Self-clarifying decision making

A response to commentary from last week's post

Last week I received some interesting pushback and commentary from folks on my proposition for what I called identity-based decision making. I think much of it came from my use of inexact terminology. Let me clear up a few pieces:

(1) the term “identity” here is not meant to be read à la “Identity Politics.” This was something of grave oversight. The use of identity was meant instead in the terms of one’s conception of their own selfhood, with the values and characteristics that create that conception. The identity that was used was focused on the multi-faceted characteristics and values one holds in cultivating a sense of self, not a conception of the interaction between society writ large and the characteristics that define an individual’s in-group.

(2) Relatedly, the purpose of this decision making framework is not to put forth the identity at the exclusion of reality. This could be a reiteration of point (1), but you can’t say that you won’t wear a mask because it conflicts with your identity if your identity includes any semblance of being a compassionate person. You have to play by the rules of reality, you can’t just project your desires upon the decision environment. Why this point caused confusion is now very clear to me; I had not before heard of “identity-protective cognition.” Under the decision making framework above you have to be willing to accept the world as it is in order to be a good decision-maker by any means. To reject reality is to have a bad model of the environment, under which good decisions cannot be made.

A way to think about it is:

Reality exists (ground truth),

we receive information about reality through communication and experiences (data ingestion),

we interpret that information and use it to update and manipulate our mental models about what reality is (data interpretation),

we identity an action set from which to choose (choice definition),

we choose an action from the action set (decision making).

Every piece of this puzzle except the last one (decision making) is not impacted at all by my proposed framework. One must be open to a world in which they are wrong and can grow in order to have any sort of meaningful existence.

The habit here that is crucial is not protection of the self against change. It is to make decisions from a reflective place that furthers one’s knowledge of their self rather than for the sake of bringing about some external outcome. When conceptions of one’s self are challenged by the world one must accept that information and incorporate it into their model and sense of self.

(3) Outcomes can matter in contexts that are not related to individual flourishing. If you’re too financially unstable to be comfortable, if you’re a policymaker or a judge or a caretaker making decisions on behalf of others, sure — outcomes matter because those outcomes carry weight about your values.

This proposed framework is certainly a push back against the hyper-optimization of modern life in the developed world, not a cure-all religion.

In light of these very good critiques, perhaps a better term for the framework is instead self-clarifying decision making (original post has been updated).

At the end of the day what self-clarifying decision making is about is making choices that reflect and cultivate a distinct sense of self that allows for a fuller appreciation of one’s unique characteristics, agency, and place in the world. It is very difficult for one to sustain a long-term conception of themself as someone who maximizes their utility, or their income, or their career prospects, or their personal power projection, or their consumption of some set of externally-derived preferences, or whatever.

In a sense, the unsaid assumption is that the push for optimization will eventually require decisions that are founded on contradictory values, and that when decisions are made that create contradictions in one’s sense of self, one loses their ability to understand their decisions except for in terms of the outcomes. Therefore when an outcome falls flat, for any number of reasons, one is left adrift.

With a sharp sense of self one cannot feel lost in the world, as one simply is existing as they are in the environment they find themselves in. One is defined by their selfhood, and in this conception they can accept their place as a fully-defined agent.

In some sense, there is nothing is new under the sun and this framework dates back to an age-old question: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

— Harrison