In 1965, it was impossible to land on the moon and return successfully.
But some people think this is a possibility. Some missions to land on the moon have been unsuccessfully, but some people won’t stop thinking of the chance
There is a power of choice at play. They could stop dreaming or creating plans.
By July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, an astronaut, landed on the moon and created a new sense of possibility: humans can survive outside the planet with some support.
This story is more about determination than it is about choice, but it reminds me of the 1 million other people who have shaped history through their choices.
If Thomas Edison had decided to do something else instead of trying to create the light bulb.
If Alexander Bell quit when people called him abnormal for saying he could make it possible to call people in far distances without sorcery.
These people have the power of choices and the capability to redefine what’s possible. They used it.
How about you?
What I want you to think about is choice or, rather, the power of choice.
Every day, we make choices, and this is an attempt to do something that could lead to new things, an imagination we want in the long run. Think about choices as a current action that leads to a result in the near future. Then, every great invention can be traced back to the choice stage — to design a rocket or not, to create a sleeker phone or not.
Some choices will change our lives, and some can be detrimental or ruin everything. This is the power of choice. You choose to read this blog post or to do something else.
We worry so much when we have two choices that look similar in terms of results and when we are unsure of the possible outcomes. For instance, I know that reading great literature helps me improve my empathy and how I deal with the issues of life. So, it’s easy to choose between reading and not reading.
But things get a little complicated when choosing between two good books on a fine evening. The covers are great. The reviews on the internet are positive. The authors are professionals and famous for their breakthrough research or achievements. How do I make a good choice?
But until a person can say deeply and honestly, “I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,” that person cannot say, “I choose otherwise.”
Man’s Search for Meaning
Making choices becomes difficult when what we think of the potential results from two decisions look similar.
To eat in this restaurant or that one. The result is to get good food and an amazing experience to go along with it.
To choose a career or that one. Either way, the result is to live a good life, whatever that means.
Most decisions usually have inertia and the fear of the unknown, but here we are discussing the confusion that arises when the potential results of two choices are similar.
There is no better way to help than to look at how humans make decisions.
Some of the factors that influence choice:
Bias refers to preconceived notions, ideas, or beliefs about a certain topic that usually have no authenticity about the overall truth.
We all like to believe that we make decisions rationally and objectively. But the fact is, we all carry biases, and those biases influence the choices we make.
HBR, The Hidden Traps In Decision Making
I have a bias toward written content created by Artificial intelligence. I think those types of content are too similar in tone and style. But I have seen people use AI, and they wow me with what they summoned out of the machine, yet this doesn’t change my thoughts about AI. Their quality is not as great in comparison to great writing, writeups that make you stop dead and think long and hard about a topic. Their quality depends on the intelligence and skill of the one using it.
There are different forms of bias.
To use the example of choosing a book, if the books look similar and the authors are both great, I will begin to look through a few other factors to make a choice. Some might not be rational, but we have biases as humans. For instance, I might ask myself, have I read one of these authors, and I like their style? (This doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t enjoy the other author.) Which author has a cuter name? Which title makes more sense, or if I mention the title, will a listener think I am intelligent? You see where this is heading, right? I am a black person. Is the author black, too?
Most of the facets in the last paragraph don’t make much sense. They have nothing to show for my choice of picking a good book. But that’s a definition of bias, to make a decision based on some unreasonable judgments.
Sadly, according to research, people who make decisions based on biases are overconfident in their choices.
Humans sometimes continually shift through our biases until we can make a choice.
So, the difficult question is how to make good choices.
By the way, these are a couple of things you should keep in mind:
Having the choice to make a choice is usually a benefit. Many people’s options are so limited that they have no other choice or are never in a position to choose.
This recall seems unimportant to our discussion, but we can see the privilege of choosing as something of great value when it comes to the power of choice. Something along the lines, “I can choose my own government, my choice of education, and my career. These are choices which not all people in all nations in the world have the capacity for.”
The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
J. K. Rowling
Your privilege, no matter how little they seem, often influences your decisions.
Secondly, you make decisions based on the material and information (and biases) you have. You make decisions based on your status and location, too. Even if those things are few at the time, it’s something worth talking about.
So many factors influence human choices, so it is hard to list all of them here. But the common ones are age, experience, skills, motivation, relationship status, etc.
One central talking point under the psychology of choice is the effect of cognitive biases on our choices. According to a study about human judgment and cognitive biases, it turns out that biases influence decisions 58.8% of the time. These biases include adversarial allegiance, hindsight, and confirmation biases; bias blind spot; moral disengagement; interview suggestibility, primacy, and recency effects; and cross-cultural, gender, and racial biases. (You can read more about it in the link).
We have already mentioned how your choice can lead to a better world. The opposite can happen, too.
So, the power of choice, which seems like a gift or superpower, can also seem like a burden. The anxiety of not getting things wrong.
Share the post with your friends if you find it helpful.
You can also BUY MY BOOKS on the menu if you like psychological thrillers. You can start with The Mystery Around Lola.
I read a post some years ago about a lady who wrote about How To…
You must have heard or read a few things about people who are the best…
It is a human problem to seek meaning in life. Some search tools show that…
When I first started watching The Queen Gambit, I thought it was one of those…
Is there anything like the best morning routine? I have tried experimenting with the first…
As a coffee drinker, what if I say you can get one of the best…