> According to regret minimization, we should project ourselves into the future and consider which path we would regret not taking more. Will I regret not moving for that job opportunity I once had? Will I always regret that I didn’t get a PhD?<p>That's not regret minimization, really it's the opposite. Regret minimization does not compare two options, it is a threshold that any option either passes or does not. The whole point is that in general there are many possibile courses of action, and it is often impossible to determine the optimal route, but so long as you pick one of the options you won't regret, you're good, even if it was suboptimal. In Bezos' quote, he's not saying he knew all along that the internet would lead to amazing success and the best of all possible futures, but rather that it was good enough that no matter what happened, he'd be okay with it. Regret minimization is a method to beat analysis paralysis, not produce it.<p>So in the author's example of deciding whether or not to get a PhD, there isn't a right answer, but someone doing regret minimization might say "I'd be proud of getting my PhD even if it doesn't ultimately put me in a better position than spending that time working" and thus getting the PhD would be the regret-minimizing course of action. Or equally possible, one might say "I'd rather try and fail at doing something in the real world than spend all those extra years in academia" and thus not going for the PhD would be the regret minimizing strategy.<p>Now it's true that it can be difficult to predict what you'll regret and no one can know all the consequences of their decisions, but that's just life. Regret is not an unhealthy and unnatural state that you should convince yourself to ignore, regret is the means by which we recognize and learn from bad decisions. You will invariably make decisions over the course of your life which will put your future self in undesirable circumstances, but that you may sometimes fail to make the right decision doesn't mean you should never try. To pretend that all choices are equally valid and to tell ourselves that we'd probably regret the alternatives just as much is to deny that we ever made a mistake in the first place, which may feel good in the moment but leads to much worse future pain as no lesson is learned from the experience and the mistake is repeated. Or worse, without proper introspection it is possible to take away the wrong lessons from a mistake - legitimate concerns become irrational fears, caution becomes anxiety, problems are avoided instead of solved, and we endure terrible pain making a life in which we can pretend to be happy.<p>Regrets are like scars - you shouldn't be trying to get them, but if in your old age you find yourself with a lot, you must have lived a pretty interesting life.