Optimization

This is, in my mind, a pretty simple concept, but I think it is one people don't think about. When people make decisions, I have concluded that they always make whatever decision is perceived to be the best course of action at the moment the decision is made. It doesn't matter whether the decision is, ultimately, a good decision or a bad one, but to the person who made the decision, all the factors were weighed in some fashion and a conclusion was reached.

Here is an example: suppose there's a 16-yr old boy who is approached by his friends to go smoke behind the grocery store with them. Depending on a multitude of factors (social acceptance, health, parental control, ethics, money, etc), coupled with an importance he internally places on each of those factors, he may or may not decide to join them. If he has heard a lot of horror stories about cigarette smoke, or he knows someone who suffers their ill effects, he may place high importance in deciding 'no', but on the other hand, perhaps he is desperate for social acceptance - he might then place high importance on 'yes' too. Whether he's consciously thinking of any of this is irrelevant - I argue that the process still happens whether he's cognizant of it or not. Ultimately a decision will be reached, and it will depend on all the factors at that given moment. He may later change his mind, or have regrets about whichever decision he makes, but at the exact instant he arrives at a decision, it is optimal according to his brain, as an accumulation of all his prior experiences, thoughts and feelings.

I like to keep this in mind when people come to conclusions that I think are baffling. I know that there is always more information that goes into any decision than I am, strictly speaking, privy to. I think that if more people understood this concept, then tolerance would increase world-wide. It all ties in with empathy - seeing things from another's perspective. It's just that in this regard, you can't always do that.

If someone does something that you perceive to be sub-optimal, then it may be time to analyze the situation. For example, let's go back to that 16-yr old boy. If I were, say, his mother, and I found out he elected to smoke with his friends, then I would try to discuss this with him why he made that decision. I might not successfully get the truth out of him (either because he doesn't know it himself, or because he decides he'd rather not say, or he's feeling guilty about it, or whatever else), but I would be against his decision and try to tip his mind's scale the other way. I might try to add more weight to the 'no' side of that prior decision, or lessen the weight on the 'yes' side, that he may one day change his mind and quit smoking.

People try to persuade other people all the time this way, either by adding weight to one side, or by taking weight away from the other side. I think in this way, people are pretty decent at working together to optimize in a social sense. Of course, people also try to 'look out for number one', so it's good to have your wits about you when someone is trying to persuade you to make decisions a certain way. Society is also shaped by balancing scales like this - every rule, convention, and custom is a result of a conglomeration of a meeting of these internal scales. It is important that we, as a society, revisit our old decisions when they start to chafe, to see whether there is anything we can add or subtract from the scales of decisions past. This is how slavery was outlawed, this is how women claimed their right to vote, this is how revolutions occur. This is how we grow as people and as a society.