Wisdom & Alrenous Decision Theory: All Decisions are Easy

There's two reasons a decision may be hard: your values conflict, or you don't have enough information.

Information isn't a decision problem, it's a superposed information problem. You always have less than perfect information, you always have to make the decision based on the best information you have, so just always do that. Hedging your bets or deciding to gather more information is merely part of meta-information information. You can only decide to e.g. learn more based on the best information that you have about how much information you have. 

If your values conflict then that means choosing either would profit you a near-equal amount. It doesn't particularly matter which one you go for. Proof by contradiction: if one would profit you a lot, choose that one. Videogames furnish a perfect example, the ideal of hard choices. Spoils the answer right in the title: "hard" choices don't matter. The mechanical version: do you go left, and then win the game, or do you go right, and then win the game? Only alternative: if on one path you don't win the game, then it's an easy choice. If you win both ways, then it's a meaningless choice. 

 

If someone tells you a decision is hard, they're just trying to scam you. They want to you to confuse a bad choice for a good choice. It's really that simple. 

In particular, watch out for the meta-choice of getting more information on a meaningless choice. No matter how deeply understand it, there still won't be any big differences in the outcome. 

If you can't tell the difference, and they don't instantly tell you how to tell the difference, then there's no difference. 

Wisdom is having the enough information to make a sufficiently good choice.

Wisdom is successfully predicting the outcome of your decisions, so you can choose the one that furthers your values the best. 

Wisdom, in other words, is prosaic. What will happen? Given my value schedule, what is the accounting? Which decision is the most profitable? Wisdom is mere economics. 

 

There is only one time a decision is any more interesting than the arithmetic problem of adding up the effects of accurate forecasts. 

It's when your uncertainty isn't about the world, but about yourself. When you don't know which of two values you find most valuable. When it's a question not of outcome, but of identity. As a stupid example, do you prefer digging, or flying? Or perhaps it's an allegory...

Real choice only occurs when you choose who you are going to be. In these moments, you grow, you elaborate, you differentiate.