreshing and look back on their humbler non-vampire selves with disdain for their humility. Which “you” should you consider when deciding what’s best for you? The current you or the you you will become?
Paul uses this example as a metaphor for becoming a parent. It’s a powerful thought experiment for approaching what Roberts calls “Wild Problems,” the big decisions without prospectively correct answers that are hard to change, the ones that define us.
To summarize:
Many decisions involve burning bridges, crossing into a new experience that will change you in ways you can’t imagine, including what you care about and what brings you joy or sorrow, sweetness or sadness, sunshine or shade.
Becoming a parent is perhaps the biggest one-way street. But broad choices about marriage, where to live, and what kind of career to pursue also have massive impacts, especially over time.
One of the unavoidable tradeoffs is the pursuit/balance of Hedonia vs Eudaimonia:
Human beings care about more than the day-to-day pleasures and pains of daily existence. We want purpose. We want meaning. We want to belong to something larger than ourselves. We aspire. We want to matter. These overarching sensations—the texture of our lives above and beyond what we call happiness or everyday pleasure—define who we are and how we see ourselves. These longings are at the heart of a life well lived.
To flourish as a human being is to live life fully. That means more than simply accumulating pleasures and avoiding pain. Flourishing includes living and acting with integrity, virtue, purpose, meaning, dignity, and autonomy—aspects of life that are not just difficult to quantify but that you might put front and center, regardless of the cost. You don’t get married or have children because it’s fun or worth it. Having a child is about more than just the accumulated pleasure and pain that comes your way because there is a child in your life. You have a child because it makes your entire life richer even if it makes your bank account poorer.
Of course we do want both. One caution about the pursuit of eudaimonia (flourishing, more or less) is that perhaps we shouldn’t become too self-serious and dry. As Oliver Burkeman argues, most of what we do doesn’t really matter—we are cosmically insignificant.
Even so, we can all acknowledge the long-term satisfaction of Type 2 Fun:
A Type 1 experience is nice the whole time—nothing too stressful, mostly positive. You enjoy it while you’re in the middle of it and you enjoy it after. A day at the beach. A walk in the park. A Type 2 experience is hard. There are moments of pain that have to be endured—difficult days with a lot of altitude gained over a fairly short distance, streams to be crossed without your shoes where the water runs so cold your feet go numb while you’re crossing, heavy gear to be carried on the trek that hurts your back or feet. But a Type 2 experience is one that you never forget, one that makes you stronger, and when you overcome the obstacles in the way, you feel like you’ve accomplished something. A Type 2 experience can teach you something about yourself. A Type 2 experience has a chance to be more than pleasant. It can be exhilarating. You might not enjoy it (much) while you’re in the middle of it. But you enjoy it after it’s over and in a different way than a Type 1 experience.
And sometimes we choose a Type 2 experience that isn’t just a test, but a chance to experience something profound and meaningful, a chance to share something with another person that brings out the best in us and allows us to grow. Marriage and parenting are much more Type 2 than Type 1.
It can be impossible to know prospectively when type 2 fun is worth it. The problem with “wild problems” is that they are problems of inherent, unavoidable uncertainty. When they turn out poorly, we often think of them as mistakes:
Often in such situations, we’ll say, I took the job, but it was a mistake. I got engaged, but it was a mistake. I went to law school, but it was a mistake. But none of those things are mistakes. A mistake is when you know you don’t like anchovies but you keep ordering them on your pizza. A mistake is trusting someone you know is a person without honor.
A lot of what makes wild problems so painful is the specter of regret. You decide not to marry someone and you end up regretting it. Or the opposite—you marry someone and it doesn’t turn out well. You go to law school and you hate it. The potential for these decisions to turn out badly tends to cause fear of making any decision at all. We say to ourselves that we need more time to gather information, ignoring that more information isn’t going to help—it’s just a form of procrastination.
Outcomes matter, but at least the process is controllable. At the end of the day, sometimes we just have to decide and live.