Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: psychology

  • We Don’t All Value The Same Things

    Every direction on the internal compass points toward what is valued…

    One of the most intriguing verses in the Bible is this:

    Every man’s way is right in his own eyes… ~ Proverbs 21:2 NASB

    This is a statement, in scripture, that confirmation bias and self-enhancement fallacies are universal. It is not a positive affirmation that whatever you think, and whatever you do, is right! It is a statement declaring that every person believes themselves and the conduct of their lives to be right.

    Clearly, everyone’s ways are not right.

    This raises two puzzling questions: What is right? Who determines what is right?

    Now, I am not making an appeal to you, dear Reader, that you believe the verse is true by using the authority bias and appealing to a scripture that you may hold no truck with whatsoever, which is, of course, your prerogative. I just find it fascinating for such a clear declaration of a linked set of universal biases to be sitting in the middle of sacred texts. 

    Rather, my appeal as to the veracity of the text is to the evidence of your own life. Do you make decisions and take actions because you believe yourself to be wrong? Or, do you do what you do, believing yourself to be right, at least right for you?

    The outworking suggested by the verse has been true for me, and I suspect, has also been true for you. One effect is that it causes us to project our own set of values, norms, and beliefs onto others. We will have a tendency to judge others by standards we hold to be true for ourselves. We may deceive ourselves into thinking that everyone shares the same value hierarchy that we ourselves hold. We may think everyone prefers and is pursuing the same thing. This is not the case.

    We don’t all value the same things. Even long-time couples, whose lives are intertwined in a myriad of ways so that they end up more as one thing, than two separate things, may have different values, different preferences and pursuits. They may entertain different goals and hopes. Enough difference between ultimate ends and there is a problem.

    If we all shared the same values, we could easily produce an algorithm that would assure us of using the appropriate means to achieve the goals we seek. The only debate would be about means, not about ends, since those would all be universally shared and agreed upon. Everything from dietary choices to politics would be easy. 

    But we don’t all value the same things. It is a plausible argument that we should, but most of us are too myopic to look down the road far enough to see what true value looks like, that state (I posit here that true value consists in states of being, not in things possessed) in which you say, ”This is a good as it gets. I am content. I am satisfied. I could ask for no more.”

    In the political realm (which by extension affects the social aspects of Americans, at least), Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence inked in some values. These were well thought out by the political philosophers of his day, vis. ”all men are created equal”, and the idea that each of us has been endowed with some inalienable rights, among which are ”life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. 

    These Rights, these Values, are a package deal

    These are value statements. If like me, you’re American, you will give hearty assent that these are valuable ends, worthy of pursuing and protecting. But Dear Reader, consider; what is life to a man who has no liberty? What is liberty to a man who is not treated equally? How can either pursue happiness?

    These values are interconnected, they fall apart if pursued singularly, with a willy-nilly disregard for their interlocking nature. Which, of course, is why Governments are instituted among men. (The sentence immediately following the enumeration of inalienable rights above). Inherent in the very idea of government is the individual’s sacrifice of unrestrained liberty.

    Yet to some, having not well considered these things, and believing their ways to be right, Liberty is the highest value. And so they have proven they are willing to use their liberty to jeopardize their neighbors lives during a pandemic. To them, the pursuit of happiness is more important than either equality, or life. But I submit that unrestrained liberty is as equally devoid of true value as unrestrained pursuit of happiness. And is as equally un-American as it is inhumane.

    The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to counsel. ~ Proverbs 12:15

  • The Availability Heuristic

     I recently bumped into a fascinating term with which I was quite familiar by practice, but not by name. It is called the Availability Heuristic. The link will go to a wiki page with a more precise definition and some examples of how the phenomenon applies in various categories of life. 

    In short, the availability heuristic is a mental phenomenon in which a person relies upon the recall of  information that can be brought easily to mind to form the basis for opinions and decisions. (The word heuristic is a fancy term for ”problem-solving” or ”decision-making”.)

