Rational Philosophy

On letting go.

Hillary Clinton seems to have been finding it difficult to pick her campaign strategy, vacillating between a softer, less strident tone and what has come across as a somewhat nasty tactic of questioning the qualifications and sincerity of Barack Obama. People differ on whether she should have been more ruthless from the start, or less ruthless all the way through; but all seem to agree that picking one would have been better than flipping back and forth.

After conducting extensive research through carefully constructed experiments, Dr. Dan Ariely, professor of behavioral economics at MIT, has concluded, not surprisingly, that people like to keep their options open. But, more surprisingly, Dr. Ariely thinks that we like to keep them open not necessarily because we feel we need them, but because we don’t like to let go of them. Dr. Ariely found that his test subjects worked hard to keep their virtual doors from disappearing, even when they knew there was no cost to making them reappear.

No matter how carefully arrived at, the results of research can be misinterpreted. The test subjects can’t tell us why, on a fundamental level, they wanted to keep the doors from disappearing, so this becomes a matter of inference. But an incredibly valuable aspect of Dr. Ariely’s research seems to be that it gives us a tool we can use when making choices.

Once we are aware that we will be tempted to keep our options open, even when logic tells us that this is detrimental, we will be more likely to trust our logic and let go of unproductive options.

No one would accuse Hillary Clinton of being stupid. I am sure she understands objectively that it would be better, or would have been better, to pick one style of campaign and stick to it. But she was tempted to hold on to all her cards. Whereas, if she’d had the benefit of the insights from Dr. Ariely’s experiments, she may have been able to make the tough call and pick one strategy or the other. (Interestingly, this inability to let a door close seems to be the Achilles Heel of much political decision making. I wonder whether it played a role in Clinton’s initial support for and later distancing from the Iraq war?)

Another example from today’s news: The NY Times reports that after a review of treatments for prostate cancer, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality could not determine which of those treatments to recommend. The article and those interviewed describe this circumstance as “scary,” “troubling,” and “disappointing.” But, as the article points out, in the absence of a prefered treatment, practitioners tend to select the treatment that they most ascribe to or feel most comfortable with. The Agency doesn’t say that any of the treatments being employed don’t have merit. And, in the absence of better data, it seems appropriate that doctors employ techniques they’re happy with. One can’t argue that it would be better to have better treatment data, but in the absence of better data, selecting the most appealing option and letting go of the others, seems a rational choice.

As a more mundane case in point I am put in mind of grocery shopping. A trip to the supermarket for a few items can take me several times as long as a visit to the bodega around the corner, just because in the supermarket I feel obliged to weigh my options. Modern life presents us with so many choices that letting go becomes a more and more valuable technique in time management.

I would present more examples, but I have to stop somewhere…

For more rational, science-based explanations of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

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