The Learner 02

So I promised to write more about the learner in my next post and my next has taken an awfully long time to come. I can only pray that it is worth the wait for both reader and writer. 

I have been thinking about how bad decisions come about lately because I am about to make a major decision. I woke up one morning of the wait to realize a few things I am going to itemize.

1.  Insufficient information: I once argued with the wrong mindset, to make a point and service the idea of being superior to those around me. The topic was feminism, and somehow I felt the need to share the recent information that I had. It turned out it wasn’t enough to win me the argument. To put it mildly, I got handed my ass by a teenager. But on further consideration, I just got exposed to a new angle on the matter, more information without which I would have been unable to make a good decision on the matter. In my opinion there is an information threshold that is required for good decision making.

2. Lack of Right of Judgement: Reflecting on that argument on feminism, I realize that I had a logically sound mind. Assuming I had sufficient information, I would have still fallen short on the matter if I did not have a strong enough will to do, say or consider the right thing. The problem with this problem is that you have to look deep within yourself to see it. We are often weakened by our own greed, selfishness or even pride among other things to consider the right thing. A lot of times the right things will not favor us, sometimes they will just be the harder options to take, and other times our minds are clouded by external pressures that they exhaust our will power.

3.  Biases: I recently learned that our mind thinks in patterns to process information faster and better. While this might be efficient for us, it has robbed us of the opportunity of questioning and learning new things, especially new people. This has also led to a lot of biases and prejudices that breed bad decisions. I have tried to avoid subscribing to a version of these patterns I call labels that make me see people within the limits of my experience or logical ability. Despite all my effort in being unbiased, I can only be utterly partial by default. Knowing this, I have to rewire myself to constantly open my mind and heart to learning newer patterns instead of reusing old ones so that my decision making process is more dynamic, more specific to every situation and overall more balanced on a case by case basis. This will definitely slow me down and my brain will struggle with me a lot every time I come across new information. But I am not yet willing to give in to my primal nature of processing decisions so I must fight it every chance I get. Only God knows who will win this uphill battle.

I have learned that either one or a mix of any of these three reasons can lead to bad decision making. Of course there are more ways a bad decision could come about, but I write only of lessons I have learned or I remember as I write.