    If something can be easily recalled, it is available to the mind to serve for ”facts”, and there is a tendency (bias) to give it more weight and credence. 

    If you spend a week watching Shark Week on television and then are invited to swim in the ocean, your exposure to all of the gruesome shark attacks during the past week will be readily available when you decide whether or not to venture into the water. 

    Nah, there’s nothing to see here.

    The availability heuristic predicts that you will feel a higher probability of a shark encounter than had you not watched all those shows. The actual statistical probability of being attacked does not change a fraction based upon your television habits or your ability to recall the frightening scenes. Meanwhile, you remain blissfully ignorant of the much higher statistical probability of being involved in a serious car accident on the way to the beach.

    Immersion in any pool of information makes it seem more true and more predominant than it may actually be. 

    This bias is exactly what gives rise to social media ”Echo Chambers” regarding political, social, and cultural views. 

    Exposure shapes opinion. Opinion shapes worldview. Be careful out there.

  • The Ultimatum Game

    How many of these could you win?

    There are two basic motivators for humans. These are fear of loss and hope of gain. This dynamic animates every choice we make. There is overlap. There is some vicissitude from one decision to the next, but most people will generally align themselves into one camp or the other over their lifetimes. ”Fear of gain” and ”hope of loss” do not exist as motivators, but the way people perceive gain and loss, are relative. The concept of value comes into play. And human interaction, with its perceived value, has an impact. The two basic motivators then, nudge people toward what they value. 

    Interesting studies show that in general, persons place a higher value on things they possess or think they are owed, than they value the very same things if they were trying to obtain them. Your used car, or your house is worth more to you as the owner/seller than the same car or house would be if you were trying to buy them.

    A study on the psychology of economics (Neuroeconomics) called the Ultimatum game presents some interesting findings. First developed in 1982, it has been repeated many times, across many different cultures and countries, and with many variations. There is an abundance of information online if you care to indulge yourself further.

    The typical format for the basic version of the Ultimatum game groups participants into pairs; a proposer, and a responder. They are endowed with a sum of money. Both the proposer and the responder know the amount of money being gifted. The proposer is told to make a single, one-time proposal on a split of the money between the participants.  If the proposal is accepted, the pair will each receive the amount of the proposed split. If the proposal is rejected, they each receive nothing.

    What is being studied is whether or not the participants will make rational decisions enabling them to agree on a proposed ratio and pocket their cut of the provided money. If not, what other considerations are at work?

    Example: Al and Barbara are given $10 in ones to split between themselves. Al has to make a proposed split that Barbara will accept, otherwise, neither of them takes home any of the free money. Al can make only one offer. Barbara knows there are ten dollars on the table. What does Al propose? What do you propose if you are Al? What are you willing to accept if you’re Barbara?

    Pure rationality, expressed as the expected utility theory of economics, dictates that the responder should accept any proposed split, even if it is only $1. Any amount is more than zero, comes at no cost, and is more than the participant entered the study with. In actual results, any offer of less than 20% of the total amount is rejected more than 50% of the time. Offers of only $1 are rejected almost all the time. Offers of between 30% and 40% are accepted almost all the time by responders, albeit, the further from 50%, the more reluctant the responder is to accept, and the less happy they feel about their share.

    Why is this? Researchers in economics are puzzled by these findings since they defy rational behavior, and therefore don’t fit neatly into economic theory. Psychologists dig deeper and discover that an emotional component exists in humans that causes perceived unfairness to be rejected. But it goes further than just rejection of an unfair proposal for one’s cut of ten bucks.

    Interesting fMRI findings show that some respondents declining to receive an offer they feel to be unfair, prefer to punish the proposer, causing both themselves and the proposer to receive nothing. The part of the brain that is stimulated to release dopamine as a pleasure response can be triggered by the rejection of the offer, specifically because it punishes the proposer for his unfairness. Let me say that again: The research shows that there is pleasure derived from punishing the unfair actor. 

