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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
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that your partner lives by
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but leaves you cold.
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Or whether to donate your life's savings to charity.
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Chances are, the hard choice you thought of
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was something big, something momentous,
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something that matters to you.
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Hard choices seem to be occasions
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for agonizing, hand-wringing,
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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
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each of us possesses.
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What makes a choice hard is the way
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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
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in your current job in the city
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or uproot your life for
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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philosophy and law.
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I really loved philosophy.
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There are amazing things you can learn
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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
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in each career would be like.
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If only God or Netflix would send me a DVD
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of my two possible future careers, 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
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led me to become a lawyer,
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and as I discovered,
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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
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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, we might as well
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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
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not because of us or our ignorance:
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they're hard because there is no best option.
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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
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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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That can't be right.
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If alternatives are equally good,
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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, flip a coin.
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There's another reason for thinking
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that hard choices aren't choices
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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
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on the cutting edge of new forms
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of pictorial expression.
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Maybe the banking career
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puts you on the cutting edge
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of new forms of financial manipulation.
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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 now make a banking job
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better than the artist one?
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Not necessarily.
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A higher salary makes the banking job
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better than it was before,
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but it might not be enough to make
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being a banker better than being an artist.
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But if an improvement in one of the jobs
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doesn't make it better than the other,
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then the two original jobs
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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.
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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we make about value.
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We unwittingly assume that values,
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like justice, beauty, kindness,
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are akin to scientific quantities,
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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,
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or equal to the weight of the other.
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Properties like weight can be represented
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by real numbers, 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,
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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
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to everything of importance in our world,
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but the world of value
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is different from the world of science.
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The stuff of one world
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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in kind of value.
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That's why the choice is hard.
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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
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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,
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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
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would enslave us to reasons.
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When you think about it,
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it's nuts to believe
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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 face alternatives
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that were on a par, 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, the ones
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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
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our normative power,
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the power to create reasons for yourself,
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to make yourself
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into the kind of person
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for whom country living
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is preferable to the urban life.
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When we choose between
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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.
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This response in hard choices
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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
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of our own lives.
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So when we face hard choices,
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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
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up to each of us.
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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
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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.
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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
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about the human condition,
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that the reasons that govern our choices
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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
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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.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
Krystian Aparta
The English transcript was updated on 12/22/2016.