uncertainty – Heather Hoyt

The great majority of all our decisions are not between right and wrong, where there is only one good pathway to take.

Our decisions are often between one good option and another good option. Sometimes they are between five bad options and no good options. Sometimes we have no idea how many options we have, and we just pick something that’s good enough.

I have had the hardest time making decisions regarding my kids’ extracurricular activities. I am actually grateful I live in a smaller town so there are less options. But even with the few options I have, I feel like I have to figure out how to optimized my child’s potential so that they can both be happy and also become the most capable that they can be.

But choosing extracurricular activities is not an optimization problem, where there is one best answer. I don’t have the necessary information to optimize, because my kids are young and I don’t know if they will like something or not. They have to try it out first. And skill is not just built on natural talent, but also grit and determination, so sometimes I have no idea what a child will actually be good at. There are too many factors, many of them are just chance.

It’s not that my child and I will choose the path that will make them the best version of themselves; we’re just choosing between different versions, and there is no way to determine which version is better.

Acrobatics, choir, drama, soccer, basketball, swimming, art, coding, crafting, fishing, archery–any option is fine, really. There is no right answer. They just need to try something, hopefully find one thing that they sort of like, learn how to work hard and do their best. It doesn’t matter if we decide to play soccer, or take dance lessons, or whatever.

I do think there can be some choices that would be problematic: involving my child in too many extracurricular activities, for example, so that we have more to do than we are able to accomplish. Another problematic option would to have my kids do no extracurricular activities and then give them unlimited screen time.

But in the middle, there are just a ton of options and I can’t tell which was is the absolute best, so we just choose something and hope for the best and make adjustments as needed.

Relatedly, this attitude has helped with menu indecision. I used to view menus as an optimizing problem where I would try to order the thing on the menu that would give me the most pleasure for the least amount of money. But I didn’t have the information that made this possible (usually I haven’t tried anything on the menu yet). So I stopped viewing ordering food as an optimization problem.

It’s an exercise in exploration instead: I’m just going to try things out. I will dislike things. That’s part of the uncertainty of life.

We don’t know as much as we think we do. We are often mistaken and wrong and we need to rethink some of our beliefs a lot.

I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about uncertainty and correcting beliefs. But I also have been reading and thinking about commitment too. Sometimes we want to commit to beliefs, and hold to those beliefs, even when other people say we’re wrong.

I think it’s a miserable existence to only believe in what is supported with a proper meta-analysis and scientific consensus. Science can be great. But science is not the most important way we gain belief.

I believe there is truth, truth that is not relative. But I truth cannot always be discovered through the scientific process. There are many ways to discover truth, and to hold on to truth.

We learn through living. We learn through relationships and connection with others. We learn with experience. We learn sometimes through faith and action and seeing what works out and what doesn’t.

I want to be open to new beliefs, to updating what I think is wrong. But I am also committed to certain beliefs–beliefs on how to be a good person, how to raise my family, and how to live my life. Those aren’t the sort of beliefs I want to rethink over and over again. I just want to hold on to them and keep trying to live up to them.

I pray every morning and every night, and my prayer is often that God can guide me and that I can hear Him in my life. There are moments when I feel something that cannot be adequately explained except to say it is divine, that it comes from a power outside of myself. That is what I am committed to. That is what I believe.

So I will be a skeptic, sometimes, and I will be a scientist, sometimes, and then most of all, I will be a mother and a wife and a daughter and a friend, and my commitment to the most important beliefs will guide me to become an even better version of myself.

Tag: uncertainty

No right answer: it’s not an optimization problem

Uncertainty and Belief