    Turning down an unfair offer, induces physiochemical and psychological gains to the responder greater than free money in their pocket would provide. They are willing to punish themselves financially, forfeiting the purely financial gain, because it literally feels better to them to walk away with zero, rather than to walk away with a gratuitous dollar and be treated unfairly.

    Researchers surmise that since the responder knows the total amount of the endowment (which in some experiments is significant, totaling $100 or more), they calculate that ”fair” would be a 50/50 split of the pot. They proceed to take mental and emotional ownership of that 50% portion. Any proposal offering less than that amount, even though it is a positive gain in terms of money, feels like a loss in contrast to the 50% portion emotionally banked in the responder’s mind. Though fictitious, having no basis in reality or rationality, this is a loss that many responders are not willing to bear.

    In such cases, the feeling one receives from punishing an unfair partner is greater than the feeling one has from walking away with money on the house. The punisher is placing a much higher value on the amount of money they believe they are ”losing” by accepting an unfair offer, than the value they place on the non-zero amount they could have by accepting whatever offer is made. And…they get some dopamine as a bonus for punishing the unfair partner guaranteeing that they will get zero as the wages of their perceived greed.

    These findings are skewed to a statistically predictable significance when factors such as ”pro-social” or ”individualistic” personality types are factored in for comparison. Surprisingly, researchers find that the more a participant identifies as individualistic, the more they are willing to accept the most unfair of offers. The flip side is that pro-social participants will more often reject offers even at the 30% range to ”teach a lesson” to the unfair proposer. Pro-social persons value cooperation and fair play. They exemplify a ”win/win” attitude. 

    Individualists, on the other hand, do not expect fairness, are not surprised or angered when unfair offers are made, and they are not out to correct the unfair proposer’s future behavior by giving them a ”lesson”. To the individualist, there are winners and losers, and that’s that.

    Remember, there is no negotiating in the basic version of the Ultimatum game. Reciprocity is not a factor. It is a one-time, take-it-or-leave it proposal. The proposer has an incentive to be fair if she wants to walk away with anything, but the selfish greed of human nature dictates that even when an 80–20 split is proposed, it’s still accepted about half the time; and the proposer gets to keep 80% of the endowed amount.

    I find it fascinating and a bit counter-intuitive that individualists are more willing to be treated unfairly and not feel bad about it, at least in purely economic transactions. Especially in light of the fact that researchers have found that there is a correlation between behaviors in the Ultimatum game and other aspects of life that are not purely economic. 

    Sociologists study these kinds of psychological tests and their results to determine people’s ability to recognize, and willingness to tolerate, social injustices and economic inequalities. Apparently, self-declared individualists would rather be taken advantage of than have to suffer the indignities of cooperation and teamwork. At least according to the Ultimatum Game results.

    I don’t know anyone who relishes being treated unfairly, but then I suppose some people will sell themselves cheaply if they don’t have the kind of wealth or principles that are more valuable than what can be bought with a dollar. Especially if they can pocket that dollar and still cling to their illusion of self-reliance. Maybe to such a one, that feels like being a winner. After all, a dollar is a dollar, and self-respect won’t buy a cold beer.

  • The Medium Is the Massage

    The back cover of McLuhan’s 1967 book

    Marshall McLuhan wrote a seminal work in 1964 called Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In it, McLuhan posits that various media types (print, radio, television) affect society by the direct impact of the medium itself on the reader, listener, viewer, more than by the content portrayed. He coined the famous phrase, ”The medium is the message”, as a concise statement of this phenomenon.

    McLuhan used the terms ”hot” and ”cool” to describe this property of various media. A hot medium gives the recipient lots of information, stimulates multiple sensory inputs, and requires little interaction from the user for the extraction of meaning. A cool medium may only stimulate one or two senses and requires much more participation from the user for the user to determine and extract meaning. 

