That will do

That will do

We make lots of quick decisions each day. Selecting which cup to use to make our tea perhaps of which plate to put our food on. With a stack of plates to choose from the decision is not complex. We pick the top one. A plate is a plate. A plate is what we need. This plate will be fine, that will do. If we notice some dirt on it, we might swap it for another one. Subconsciously we say, that will do. These decisions are practised and become automatic. We are automatons doing things, often with little conscious thought. Some thought may be required to seize the optimum spot to sit. Some like to have their back to the wall and no one wants to be at the end of a long table full of diners. One in from the end is much better. Sometimes we compromise, accept a trade off or seize the least-worst option. The process by which we decide things can be viewed as labyrinthine. We may mull over the finer points. Sometimes we hither and thither over the options available. However, if you draw a diagram of all the links that come to the fore, you can see why you chose what you did. If you map the fretwork, you will see that the biggest one triumphed.

Imagine what the world would be like if the time and diligence spent making decisions were correlated to the impact. We can spend a minute deciding what pizza to have. What size, what toppings and which crust option do I want? A house can cost ten thousand times as much as a pizza. However, spending ten thousand minutes thinking about a house purchase is unrealistic.

If I had more money to call upon, I would have made the same decision when it came to the many trades I made. More money deployed on a trade would have led to much more profit. Same amount of time researching. Same amount of time deliberating. Same mechanism used in my head. Vastly more profit.

Wars break out. Leaders make decisions. Once again, the fretwork mechanism in their heads is used to decide what to do. Fretworks are built and adjusted then measured to produce a decision. The consequences of a decision in war are infinitely greater of course than deciding whether to buy a house or not. Leaders will commit troops to battle aware of the potential for huge losses on both sides. Nevertheless, war, trading, and board games that we play with our friends, all require decisions, decisions that use the same fretwork system.

Time pressures force us to cut corners in our decision-making process. We can do nothing right now but there can be consequences with inaction. Unfolding events spur us to make an assessment based on the information we have. Much is presumed or guessed. Get our assessments wrong and tragedy may strike. Lots of people may die as a result. The consequences of a decision in war are infinitely greater than those on a board game. However, the amount of time, effort and precaution is not infinitely greater in war compared to a board game. It is an aspect of being a human not a failure. If you think free will and determinism is a complex difficult subject, you may not realise that choices are made by ludicrously simple processes.

The mind can be logical but rash. Your mind gets carried away, making one rash choice after another. Your mind sees pieces as dispensable when the mind wants to resolve the mess - the mess in the mind. Clear up the mess in the battlefield and a corresponding mess in your head is cleared too. To clear the mess in your head, pieces on the battlefield need to be moved.

Having more choice available is wonderful. Once upon a time we had two choices with bread, white or brown. Now we can choose from forty-four different types of bread. That means we get to spend longer deciding which to buy. We find ourselves weighing up the pros and cons. Price, value, texture, taste, health factors, image, and a myriad of other innuendoes. Subtle differences, silly gimmicks work. They hook into our pre-existing fretworks – people on a budget, people looking to eat more healthily, etc.