The Hanover Collaboration

Not you, somebody else: Hey advice column guy, I’ve got a problem.
—Negative Adjective

Advice Column Guy: Dear Negative Adjective,
Imagine you’re driving somewhere and you make a wrong turn, drive for a little while and then realize it. What do you do?

Let n be the fraction of the time that the optimal action is to turn around and drive straight back to where you made the wrong turn. I think people tend to choose that action substantially less than n of the time.

Let me try to be more clear. You were driving from A to B via C at which point you drove from C to C’ which is not on the optimal route from A to B. Suppose the optimal route from C’ to B goes through C. People prefer not to retrace C’ to C or even to go through C again at all. My question is why?

Is it that they don’t want to admit a mistake? That could be, but I don’t think that is quite it. I think it is that people feel “invested” in C to C’ or that they are “committed” to the new plan. Backtracking would be to sacrifice that investment—to show a lack of commitment. Or maybe people simply forget that C to C’ is sunk and shouldn’t be considered in the C’ to B problem.

Due to this affect, it seems that plans generate a strange momentum. You know what it is like. You accumulate commitments to all kinds of people and activities. “I’d love to but I have to…” you hear people say. Maybe it has something to do with the high seating of “responsibility” in the pantheon of virtue. When you say that you will do something, you have to do it. Sounds good right? Maybe not. What if future information tells you that not doing it is the better course of action? Do you still do it? What if you never actually said it but rather just told yourself that you would do it? [1]

I often find myself advising people to “take a step back”. What does that mean anyway? I mean that it is easy to lose track of primary goals in pursuit of subgoals. But the subgoals are not what matter; you are totally free to punt on them.

I define plan as a weakly-ordered set of subgoals that terminate with a primary goal. If the plan is going shitty, for instance failing subgoals, you don’t have to “stick to it” you can just make up a new plan.
—akward positive adverb,
Advice Column Guy

¹ philosophical side quest What if you promised someone something on their deathbed. Noone else knows that you made this promise. Under what circumstances would you break that promise? I seem to be abnormal in that I would have no trouble breaking that promise. That’s a heads up to you guys—If you want something tedious done with your ashes or Beany-Baby collection or something, you should ask someone else.