decision management
When faced with a fork in the road, or three glamorous doors, or a four-way stop, your mind begins to assess the human element of reasonable choice. In any given day, we are likely to be faced with thousands of choices, nearly all we would recall as being involuntary; ranging from ::hair in my face:: ::brush it away:: to “Will you marry me?”, thought the latter choice may only happen a rare few times in our lives.
Whatever the choice may be, as we have grown up and become individually socialized to cultures and environments, our decision-making capacities have veered off into various strata, none the better for choosing because they are all unique. Some allow emotions to choose, some think of immediate consequences. “Will this person like me if I comply?” “Will I have to mop the floor if they ask me to sweep?” This unique factor of decision-making truly sets every human apart, because, on every scale and ranking, we all consider different elements as having different weights.
Knowing myself rather well, at least from an insider’s point-of-view, I know that my thoughts tend to be rapid, somewhat often to the point where I nearly think on top of another thought. It’s a super-processor sort of system, you might say; maybe one that drives itself close to overheating.
At those moments when opportunities appear, my brain goes to work in its own decision-making process. I realized recently that my brain is cause-effect and risk-management-centric. If a potential arises, my thoughts will assess, in a swift fashion, various possible outcomes of each answer. Of course, there are infinite outcomes and, sometimes, an infinite number of answers I could come back with (infinity ^ infinity); however, common sense and understanding of the background and setting quickly eliminates that majority of that infinity.
The risk-management portion acts more like a gambler than a mama’s boy. Thoughts are pointed towards the obvious or implied advantages without very much regard to the means to get there. I am no ends-justify-the-means person, but the end is often a driving motivation to decide yes or no. When I sense implied disadvantages may result (deals too good to be true), I then seem to jump back on the cause-effect portion which usually sorts it all out.
Viewing a decision-making process is an abstract objective, particularly so since the greater portion of human thought isn’t actually perceived, but rather instinctive. It’s interesting to consider. At least, I thought it was a neat subject of pondering during a rainy afternoon.
Have a fun Hallowe-en weekend.