    Think of the difference between a book you’ve read (some people still do that), and seeing the movie adaptation of the same book. A book is much ”cooler” than a movie, because the reader must imagine in her own mind everything sensory: how the characters look, the colors in the settings, the sounds of the voices in dialogue, etc. A great author creates a world not only for his characters to inhabit, but for the reader to inhabit with them.  Television and movies provide all, or nearly all, of the visual and auditory information to the watcher. Great directors, like Hitchcock, for example, knew this to be true, and left only the suggestion of violence in some of his scenes, counting on the viewer to fill in the blanks in her own mind. This interactive component, he believed, would make them even more frightening than anything he could put on film. Count in your own mind how many senses you use when reading vs. watching television or a YouTube video.

    In 1967, McLuhan wrote anther book, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. In this book McLuhan points out the entire array of effects on the sensorium of the user of each respective type of a particular medium. This has application to sound (volume), and sight (colors, movement, screen refreshes, etc.), but the accumulated affect is amplified. McLuhan explores how various media types ”massage” the user, and how that effect, in turn, impacts how the user both receives and perceives content.

    McLuhan is oft criticized for his concern over what was derisively called ”technological determinism”. That is, his critics believed McLuhan was a Luddite, afraid that emerging technologies, especially visual media forms like television and video would somehow adversely affect the user, ”determining” cognition, comprehension, and responses, by means of the medium itself and not by means of the users interaction with the content conveyed.

    McLuhan died in 1980 prior to the proliferation of the internet and prior to any so-called social media platforms at all. Little did McLuhan’s critics realize in 1967 just how much conscious participation is surrendered, the better technology becomes at immersing the user in an environment in which the triggering of predictable responses is the goal. Neither McLuhan nor his critics had access to brain-imaging technologies, or they could have seen visual evidence of the neural impact of ”hot media” on various regions of the brain. And when McLuhan died, the field of neurophysiology was brand new, it’s insights into brain-chemistry and neurotransmitters like dopamine with its role in addiction and compulsion a complete unknown.

    Today we know that McLuhan was right. The medium is both the message and the massage. Both environment (with its sensory stimuli), and content are customized for the responses desired. And the medium is engineered to maximize attention capture. A hot medium masquerades as a cool medium requiring interaction ( a swipe of the infinite scroll, please), while behind the curtain it is controlling everything. Software engineers collaborate with psychologists to experiment with every element from the color of the background, to the placement (and colors) of labels & buttons, to the tactile feel and sound of a ”click”, to the algorithms determining what information the user does or does not see.  All of this happens while massaging the user into feeling good about what kind of person they are for using the particular platform, flooding him with dopamine when he sees ”likes” and hearts, and other emoticons so he’s sure to come back for more.

    Sadly, this overall ”massage” phenomenon isn’t relegated to social media platforms. The so-called News Media, especially the ”hotter” variety, exist in a marketplace where viewership pays the bills. Let’s face it, we choose the media we consume the same way we choose our food. What flavors do we like better? Which has the larger portions? Which has the prettier or more handsome ”talent”? We trust that if a program is on what is called a ”News” network, then the content is actually ”news” in the sense of being factual and true.

    But media magnates realize that we consumers choose our channels like we’re in the McDonald’s drive-thru. We want to eat what we’re familiar with. We want to hear what we already believe. So, we watch, listen to, and consume the ”news” from networks and personalities expressing opinions that are our own. This satisfies our confirmation bias. It doesn’t require any thinking, or interaction. This makes us feel better about the kind of persons we already are. We don’t come to the news the way we would approach taking medicine. It is entertainment masquerading as fact. And we fail to recognize that all the while we’ve been laid out on a carefully prepped table enjoying the massage.

