The largest life decisions are made without thinking about them. We are never truly at the beginning of an event. We are instead in a continuation of causes and effects. For instance, no one decides to be a parent by drawing a pro and con list. By the time it’s considered, the decision is already made. It’s been decided by virtue of previous values and decisions.
Professional deciders use decision processes - divergent and convergent stages, charettes, or decision-planning kits. But in our daily lives, few people think things through to that extent. After all, decision-making is a stressful analysis: even decisions like what shampoo to buy are consumed by environmental friendliness, effectiveness, long-term health, cost, and more.
At the core of decision science is "seeking out diverse perspectives on the choice, challenging your assumptions, making an explicit effort to map the variables". How can we make these rational decisions when our values are anything but rational?
Decision theory attempts to maximize values. But when we're unsure of those values or if they shift, the formula falls to pieces. How does your 19-year-old self make a decision for your 40-year-old self? How do you understand a stranger's needs?
Israeli philosopher Edna Ullmann-Margalit uses the term "opted" to describe "when we shift our values instead of maximizing them".
We grow into the decisions that we make. In this sense, we opt in to who we become.
That's terrifying - jumping into the unknown. Diving into an ocean after dipping in a toe. And maybe you'll love the sea, but how can you satisfy your land legs now?
But it's also thrilling, as proposed by Yale philosopher L.A. Paul, who proposes that living authentically requires creating a new self. It's your 19-year-old self shapeshifting and shedding until it transforms.
UChicago philosopher Agnes Callard also believes in choosing our change. "...Callard maintains, we “aspire” to self-transformation by trying on the values that we hope one day to possess, just as we might strike a pose in the mirror before heading out on a date... In place of a moment of decision, Callard sees a more gradual process: 'Old Person aspires to become New Person.'"
Our decisions are made before we realize it. They're pathways to our aspirations, determined by our past and (best guess at) future values. But until we reach our aspirations, we doggy-paddle in this awkward state.
Who is a beginning artist who loves the idea of painting? How can we say we value something we don't even know? And until we know it, aren't our motivations corrupt? Left alone to chase a vacant dream until we color it in. Until we understand its profound value, its idea alone must be enough to sustain it. "Being a well-meaning phony is key to our self-transformations."
In "The Good Place", token bad person Eleanor Shellstrop feigns her way into goodness through actions taken for selfish reasons. She dances around one of psychology's greatest paradoxes: how can we convince someone to change their values if their current value system is satisfied with itself? To induce the right aspiration, we must sometimes start with the wrong reasons.
Values in progress are prone to interruption from other values - financial stability and passion, for instance. The aspiration takes its own, dreamy, hazy form. And losing it feels sharp, even if we cannot articulate why. An idea is still beautiful without its action. It's how we can be crushed at losing the possibility of a dream without truly understanding what living it is like.