December 11, 2017, by apyjog
How Philosophy can Help you Make Decisions
Everyone knows that you can always make rational decisions. Right? Last week I sat in on a lecture that convinced me otherwise.
1. What is a rational decision?
Rational decisions seem complicated. However they’re actually very simple.
All you have to do is choose the action that you think will lead to the best outcome. Sounds too easy to be true, right?
Let’s take an example of deciding whether to steal food.
Stealing food would make you less hungry, but would also lead to being arrested. Clearly a snack isn’t worth prison, so stealing leads to the worse outcome. Not stealing is the rational decision.
It really is as simple as that. Nothing complicated about it.
2. What’s wrong with rationality?
Sometimes you can’t know what the best outcome will be. In these situations, it is impossible to make a rational decision.
However these decisions aren’t irrational either. You can’t know the best outcome, so you cannot choose a sub-optimal action.
The decision is neither rational nor irrational. It is non-rational.
3. When does this happen?
Paul talks about transformative experiences. This is where you gain knowledge that you could not have gained in any other way. Any decision involving a transformative experience must be non-rational.
For example, I had never tried Marmite until last week. I couldn’t know what it tastes like until then. So eating Marmite was a transformative experience. I gained new information I couldn’t have gained otherwise.
I couldn’t know if I’d like Marmite, so I couldn’t make a rational decision to try it. The decision had to be non-rational.
4. How does this help?
Not every decision can be rational. This lecture showed me that sometimes you have to let go of rationality and make decisions based on something else. What that something is, is up to you.
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