  • Filtering

    I’ve always been curious about reality. I can accept that I am sitting in my office chair, my own hands stretched in front of me, touching hard plastic keys on a bluetooth keyboard, each touch producing a change that adds or removes squiggly marks on the screen in front of me, carefully engineered to look like a sheet of white paper suspended in portrait view. Because I’m not using full-screen mode, I can see my background wallpaper on what is called my ”desktop”. Of course, I know it’s not an actual desktop because my keyboard and my coffee cup are sitting on my ”real” desktop. If I tried to place them on the one in front of me, they’d slide off in a crash because the one with the squiggles is 90° perpendicular to my actual desktop, the wooden one that is parallel to the floor. The flat one in front of me, in 5K-retina-display-glass-and-electricity, also has some fancy hard drive icons on it. These represent physical hard drives, but they are not the ”real” hard drives, just graphical user interface (GUI – pronounced ”gooey”) representations of the ”real things.

    I’m beginning to think that the ”real world” is probably a bunch of gooey icons too. See if you catch my drift.

    The virtual desktop has a ”wallpaper” of nice colors on it, except I know for a fact those colors don’t really exist anywhere except in my own brain. Light is getting in through the specialized openings in my head called ”eyes”, and that light has a variety of wavelengths (all part of a spectrum called ”white light” that is human friendly) that gets interpreted in some fancy way by another part of my brain that is doing the actual ”seeing” (Eyes don’t really ”see” anything at all). Anyway, the seeing part of my brain allows me to perceive the variety of colors, and it fools me into believing the colors are happening on the screen and not in my head. This same deception also happens when I look out the window and see  ”blackness”. (It will happen when the sky changes into vanilla cotton candy in about an hour too, unless it’s foggy, then I’ll get deceived into believing there is such a thing as ”gray” out there.)

    I had to take a break and walk to the master bathroom for a moment to say good morning to my girlfriend. The tile was very cool on my feet. I remained upright without tilting or leaning. On the way back to my office chair, I felt the brush of my cotton pajama pants against my thigh. Sitting here now, I can’t feel these pants at all. (I am still wearing them) I can’t feel the waistband of my boxer shorts. With a little focused attention, I just made myself become aware of the soft collar of my Life Is Good long-sleeved tee shirt. I can feel the luxuriously soft cotton lying soft as a feather against my shoulders, and the barely noticeable cuffs tickling the hair on my arms at my wrists while I type. As soon as I stop trying to notice it, those sensations will go away.

    I just became vaguely aware of some yellow-white and red lights moving slowly from left to right outside the window in front of me, accompanied by a vague whoosh of sound and a slight low ”grrrr”. ”Car,” says my brain. And, I’m just now noticing the muffled white noise of what has to be the shower running in the bathroom, which is on the other side of the foyer wall to my right. In another minute, I’ll be oblivious to it again. 

    Reality is different than my perception of it, or your perception of it. It’s probably as different as your computer file icons are from the gibberish of ones and zeroes that make up the actual files. Philosophers debate this stuff. There is a school of them that suggests there is no matter at all, only ideas presented to our brains giving us the illusion of matter. I dunno, that’s a bit of a stretch, but I digress.

    You know the way you cannot ignore the sound of waves rhythmically crashing when you first climb out of your car at the beach, only to be completely deaf to the sound within minutes? The waves don’t disappear. The sound is still being generated because the force of water is vibrating air at a specific frequency that is still vibrating the cilia inside your ear canal, which tickles your ear drums to begin the transmission of signals along dendrites and neurons to reach the sound processing part of your brain for some info on what those vibrations mean. 

    ”Ahhh,” says your sound engineer., ”That’s waves…we can safely ignore that. Unless you just want to pay attention, then I can also flip a switch to let you hear those gulls that have been circling overhead the last five minutes you’ve also been deaf to. And for good measure, here’s the sounds of some children laughing.” 

    (Sidenote: It is said that people living in proximity to Niagara Falls do not hear it.)

