WEBVTT

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Think of a hard choice
you'll face in the near future.

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It might be between two careers --

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artist and accountant --

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or places to live --
the city or the country --

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or even between two people to marry --

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you could marry Betty
or you could marry Lolita.

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Or it might be a choice
about whether to have children,

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to have an ailing parent move in with you,

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to raise your child in a religion
that your partner lives by

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but leaves you cold.

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Or whether to donate
your life savings to charity.

NOTE Paragraph

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Chances are, the hard choice
you thought of was something big,

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something momentous,
something that matters to you.

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Hard choices seem to be occasions

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for agonizing, hand-wringing,
the gnashing of teeth.

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But I think we've
misunderstood hard choices

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and the role they play in our lives.

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Understanding hard choices

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uncovers a hidden power
each of us possesses.

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What makes a choice hard
is the way the alternatives relate.

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In any easy choice,

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one alternative is better than the other.

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In a hard choice,

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one alternative is better in some ways,

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the other alternative
is better in other ways,

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and neither is better
than the other overall.

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You agonize over whether to stay
in your current job in the city

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or uproot your life
for more challenging work in the country,

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because staying is better in some ways,

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moving is better in others,

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and neither is better
than the other overall.

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We shouldn't think
that all hard choices are big.

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Let's say you're deciding
what to have for breakfast.

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You could have high fiber bran cereal

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or a chocolate donut.

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Suppose what matters in the choice
is tastiness and healthfulness.

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The cereal is better for you,

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the donut tastes way better,

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but neither is better
than the other overall,

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a hard choice.

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Realizing that small choices
can also be hard,

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may make big hard choices
seem less intractable.

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After all, we manage to figure out
what to have for breakfast,

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so maybe we can figure out
whether to stay in the city

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or uproot for the new job in the country.

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We also shouldn't think
that hard choices are hard

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because we are stupid.

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When I graduated from college,

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I couldn't decide between two careers,
philosophy and law.

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I really loved philosophy.

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There are amazing things
you can learn as a philosopher,

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and all from the comfort of an armchair.

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But I came from a modest immigrant family

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where my idea of luxury

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was having a pork tongue
and jelly sandwich

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in my school lunchbox,

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so the thought of spending my whole life

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sitting around in armchairs
just thinking ...

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Well, that struck me as the height
of extravagance and frivolity.

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So I got out my yellow pad,

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I drew a line down the middle,

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and I tried my best
to think of the reasons

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for and against each alternative.

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I remember thinking to myself,

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if only I knew what my life
in each career would be like.

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If only God or Netflix would send me a DVD
of my two possible future careers,

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I'd be set.

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I'd compare them side by side,

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I'd see that one was better,

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and the choice would be easy.

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But I got no DVD,

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and because I couldn't
figure out which was better,

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I did what many of us do in hard choices:

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I took the safest option.

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Fear of being an unemployed philosopher
led me to become a lawyer,

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and as I discovered,
lawyering didn't quite fit.

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It wasn't who I was.

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So now I'm a philosopher,

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and I study hard choices,

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and I can tell you,
that fear of the unknown,

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while a common motivational default
in dealing with hard choices,

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rests on a misconception of them.

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It's a mistake to think
that in hard choices,

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one alternative
really is better than the other,

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but we're too stupid to know which,

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and since we don't know which,

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we might as well take
the least risky option.

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Even taking two alternatives side by side

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with full information,
a choice can still be hard.

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Hard choices are hard
not because of us or our ignorance;

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they're hard because there
is no best option.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, if there's no best option,

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if the scales don't tip in favor
of one alternative over another,

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then surely the alternatives
must be equally good.

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So maybe the right thing
to say in hard choices

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is that they're
between equally good options.

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But that can't be right.

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If alternatives are equally good,
you should just flip a coin between them,

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and it seems a mistake to think,

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here's how you should
decide between careers,

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places to live, people to marry:

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Flip a coin.

NOTE Paragraph

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There's another reason for thinking

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that hard choices aren't choices
between equally good options.

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Suppose you have a choice
between two jobs:

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you could be an investment banker

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or a graphic artist.

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There are a variety of things
that matter in such a choice,

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like the excitement of the work,

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achieving financial security,

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having time to raise a family, and so on.

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Maybe the artist's career
puts you on the cutting edge

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of new forms of pictorial expression.

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Maybe the banking career
puts you on the cutting edge

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of new forms of financial manipulation.

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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Imagine the two jobs however you like,

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so that neither is better than the other.

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Now suppose we improve one of them, a bit.

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Suppose the bank, wooing you,

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adds 500 dollars a month to your salary.

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Does the extra money

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now make the banking job
better than the artist one?

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Not necessarily.

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A higher salary makes the banking job
better than it was before,

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but it might not be enough

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to make being a banker
better than being an artist.

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But if an improvement in one of the jobs
doesn't make it better than the other,

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then the two original jobs
could not have been equally good.

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If you start with two things
that are equally good,

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and you improve one of them,

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it now must be better than the other.

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That's not the case
with options in hard choices.

NOTE Paragraph

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So now we've got a puzzle.

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We've got two jobs.

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Neither is better than the other,
nor are they equally good.

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So how are we supposed to choose?

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Something seems to have gone wrong here.

