http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=...ces-how-making

It's not blatantly obvious how this article relates to politics.... but it makes me think of how so many berate both the poor and those in high-responsibility positions over bad choices. People tend to be excessively harsh on that... and what it comes down to is that maybe we have too high a bar set for people in the choice-making department.
Consider the implications for certain groups if choice-making drains.

I think when you look at the numbers of frivelous or excess choices piled on people, you'll find the groups with the most are those groups who tend to not succeed... and those groups we judge most harshly.

I'll just give you that to chew on for now. Read the article if you feel like it and post what you think.

__________________
"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

It is much easier to criticize the choices of others than to look at your own.

Agreed. And one reason is that people often have trouble putting themselves in the position of another.

But what I find interesting in this article is that just the act of making hard decisions makes it harder to make hard decisions later.
If you look at the people who we either criticize most for bad decisions (politicians, businessmen, etc.) and the people we legitimize the troubles of by attributing it to "poor decision-making" (the poor, minorities, women), we see groups that for one reason or another have more decisions stuck on them.
In the case of the businessmen and politicians, it's due to the nature of their work.
For the poor, it's because they just have harder decisions (health care or food?). Minorities have to focus on the extra decision-making process of facing up to people they believe will be prejudice against them. Women's lives are full of arbitrary decisions about crap like makeup and diet- that are somehow tied to their professional lives.
And really as consumerism grows, all of us encounter more and more frivelous decisions to make.

I think what this points out is the biological reason why there is a such thing as too many choices. I'm not sure this is helpful in any policy-making sense, but I think it gives us good reason to pause before we condemn people for "poor decision-making".
If there is something to learn, it's that we must make good decision-making less difficult, so that doing it does not require making a choice.

As much as I love the phrase "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice", it's purely philosophical. Biologically the two things are apparently different phenomena!

__________________
"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

Whether I criticize a decision depends on the circumstances. I don't care how "tired" your brain is, some choices are clearly stupid on their surface should you give it any thought. A "tired" brain does not excuse anyone at Enron or Arthur Andersen. Where I think people need to be cut some slack is when you can only see the decision was bad in hindsight. A call this the Football Coach Exemption. You only know it was bad play in many cases because it didn't work. But there was no reason to believe prior to calling the play that it wouldn't work. I also excuse those who know they are playing a risk/reward game and are prepared for the outcome. I call this the Edsel Exemption. Turns out it was a terrible decision. They took a chance. It was going to be cutting edge and ahead of its time or a total flop. They lost. I can live with that. But dropping out of school, getting knocked up and then whining about gas prices gets a huge F you. You're an idiot.

__________________
I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

Well... I generally feel that way about people who whine about gas prices... regardless of their other problems.
But I think under some circumstances and limited knowledge (often misinformation), the other two behaviors can be rational.
I'm not thinking so much about those as the examples the article gives... like picking the wrong job. Or even some of the people getting into dumb mortgages.

__________________
"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

Well yes. But some people are adversely affected by the price of gas through no fault of their own. And as a single person you really don't impact the price of gas. In many cases I don't like to hear the whining, but I get it. (Not if you drive a Yukon, however). Others are only adversely affected to the degree they are because they are idiots.

Well, the first depends. Sometimes you have no realistic way of knowing about a job. If the place is a sweatshop and you could have discovered that by simply asking someone who worked there what it was like, I place that on you. But many times there is no way to know how it will work out. I took a job once and it was great. Until they switched bosses on me. Then it went to crap. How was I supposed to know? As for mortgages, you know full well my sympathy is exactly at 0%! You get nothing but a giant tough crap from me.

__________________
I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

[/quote]

I think this is getting closer to the issue at hand. It's the "coulda shoulda" things that are most affected by this.
I suppose a better example is procrastinating on a 401k. You know it's something you have to do, sooner the better. But it requires a lot of choices and the default choice is to do nothing (well, it wasn't where I work... but it is for a lot of people).
If you have a job and a life that overuses your choice-making capacity, you're going to put it off or you're going to just get it over with as quickly as possible... and likely not do so great a job of picking a plan.
I think the mortgage thing sometimes tie into this because a tired mind will rely more on the "expertise" of people helping to affect the decision. One might doubt their own nagging "something stinks here" sensation if the person who allegedly knows more than he does is looking at him like he's an idiot for not jumping on the plan.

