Chapter Text
On Indecision: Outsourcing Choice in an Uncertain World
I suck at making decisions. I don't occasionally hesitate, I wish it were that simple. I treat every choice as if it is a trap disguised as a question. I linger for days, weeks, even months in the mental waiting room of ‘I’ll decide later,’ only to realize that later is a myth I invented to avoid commitment.
This is why I’d be screwed if I encountered the trolley problem. Ethicists may love the thought experiment, but I detest it. Not because of the moral dilemma, but because of the necessity of making a decision in a limited time frame. I'd stand there, waiting, never arriving at a conclusion as the trolley barrels closer. Paralyzed, I would stand by the lever, flipping it up and down like a fidgety kid playing with a light switch. I wouldn’t make a decision until it's too late.
When a decision, like the trolley, barrels down the track of my neural pathways, it comes with a rumbling sound, and the bell rings until I can’t hear anything else. Emily Dickinson captures this mental noise in her poem, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, /And Mourners to and fro / Kept treading - treading - till it seemed / That Sense was breaking through -” When I first read this, I felt an overwhelming feeling of relief, finding solace in knowing I wasn’t alone in experiencing mental chaos. Although Dickinson wasn’t writing about indecision, her depiction of mental chaos resonates with the numbness I feel when trying to make sense of myself.
Sometimes I wonder if a clear goal could fix this. I talk to people with grandiose ambitions and I’m jealous — they make choices that propel them forward. Ideally I will make an impact on something, but beyond that I lack a concrete goal. Everything feels too big or too unimportant. People that know me consider me ambitious because I hold myself to a somewhat high standard, but this isn’t the same as working towards a goal. I float through life like a balloon, helium slowly leaking out, edging closer to the ground.
If I did have a goal, making decisions would be easier. Would this choice bring me closer to achieving it? Lacking that, I began to wonder about outsourcing to chance. If I can’t trust my own logic, maybe I could trust luck instead.
In one of my favorite books, Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale, there is a character I find exceedingly interesting. Due to an accident in his youth, he is stripped of all morals. In turn, he flips a coin to make decisions, and commits himself to the luck of the draw. How would this work if I implemented it in my life? Would I be happier with some of my agency removed? If I left my decisions to luck, maybe the results would be preferable, after all, I wouldn’t be there to overthink things. If I’m unhappy with something, it’d truly be bad luck, I couldn’t blame myself for an incorrect decision. It would look odd, pulling a coin out randomly throughout the day. Yet even surrendering to chance, I would still script the possibilities; the illusion of control lingers, stamped on each side of the coin.
At first, this was a joke. The coin could be like a mental eject button on the gearshift of 007’s car, sending me flying out, leaving me stranded on some random interstate, at some random life outcome. But then I found myself seriously wondering: would I be happier if I abdicated my control? Would regret even exist then?
Neuroscience offers its own version of the trolley track: “Regret and its avoidance: a neuroimaging study of choice behavior” is the name of a study I read that discusses when people anticipate regret, certain brain areas such as the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate are activated. This activation leads people to avoid future regrets, even if their choices aren’t optimal. Flipping a coin would likely reduce my stress and mitigate potential regret.
There’s something beautiful about chance, after all, people become gambling addicts for a reason. The brain’s reward system is hijacked not by winning but by unpredictability itself. Unpredictability releases dopamine and can lead to dependency. If I outsource my decisions to the coin, I don’t think I’d be able to stop, I might fall into complacency. I could love the randomness too much, to the point it replaces intention.
Since my first draft, my friend and I have implemented this system. The randomness works well. We flip a coin for nearly everything: Panera or Acai Bowls, dine in or take out, eat in the park or in the car. It saves time and removes small mental burdens.
Although the use case shows the system works, I’m not sure I'd be able to blindly follow Lady Luck’s decisions for everything. Despite lacking direction, I still have desires and preferences. Without the moral erasure of the book’s character, I couldn’t commit blindly. I’d likely want to reflip, guided by implicit preference; but would my biases lead me to the right choice? I still care about outcomes; I still want things, even if I don’t know what they are.
If I did abdicate my decisions to chance, that itself would be a decision I’d have to make, a decision I may come to regret. Decisions may be a fundamental part of human existence, unavoidable and unchanging. Maybe the poor past decisions set us up to make better choices in the present and future. Maybe the goal isn’t to eliminate regret or perfect our choices, instead, it’s to keep choosing, even when it’s hard. Because the act of deciding, however flawed, is what keeps us moving.
Coricelli, Giorgio, Hugo D Critchley, Mateus Joffily, John P O’Doherty, Angela Sirigu, and Raymond J Dolan. 2005. “Regret and Its Avoidance: A Neuroimaging Study of Choice Behavior.” Nature Neuroscience 8 (9): 1255–62. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1514.
Dickinson, Emily, Betty J Keller, Ronald Keller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Red Angel Press. 2002. I Felt a Funeral in My Brain : A Poem. Bremen, Maine. ; New York City: Red Angel Press, Two Thousand Two.
Koushun Takami, Masayuki Taguchi, Tomo Iwo, and Keith Giffen. 2004. Battle Royale. Vol. 9. Los Angeles, Calif.: Tokyopop.