![]() And so Fredkin's paradox applies: the decision will be hard but maybe shouldn't be the decision "doesn't matter" in the sense that it doesn't affect your expected utility. These might be equally (un)appealing based on the information you have available right now, such that their expected utilities are roughly the same. Consider the decision to pursue medical intervention A versus medical intervention B. Correspondingly, the cost of getting it wrong, and the possibility for regret, loom much larger.Ĭonsider the decision to move to Los Angeles versus New York. When it's a matter of life partners or surgical procedures rather than ice cream flavors, the stakes are much higher. Even if you choose vanilla and discover that it's much worse than you expected, even if your friend who ordered chocolate moans with pleasure, your regret will be short lived. But here the stakes are low getting it wrong isn't life-changing. You find the two options equally appealing (say), so the decision is hard in the sense that one option doesn't clearly dominate the other. That's due to the second reason hard decisions are hard: We perceive the choice to be consequential.Ĭonsider the choice between two flavors of ice cream: chocolate or vanilla. ![]() Hard decisions should be easy, perhaps, but they certainly don't feel that way. Fredkin's formula isn't a popular approach to making decisions about work or marriage. The choice doesn't matter much anyway.Īnd yet, Fredkin's paradox is unlikely to soothe the sleepless. ![]() We might be so bold as to propose "Fredkin's formula" for hard decisions: Just flip a coin. It seems to follow that hard decisions should be easy, because our choice matters so very little - the most it can matter is the "difference" between the value of the best option and the value of the alternative that we find nearly indistinguishable. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.This paradox is spelled out in an influential book by Marvin Minsky called Society of Mind, where he attributes it to Edward Fredkin and formulates it like this: "The more equally attractive two alternatives seem, the harder it can be to choose between them - no matter that, to the same degree, the choice can only matter less." You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. ![]() Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. ![]() Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice. ![]()
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