The chemical properties of the brain are weird. It's been shown time and ime again that fatigue and anger can cripple the decision-making process. This is just another one of those things.
That's why the "sleep on it" addage tends to hold true. It rejuvenates the brain and makes for better decision-making. But the problems come in when there is a hurry and schedules are cramped. People sometimes cannot put things off until their brains have had time to rest.

__________________
"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

This is simply a personal choice of whether now matters more than later. Hell, later may never arrive. But at the same time you have 365 chances every year to pull the trigger on the 401K. It is not a one time decision. And you can make for it later by putting in more. HOWEVER, if you could have participated and you didn't I won't chastise you or anything, but I also will not listen to you whine about not having any money at age 65. Homey don't play that. I wouldn't call that person stupid because I know money in the hand means something when you are 38. But no whining is allowed.

This is a case of having to make a major and vastly important decision at a specific point in time. That doesn't happen often in life. There is no excuse anyone can muster for screwing it up when they have total control and all the facts are laid out in writing in front of them. This is not one of a hundred decisions a tired mind makes during a typical day, most of which likely won't matter much. This is getting ready to go into the bank with a gun. Yes or no? If you screw it up it's all on you. You get no quarter from me. None.

I agree they do cripple decision making. So I suggest sleeping on it when you know with 100% certainty that the decision is major.

__________________
I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

I'm going to have to agree with Stekim on this. I think there are certain choices like where will this job lead me, that may not be apparent to an individual, but many choices in life are common sense or merely a choice of what would you want better. If someone doesn't save for retirement, then quite frankly it was never important enough for them and they must have consumed it while younger. Some people just have more utility out of consuming when they are younger, and as Stekim says that makes sense. If that person happens to make it to a very old age, then tough luck, they should be working. Even if the mistake was made, they still reaped the benefits of consuming earlier.

I don't see how the poor can be categorized as having harder decisions. Their decisions are actually quite simple given that most of them revolve strictly around price. This makes it quite easy to make decisions. The outcome may be sad, in that they cannot afford everything, but the decision should be quite obvious. Food is obviously more important than health care. A place to live is also necessary, but food is once again more important for survival. These decisions aren't hard, just sad. Like Stekim said, getting knocked up, signing up for a ridiculous mortgage, or in general spending above someone's means is not tough decisions making, it's plain stupid.

You don't need a college degree, or even a high school degree to make these decisions. Some people just don't care. I think more of it has to do with apathy. Higher ups may grow apathetic to a situation if so much is going on that they would rather just flip a coin, while the poor just don't care to think about there actions because they don't think they have a future or any way to fix their situation. That doesn't abstain them from wrongdoing or suffering the consequences. Helping people understand decisions in complex situations is one thing (I don't think many of Java's examples were complex decisions), but being responsible for a person's emotions is another thing entirely.

As a middle class person, I never have to choose between healthcare and gas in my car. Not having kids and not being poor, I do not have to choose to pay to be in a better school district over having enough food for decent nutrition. Even if I had kids, my decision between going one-income or paying for child care is simple math and what I feel like... not which will lead to the greater net loss.
I can afford to have health insurance, a certain amount of regular savings, decent food, and luxury. Sure, that reflects past decision to some extent (although I'd argue I had advantages automatically that some did not)... but we live now.
Should past decisions lead to a downward spiral?

In a short-sighted sense. That can change later on.
Plus it's not really "food or healthcare" (If you can't afford food at all, you can't afford healthcare at all). It's enough food and nutritious enough food vs. healthcare. People know that some things have value later on, but when all of your choices necessarily involve the short-term... it can get tough.
That's actually another phenomenon... disempowerment- lack of choices. That has nasty consequences both biologically and financially as well.
I was thinking more along the lines of how to handle the gangs living in your area.
Keep in mind that simply doing something that goes against one's nature constitutes a choice by the biological definition. Choosing to do what you've been told to do forever does not. Decisions with no perceived consequences also do not.

But compare to a middle classer... The choice of good food or good healthcare is not much of one, because we can have both.


I disagree with the stupid notion... on reasons completely irrelevant to the topic. You are assuming that all people have the same available information, upbringing, and stability of environment.

__________________
"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside