Counter point...<p>There's a famous study about what happens when medical professions (eg cardiologists) have major conferences. The juniors and non specialists are left running the wards for a week or so. And survival rates go up not down.<p>The leading theory is that more junior doctors are more likely to wait to and see while seniors intervene and trust in the skills. But their skills aren't as good as they think for the marginal patient...<p><a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530032-100-death-rate-drops-when-top-heart-surgeons-are-away/" rel="nofollow">https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530032-100-death-ra...</a>
Not based on any sources, but I believe that these results say more about our subjective experience of decisions (specifically in situations of action vs. inaction) rather than the actual likelihood of outcomes. In other words, I'm not convinced that statistically in a situation of action / inaction an action is always more likely to lead to a more favourable outcome, but it <i>is</i> more likely to be later considered in a more positive light. Some of the reasons for that would be:<p>* Empowered sense of agency<p>* Taking action requires resources which would be "wasted" if the action is later considered the wrong choice, which potentially creates rationalization to avoid that (the sunk cost fallacy)<p>* When you take an action to change a status quo you've probably prepared for the expected negative aspects of the change, diminishing their effect<p>* When you stay inactive the potential to act is always there nagging<p>In purely personal decisions the subjective experience might actually be more important than the real outcome (barring extreme circumstances), so taking an action might indeed be the right choice regardless. However, I do believe that these effects are also present in decisions that affect others (organizations, families etc.), in which the outcome is more important, and also affected others don't share the decision-maker's perspective and may subjectively experience the decision completely differently as a result.
The book “Transformative Experiences” by LA Paul argues that it’s impossible to rationally decide what to do when faced with a life-altering (aka epistemically transformative) decision, because you have no way of knowing the person you’ll be after the choice, and what their preferences will be (“what it’s like to be them”)
This [0] is another take on the same research that sums it up better: "If you’re genuinely unsure whether to quit your job or break up, then you probably should." I was quite influenced by this post when deciding to switch jobs - in the end I figured that if I couldn't make up my mind then I should go for the change. So far it's worked out, but of course you can't ever go back and know whether you would have been happier staying put. Life isn't a series of randomised trials. I think the fact that you're considering a new job (or a new partner) tells you that at least some part of you wants to make a change though.<p>[0] <a href="https://80000hours.org/2018/08/randomised-experiment-if-youre-really-unsure-whether-to-quit-your-job-or-break-up-you-really-probably-should/" rel="nofollow">https://80000hours.org/2018/08/randomised-experiment-if-your...</a>
Am i right in thinking that the study shows that those who took action were happier, but not that they were actually better off? Does it attempt to account for a bias towards rationalising your actions?<p>In reality, the alternative to taking action is usually not simply taking no action, it is collecting more information and then deciding whether to take action. Does the study get at this at all?
This only holds in convex payoff distributions where risk has a positive expected value.<p>In concave payoff distributions, where risk has a negative expected value, inaction is favored.
Maybe this has some applicability for personal, individual decisions. But to translate this to larger, more important things, affecting way more people?<p>Take great caution.<p>If you find yourself to be a leader, CEO, president, or whatever, facing really hard, ambiguous decisions, sometimes the right thing is <i>not to act</i>, yet this is very hard to do and resist the temptation to act. We end up disincentivizing leaders from hesitating to act, when that might be the appropriate thing, because it might be seen as weakness or indecision.<p>All too often the bias towards action (for anything but personal decisions) is a quick way to get in a lot of trouble.
The study itself looks like it's well done, result is statistically highly significant, but it was still just an internet study where people were self reporting. All you end with is suggestive evidence not be taken too seriously.
This can really go both ways, which makes it complicated. I feel like contemporary human beings have a massive bias toward action, often to their own detriment. "Do nothing and wait" is often a good piece of advice, but I can't see any political leader, entrepreneur, or 'thought leader' advocating for that. Patience seems to have lost out to instant gratification and the desire to do something, <i>anything</i>.<p><i>..those who had opted for the choice that involved making a change (as opposed to sticking with the status quo) were more satisfied with their decision and generally happier.</i><p>If you study history, specifically military history, you'll see the "be patient" strategy employed successfully (and ignored, unsuccessfully) quite often. Fabius defeated Hannibal by essentially out-waiting him. [1] One of the Thirty-Six Stratagems from ancient Chinese warfare is <i>Wait at leisure while the enemy labors.</i>
[2] So I would amend the advice to be, <i>In marginal decisions, don't be rash, but don't over-analyze. Wait for the right moment, then act.</i><p>The example cited in the article could also just be retroactive rationalization. I.e. people want to rationalize their decisions as being the right one.<p>1. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_strategy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_strategy</a><p>2. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-Six_Stratagems#Wait_at_leisure_while_the_enemy_labors" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-Six_Stratagems#Wait_at_...</a>
> The findings may be explained by 'loss aversion', a cognitive bias that causes potential losses to be weighed more heavily than potential gains (the ratio is somewhere around 2:1, meaning that most people will feel comfortable with a decision only when the likely gains are double the likely losses). As a result, in situations where the benefits and drawbacks of making a change appear to be evenly matched, it may be sensible to take action.<p>This loss aversion ratio of 2:1 is an average or other. How do you find your own ratio? It's the only one that matters. I'm always switching tracks and on to the next new (or old and new to me) thing.<p>A better reason is most people toward the ends of their lives regret the things they didn't do, rarely any of the things they've done. Do more things. Change is good.
It's the Monty Hall problem effect. When you take an action, you choose from a small set of options. When you stay with the status quo, you are following a Markov chain than has not been narrowed by your choices (which is worse on average).
Counterpoint: the way people assess decisions after the fact is no more rational than the way people assess them beforehand.<p>Some parents with <i>n</i> children wrestle with the decision of whether to have <i>n+1</i>. You seldom hear regret from people who choose to go ahead with having an additional kid - yet science shows that, in aggregate, people with multiple kids tend to be unhappier than people with just one. In this example, each individual claimed to be happier with choosing 'action' over 'inaction', but in aggregate the action made people unhappier.
> ... whenever you cannot decide what you should do, choose the action that represents a change, rather than continuing the status quo.<p>As a heuristic, this is kind of rough: what does it mean to say you "cannot decide what you should do"?<p>How hard have you tried?<p>If this research was mutated into a piece of folk wisdom, I bet it would be interpreted as advising that "change is preferable, so don't overthink it."<p>But, that would be the wrong conclusion to draw. It's better to make important decisions after getting as much information as possible, and using rational decision-making strategies. So, it's likely always more effective, though more work, to try to push back the boundary of when the word "cannot" becomes applicable than it is to just say "fuck it, let's do this".
Overall, and depending on context, I think this is a moot point. Inaction is as important as action and can be considered a different action in itself. What some call inaction is not necessary a state of being inactive, but simply observing and analyzing the outcome longer, while focusing efforts elsewhere.<p>Maybe "being on the fence" or staying in a frame of doubt and uncertainty for too long, without developing future steps for a given plan could really be considered disruptive inaction.
Of course they are not satisfied. That's why they were considering a life-changing decision, because they were not happy with the status-quo. Duh!<p>—"Levitt found that those who had opted for the choice that involved making a change (as opposed to sticking with the status quo) were more satisfied with their decision and generally happier."
This would seem to line up with some old wisdom I heard years ago, where some researcher interviewed elders and found that his subjects regretted chances they had not taken far more than chances they had taken, even if it didn't work out.<p>That idea was a big focus of mine as I tried to get over fear in dating.
Agency has to be remembered tho, your decisions impact others, and change that is received is generally less well tolerated than change that has been initiated. It's real in teams where the management decides on change and underlings can only agree or not.
in aggregate, this data makes sense<p>For people with chronic ADD who struggle to finish projects, you may easily fall on the other side of this line ..