    That’s the way our brain handles everything, all the time. We may think our conscious selves are being presented with all the information that’s available in our sphere of awareness, but in truth, the normally functioning human brain is a gigantic stimulus gatekeeper. It filters out way, way more than it allows to knock on the door of awareness. It only lets through what it determines is really essential for whatever it guesses you’re most likely to need to navigate the next microsecond successfully. It does this so quickly, that many neurophysiologists believe that most of what we perceive as ”real” is actually the brain’s moment-by-moment predictions of what is ”real”.

    Like your computer icons, the predictions represent reality sufficiently for you to interact without having to sort through the messiness of what’s being kept from you in DOS or UNIX world. Meaning, the perceptions we have of reality are our brain’s predictions (icons) about what the next moment holds in store, which means we are all caught in a milli-second lag and never quite able to…catch…the…present…moment. 

    Sidenote2: (This is what makes improvisational Jazz, or the creativity of a Grateful Dead jam so much fun…they are sonic efforts to catch up to the elusive NOW of things. And the effort is happening between the band members, and between the band and the audience.)

    The brain captures and catalogues all incoming stimuli, maps it, creates a baseline, stamps ”reality” on it, feeds it to the interpreter part of us that needs to know where the edge of the bed is in a dark room, and then starts filtering out extraneous info while feeding the predicted-hallucination-labeled-as-reality back to the interpreter part. The brain is very, very good at picking up on subtle shifts in the catalogued stimuli, but it acts with equal speed to quickly put new information into the existing ”reality hallucination” unless the new stimuli is so disruptive that it requires the generation and presentation of a new hallucination, such as the refrigerator suddenly making ice and the brain has to feed you a reality that tells you:

    1. the fridge is making ice, or 
    2. Someone is breaking into the kitchen through the door leading to the garage.

    OK. Enough of that. You get the general picture, right?

    The gist is, there’s just too much information to pay attention to all of it at the same time. Our brains, somewhere along the line, determined that all the sensory info doesn’t have the same level of importance, so it creates a hierarchy to give the part of us that pays attention a break, since it’s a known fact that dude in charge of paying attention cannot focus on one thing for very long. 

    This is a GOOD THING, because we cannot give equal attention to all things simultaneously for very long and remain what is commonly referred to as ”sane”. 

    So…the brain filters. It predicts. It predicts based on what I guess is a learned history (possibly an innate pre-wired assumption) of the spectrum of ”normal”. From this baseline, it follows that the picture of reality shown to the owner should not be changed very often, and should not be changed very abruptly, or dramatically, unless such measures are unquestionably called for. 

    The other day, I was on a walk. I wasn’t consciously paying attention to the landscape I’ve walked through a hundred times, caught up instead in listening to an audiobook, when I glanced into the empty field with the dead tree beside the sidewalk I was casually descending, and for a hair-raising moment I saw a knee-high tall coyote standing about 20 yards away. Its tail was up, its head was swung in my direction, eyeing me. I had that brief explosion of of WTF adrenaline…you know that explosion? Then, in the next instant, the coyote vanished and became a perfectly aligned clump of dried brown grasses and a scraggly shrub that had been the coyote’s bushy tail only a second before. 

    This was funny. And it was revealing. I’m willing to bet you’ve had the same thing happen before. Maybe you walked into a room and there were some clothes thrown over a chair in a way that for an instant startles you into believing a person is sitting there, and you have that momentary panic. The brain filters out most data that reaches our conscious ”pay attention to this” ops center, but it has no qualms throwing out a hallucination of a coyote (or an unexpected person sitting in a chair) to protect you if needed. And every time your head shifts, whatever new information comes into your visual field has to be scanned, categorized, assessed for threats, assembled into a new hallucinatory reality puzzle, labeled ”real” and ”ok” and fed to the ops center. 

    I’ve jacked with this whole system and this whole process quite a few times in my life. Not too recently, but I can remember. Oh boy, can I remember…

    But think with me, even if you’ve never done acid, or mushrooms, I bet you’ve been sitting in your car stopped at a traffic signal when all of a sudden you have the distinct feeling of moving when the tractor trailer beside you rolls forward. Right? You haven’t budged, but your brain interpreted the new stimulus of the moving trailer as YOU moving, and gave you all the accompanying physical sensations just to complete the hallucination for you. It’s so ”real” you press hard on the brake to stop your unmoving car from ”moving”. Tell me that’s never happened to you.

