Belly Button Lint

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Tag: decision making

  • Theme:

    doubling down on rationality

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    1–2 minutes

    We often appeal to rationality, yet seldom take it far enough.
    We partially problem solve, applying enough effort to get past the current predicament.Taking rationality further it begins to dissolve its own support, leading from solutions to existential dilemmas.

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    Alien Invasion or Live in a 3rd World Country?

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    1–2 minutes

    You must choose.
    The privilege of determination says much: the global vs the local, novelty or poverty?
    (from Beau Smith)

  • Theme:

    Be Less Wrong

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    1–2 minutes

    Even when you are right, you aren’t. We always need more information or consideration.
    Tomorrow, science or philosophy will have a better answer, a novel approach to crack this thorny impasse. Or tomorrow, we will know how we should have responded in that confrontation. But today, we must move forward knowing every step we take is wrong.

    We attempt to make good decisions, but when information fails we are left making choices with instincts shaped by circumstances, or we crowdsource our ethics, or we choose an incomplete data set and make a leap.

    They are all wrong, but some processes of choice have a predictive capacity allowing them to foresee conflict and avoid confusion for better outcomes.
    The goal is not to be correct but to establish a framework of checks and balances to be less wrong.

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    Mexico or Canada?

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    1–2 minutes

    You must choose: European progressive values and resultant taxes (social safety and education) or Wild West free market chaos, corruption, and cheap living (with lagging infrastructure and abundant labor).
    Check your political philosophy against the countries that embody it: is this really what you want?

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    Politeness is glue, but it is toxic too

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    1–2 minutes

    Do you ruin a dinner because somebody won’t recognize school shootings or climate change facts?
    Our politeness is the glue of society, but it is also the neutrality that allows idiocy to perpetuate unchecked.

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    Is Comfort Cowardice?

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    1–2 minutes

    What is the relationship between comfort and cowardice?
    It seems the trap of comfort provokes cowardice: doing the easy thing as a way to avoid doing the right thing.
    There may be times when the easy thing is the right thing, but do not allow yourself to mistake the "feeling of ease" as a sign of a decision’s rightness.

  • Theme:

    Without purpose, you lose yourself

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    1–2 minutes

    Loss of purpose reduces the ability to think well of yourself. Once a vital goal is lost, every decision is reactive rather than proactive: we either defer indefinitely or attack ideas as enemies.
    Another way to say it: When you lose where you are going, you lose who you are. You may retain power, but your decision-making is compromised and reactive, so the decisions of others move you.

  • Theme:

    Making polar opposite claims

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    1–2 minutes

    We are creatures evolved from dirt, mere flawed organisms until our status is threatened, and then our ego angrily declares our self-importance.

    We claim to do the work for money, except when we slip up or care too much, then it is all for others or for soul sustenance. We claim to be the romantic rogue and become the cutthroat mercenary with the next breath.

    It is as if we don’t know and are frantically bouncing ideas off reality to see which one it will accept. We do anything to keep from looking within and either knowing or declaring we don’t know.

    We consistently avoid honesty at all points.

  • Theme:

    Size matters: the small things are more important

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    1–2 minutes

    We often dismiss the small decisions as inconsequential because of their slight impact.
    We assume our character is reflected in big decisions: to whom you get married or your job. However, these events happen to you because of who you are.
    Who you are is aggregated daily through small contacts and seemingly trivial chores. Your approach to the small inevitably becomes large.

  • Theme:

    The Human Barometer

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    1–2 minutes

    My body is so sensitive to weather pressure it affects my mood: downward pressure depresses my mood, causing anger and headaches.
    We are environmental creatures, often reacting to cues so subtle we are unaware and only able to understand that odd personality with sympathetic hindsight.