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Maybe the choice itself is problematic,
and comparison is impossible.

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But that can't be right.

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It's not like we're trying to choose
between two things that can't be compared.

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We're weighing the merits
of two jobs, after all,

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not the merits of the number nine
and a plate of fried eggs.

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A comparison of the overall
merits of two jobs

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is something we can make,

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and one we often do make.

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I think the puzzle arises

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because of an unreflective assumption
we make about value.

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We unwittingly assume that values
like justice, beauty, kindness,

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are akin to scientific quantities,
like length, mass and weight.

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Take any comparative question
not involving value,

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such as which of two suitcases is heavier.

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There are only three possibilities.

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The weight of one is greater, lesser
or equal to the weight of the other.

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Properties like weight can be
represented by real numbers --

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one, two, three and so on --

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and there are only
three possible comparisons

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between any two real numbers.

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One number is greater, lesser,
or equal to the other.

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Not so with values.

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As post-Enlightenment creatures,

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we tend to assume

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that scientific thinking holds the key
to everything of importance in our world,

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but the world of value
is different from the world of science.

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The stuff of the one world
can be quantified by real numbers.

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The stuff of the other world can't.

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We shouldn't assume that the world of is,
of lengths and weights,

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has the same structure
as the world of ought,

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of what we should do.

NOTE Paragraph

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So if what matters to us --

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a child's delight, the love
you have for your partner —

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can't be represented by real numbers,

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then there's no reason to believe

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that in choice, there are only
three possibilities --

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that one alternative is better,
worse or equal to the other.

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We need to introduce
a new, fourth relation

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beyond being better, worse or equal,

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that describes what's going on
in hard choices.

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I like to say that
the alternatives are "on a par."

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When alternatives are on a par,

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it may matter very much which you choose,

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but one alternative
isn't better than the other.

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Rather, the alternatives are
in the same neighborhood of value,

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in the same league of value,

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while at the same time
being very different in kind of value.

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That's why the choice is hard.

NOTE Paragraph

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Understanding hard choices in this way

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uncovers something
about ourselves we didn't know.

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Each of us has the power
to create reasons.

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Imagine a world
in which every choice you face

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is an easy choice,

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that is, there's always
a best alternative.

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If there's a best alternative,
then that's the one you should choose,

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because part of being rational

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is doing the better thing
rather than the worse thing,

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choosing what you have
most reason to choose.

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In such a world,

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we'd have most reason

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to wear black socks instead of pink socks,

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to eat cereal instead of donuts,

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to live in the city
rather than the country,

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to marry Betty instead of Lolita.

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A world full of only easy choices
would enslave us to reasons.

NOTE Paragraph

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When you think about it,

NOTE Paragraph

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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it's nuts to believe
that the reasons given to you

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dictated that you had
most reason to pursue

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the exact hobbies you do,

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to live in the exact house you do,

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to work at the exact job you do.

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Instead, you faced alternatives
that were on a par --

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hard choices --

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and you made reasons for yourself

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to choose that hobby,
that house and that job.

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When alternatives are on a par,

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the reasons given to us,

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the ones that determine
whether we're making a mistake,

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are silent as to what to do.

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It's here, in the space of hard choices,

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that we get to exercise
our normative power --

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the power to create reasons for yourself,

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to make yourself into the kind of person

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for whom country living
is preferable to the urban life.

NOTE Paragraph

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When we choose between options
that are on a par,

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we can do something
really rather remarkable.

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We can put our very selves
behind an option.

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Here's where I stand.

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Here's who I am, I am for banking.

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I am for chocolate donuts.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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This response in hard choices
is a rational response,

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but it's not dictated
by reasons given to us.

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Rather, it's supported
by reasons created by us.

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When we create reasons for ourselves

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to become this kind
of person rather than that,

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we wholeheartedly become
the people that we are.

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You might say that we become
the authors of our own lives.

NOTE Paragraph

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So when we face hard choices,
we shouldn't beat our head against a wall

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trying to figure out
which alternative is better.

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There is no best alternative.

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Instead of looking for reasons out there,

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we should be looking for reasons in here:

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Who am I to be?

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You might decide to be
a pink sock-wearing,

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cereal-loving, country-living banker,

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and I might decide to be
a black sock-wearing,

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urban, donut-loving artist.

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What we do in hard choices
is very much up to each of us.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, people who don't exercise
their normative powers in hard choices

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are drifters.

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We all know people like that.

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I drifted into being a lawyer.

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I didn't put my agency behind lawyering.

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I wasn't for lawyering.

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Drifters allow the world
to write the story of their lives.

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They let mechanisms
of reward and punishment --

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pats on the head, fear,
the easiness of an option --

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to determine what they do.

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So the lesson of hard choices:

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reflect on what you can
put your agency behind,

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on what you can be for,

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and through hard choices,

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become that person.

NOTE Paragraph

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Far from being sources of agony and dread,

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hard choices are precious opportunities

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for us to celebrate what is special
about the human condition,

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that the reasons that govern
our choices as correct or incorrect

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sometimes run out,

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and it is here, in the space
of hard choices,

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that we have the power
to create reasons for ourselves

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to become the distinctive
people that we are.

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And that's why hard
choices are not a curse

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but a godsend.

NOTE Paragraph

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Thank you.

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