2nd September 2026
Four of the most joyful decisions in my life with all the knock on implications : to enter the world of investment; choose my serious other; try for my third cost centre and buy a home outside of London.
But then I wonder. Did yours truly grasp each choice by the scruff and doggedly pursue, or have I over-estimated my attachment to a decision? Given my options did I spend an inordinate amount of time deliberating or metaphorically toss a coin?
In choosing my most memorable life changes, clearly I’m being selective and forgetful. I’m dis-regarding the myriad of decisions we make everyday. From the mundane to the impactful to the knowingly aware to the passive passenger. Although we assume the naturalness of this ability, humans are capable of making decisions or choices because we possess a nervous system which can sense our environment aligned with a brain to process those inputs. Obliquely, we have free will. Implying any single decision could vary each time we are presented the same possibilities. This is unlike for example plants, which do not have a central brain and react in a pre-programmed mode based on their genetics and chemical composition.
In the act of selecting for different deliberations, we attribute greater or lesser heft to facts. We can also inter-mingle an assortment of variables – our emotions, biases, the past. Melding this swirling mass with intuition or gut feel augments the weighing machine to determine our preference; our decision. It is an intricate, nuanced and sometimes instantaneous process. So much so at times, retro-fitting our resolution to the inputs can be obfuscated. But not always, dependent on how much we simplify our framework for concluding.
Although we may believe mankind are the ultimate processing machine, surprisingly or maybe not, we have observed and learnt much from the animal and insect kingdoms. Many species solve complex problems efficiently, fast and co-operatively despite for the most part, smaller brains. This knowledge has been particularly useful to humans in arbitrating when we are not possessed of a complete suite of information and are functioning under uncertainty.
For example, the bee brain with 1 million Neurons (a nerve cell transmitting signals of which we have about 100 billion) makes decisions very accurately, speedily and with little energy consumption. These attributes have persuaded scientists to map the ‘bee brain’ onto silicon for use in drones and robotic systems. From the BBC I read that those individual locusts not thronging in a particular direction help determine the flying direction for the swarm. This is because in a highly engaged group the voice of the unsure allows a pause from which one intent can dominate. We are employing the leaderless, distributed yet optimised wisdom of collective ants. Assimilating their approach into complex co-ordination problems such as in logistics scheduling and telecommunications routing. From cockroaches we have understood the greater the social interaction in a group the quicker a decision is made.
The behaviour of decision making is a significant field of research. Armies of people and copious books aim to tool you up into making ‘better’ decisions whether in life or work. From thinking fast and utilising your ‘gut’ (system 1) to slower logical analysis (system 2 thinking), managing biases, conflicts, regret and stress. Many frameworks work on the basis the more structured you are the more optimal the decisions you will make. I shy away from self help books at the best of times but I’m not sure this always applies. There are many choices where it is clear what a good outcome should be. But there are even more shrouded in cloud because uncertainty dominates, no particular avenue appeals more, the outcome may never be known or could only be realised by making other pertinent decisions.
In this vein, Fredkin’s Paradox slightly re-worded intrigues me. ‘The more equally attractive two choices are, the harder it is to choose between them and in that scenario, the decision can only matter less.’ Does that make sense? Essentially it means if nothing stands out then the ramifications of your decision will be less impactful and so overthinking is futile. We might as well accept in these situations our direction of travel could be determined by a coin toss. Which implies when we are feeling tortured over an agonising decision we should be kind to ourselves whatever the outcome. Possibly the converse is true when we are in congratulatory mode.
So in the dissipating fog of my smugness, I come full circle to my joyous decisions to re-evaluate them based on the coin toss theory. And contemplate I will. Though if my serious other comes to believe my choosing him was as similar a process to deciding what pizza to eat (always a Diavolo)….it might not be a joyous decision anymore….
Curiosity and the rascal 