Philosopher Ruth Chang’s TED talk on ‘How to Make Hard Choices‘ is quite an interesting insight into how we take tough decisions. According to Ruth Chang, we generally think we take the option that looks like the safest: “It’s a mistake to think that in hard choices, one alternative really is better than the other, but we’re too stupid to know which, and since we don’t know which, we might as well take the least risky option.”
There’s another way – I actually do have in my bag a dice to help me take tough decisions when I can’t decide.
But in reality, Ruth shows that what we choose is actually what we want to be – and then after we rationalize to promote the option we prefer. “Instead of looking for reasons out there, we should be looking for reasons in here: Who am I to be?“. This is related to out unique capability to put our own selves into our decision, by projection of what we want to be.
As Ruth concludes: “we become the authors of our own lives“. Not everyone does it, but that is a unique capability that allows us to tackle tough decisions in our lives.
Take 15 mins to listen to this interesting talk:
