Foundational context that enables an autonomous control system with consciousness to stand.
Choice: Rediscovering Choice (Kim Un-a, Micro-Humanities 2014)
(p.35)
Choice always takes place in a specific time, space, and location. In other words, a concrete 'choice situation' is presumed.
Important choice situations carry the questions of what, why, by what criteria, and how to choose.
Because of a few unique and intricate traits of each choice situation, judgment is never easy—especially for the questions that matter most. For this reason, rather than piling up documents and data, sorting and organizing them by category lets you handle tasks more easily and better.
When we stand at a crossroads of what we consider an important choice, not a trivial everyday one, we enter a troubling choice environment, and that environment demands a clear recognition of the 'I' who makes the choice and the 'situation' in which we find ourselves.
(p.36)
The first thing to think about in choice is the subjective and objective sides of it.
Subjective choice depends on the objective choice situation, and the objective situation changes constantly under the influence of our choices. Therefore, without sufficiently considering both the subjective situation and the objective external situation surrounding me, we cannot properly understand the problem of choice. We need to understand the logic of the choice structure that lets us grasp the interaction between the subjective and objective elements as a whole.
To better understand the situation logic of choice, we cannot ignore the structural side of choice.
Therefore we need some understanding of the structure of the human mind that does the choosing and how the mind operates—namely, understanding the beliefs that serve as the criteria for choice, the psychological mechanism that decides our choices deep within our minds, and models for good decision making.
(p.40)
Distinguishing wants from needs and demanding more accurate information can be useful choice techniques for everyday situations. But there are many times when we must choose based not on the criterion of what is needed but on what we truly want. The more important the life issue, the more likely this is. If we focus only on 'technical' pieces needed for the subjective side of choice, we easily overlook the complex and varied aspects that lie on the objective side.
In choice situations big and small, our body and mind, our situations and environments, constantly interact. More than anything, I want to draw attention to the components that hinder, block, or constrain good choice on both the subjective and objective sides. Knowing precisely the limits and constraints of choice gives us a better understanding not only of choice but of life as a whole.
It is difficult to understand the correlation between life and choice without understanding, on the objective side, the features and character of situations that determine or constrain the range of choice, and the problems of time and chance that influence the outcome.
In fact, I would even call the three things that block good choice the three 'monsters' of choice: the unconscious that is an objective element of the subjective side and the psychological biases (subjective biases) that distort judgment; the objective situation and reality outside me that surround me (the choice situation); and time (chance and luck), which is also an objective element, causing the butterfly effect of choices.
(p.58)
According to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, humans are not rational but irrational beings. Because to be rational, the innate structure of the human brain itself imposes too many cognitive constraints. Their view that humans are basically irrational can appear, in one sense, to follow that of 18th-century British philosopher David Hume. He argued: "Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." If reason is nothing but the slave of irrational desire and passion, the rationalist studies of human choice behavior would be badly shaken at their very foundations.
(p.62)
Neuroscientists and psychologists describe two systems operating in human choice and decision making. They call them System 1 and System 2. [Note: the book reverses the common labeling.] System 1 is the conscious system that generates reasons. System 2 is the unconscious system that, deep in places we cannot know, is shaping our desires, emotions, and decisions. The two systems are connected, but the force coming out of the unconscious side is far more powerful. System 1 is the system of reasons that explains the subjectively produced motives of behavior, while System 2 can be called the system of objective causes.
To put it roughly, System 1 is the dashboard that displays the current state, and System 2 is the car itself.
A dashboard that shows current speed or fuel level is, literally, only displaying the result of the current state; the dashboard itself has no influence that makes the car move. What we call 'consciousness' is like that. Consciousness shows, like a dashboard, the state, desires, and decisions of our unconscious.
-> A fundamental limit of big data or data mining algorithms: in contextual approaches, the important thing is whether one can provide a criterion for judgment, and whether one can grant the opportunity to deny one's own memory.
(p.84)
When we face a choice problem, the reason we are flustered is that every choice situation we encounter is always 'the first of a lifetime' situation. All of us live as if we are living this life for the first time. The choice situations we meet each moment are likewise first-of-our-life situations. Moreover, most of the choice situations we face carry an ambiguous and complex 'fundamental uncertainty.'
(p.121)
In the short term we regret romantic relationships that broke, but in the long term we regret romantic relationships we let slip. Like this, we leave the psychological door to our decisions open rather than closed, and as time passes what we did not do grows larger. (The Psychology of Choice)
What the research ultimately shows is that time also acts on the psychology of regret. Value judgments of past choices are fluid with the flow of time and can change greatly depending on our 'current' state of satisfaction. The short-term past eventually becomes the long-term past. Each newly arriving 'present' imposes a new interpretation on the past.
(p.130)
What Kahneman showed through experiments is that human experience is constantly re-evaluated through the reinterpretation of memory.
Memory related to an experience is determined by the average of the emotion at its peak and at its final moment—this psychological phenomenon is called the 'peak-end rule.' From there comes the distinction between the experiencing self and the remembering self.
Every moment, through some choice behavior, we experience life, but that experience is simultaneously stored in memory at every moment. And the remembering self continually re-interprets and re-evaluates past experience in light of subsequent experience. In other words, memory 'distorts' the value and meaning of an experience through reinterpretation.
(p.137)
We are not purely rational beings; we are beings with only bounded rationality, ruled more by irrational impulse and bias. We choose under limited information, knowledge, and time, looking ahead to an uncertain and unpredictable future. My free choices never always yield good results.
Within these fundamental constraints of the choice situation, the best choice technique we can practice is simply this: to take choices we will not regret, grounded in clear recognition of ourselves, the environment, and the alternatives in the choice situation. Another important point: not to let failed choices pass with mere regret, but to take such experiences of failure as negative examples to learn from, and continually agonize over becoming a better chooser.
Experience of failure can be the very best mentor for a better choice. Knowledge unverified by experience is blind, and the simple accumulation of experience that does not use knowledge is merely meaningless.