    That same brain that can make you feel like you’re moving, is making you feel like you’re sitting still, or standing, or whatever right now. And that’s cool. It’s ok, but it is very, very subjective. 

    Your filter, is not my filter. I cannot feel your clothes. I do not see the same sky you’re seeing. I do not hear the same sounds. Studies have shown that even people who look at say the color ”blue” will perceive variations in hue, tone, intensity, depth when asked about ”blueness” on a more granular level. So…the conclusion is we don’t all see the same blue. That’s because there is no blue OUT THERE…your blue lives in your head and my blue lives in mine. 

    I know, weird stuff, right? But, I’ve always grokked out on this kinda stuff. And let me tell you…it has IMPLICATIONS. But…that’s probably enough for today. 

  • Which Do You Prefer?

    Every person, myriad times throughout each day makes decisions about what to say or do from the menu of options available to them at the time of the choice. 

    This bears unpacking a bit. You are reading this right now. You could have chosen to do something else instead. But reading this showed up on the menu of choices available to you and you chose to do so. This process was in play before you knew about it, and it will continue now that you do know about it. 

    Not all options are available to choose at all times. Neither of us can fly to the moon, or even across the room under our own power, for instance, even if we desired to do so. And, to be certain, there is a catalogue of historical debate amongst philosophers and behaviorists over whether or not any of us is truly free when we choose any action. That is the age-old debate over ”free-will” vs. determinism. I am unqualified to dive too deeply into those waters, though I have taken a swim in them from time to time.

    I’m writing to bring attention to the fact that when we act as if we are free to choose, there is something driving and impelling those choices. That something I will call ”preference”. There are two or more options available on the menu; and the one we choose is the one we prefer. How could it be otherwise? 

    I’m writing this now, at this moment, rather than doom-scrolling through Twitter, crawling back into a warm bed, going for a walk in thirty degree drizzle, reading news, turning on the television, etc. I’m writing because it is what I prefer to be doing with this slot of time, energy, and attention more than anything else I could be doing. You are doing the same thing.

    It is important to note that preference does not equal desire. I have desires that I may actually prefer more than my current choice, but at the time of my choosing they were not on the available menu. I desire to be walking a secluded beach with my girlfriend in seventy degree weather with a light breeze in our hair, watching the sun come up over the ocean. But that is not on this morning’s menu. I’m sure you have desires like that.

    Our choices are driven by our preferences. This phenomenon is a fact we experience over and over. This is what makes the concept of free will feel true. Seen in that light, no one can take away another’s free will, because there is no power that can be exerted to take away another’s preference as long as more than one choice is available. You may severely limit the menu of options available to an individual. You may wickedly create for them a reality that is a constant choice between the lesser of two evils. But you cannot take away their ability to choose what they prefer from the remaining options.

    This realization has helped me interpret both my own choices and behaviors as well as those of  others. Watch what someone does or refuses to do. Listen to what they say or refuse to say. You are seeing the external manifestations of their internal preferences, moment by moment, event by event, day by day.

    I am overweight because on the whole, I prefer it to the effort and attentiveness that is necessary to lose the extra pounds. I work for my self as a commissioned salesman, with all of its accompanying risks, because I prefer it to a rigid schedule and losing autonomy in my workday.

    The example of overweight-ness is illustrative of the fact that preferential choices happen in the moment. They are myopic. They are not contemplative of the long game, unless…unless you put that contemplation on the menu. Because to be sure, I prefer health to obesity, in general. I prefer activity to lethargy, in general. I prefer self-control to sloth or gluttony, in principle. 

    A key then to making better choices, is to pick those which will be a balance of preferred outcomes both in the present and into the future.

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