9 ms·
Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Happiness [pdf]
- kyleschiller 10y agoThe great majority of the recruitment for the study was done through social media associated with Freakonomics... in the recruiting for the study, I emphasized that I was only interested in people who were having a difficult time making a life decision... Finally, this is a group which is apparently attracted to the idea of using a coin toss to potentially resolve major life dilemmas. Not that we should automatically dismiss the results, but that is a pretty important qualification. Also: Empirical economists are increasingly moving from a role of consumers of data to producers of data. This paper represents an extreme expression of that trend. It is difficult to imagine how one could hope to answer the questions addressed in this paper without generating the data. As the prominence of social media grows, opportunities to recruit subject pools for randomized field experiments from broad swaths of the population will only increase. As cool as that is, you've got to worry that if social scientists have the ability to conduct significant studies as a result of their popularity, we'll start to see a world where the most prolific social scientists are necessarily more and more like entertainers.
- notahacker 10y agoLevitt's been more entertainer than social scientist for a while now, and as for other social scientists wanting a broad section of candidates for field experiments, social media associated with the university or other third party, or even paid social has the same recruitment potential without the systematic biases of Freakonomics fans
- remx 10y agoI enjoy applying the I Ching[0] to decision making. It's like a coin toss, but on steroids [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/534289.The_I_Ching_or_Book_of_Changes https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/534289.The_I_Ching_or_Bo... [#] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching
- toisanji 10y agoHow so? Pleases go into more detail.
- stephancoral 10y agoInstead of a binary yes/no decision, the various positions of the i ching means you have a wider range of "oracular" output - 64 hexagrams to be exact.
- winkywooster 10y agoActually with the changing lines, it's more than that. You'll have one hexagram change into another, with the lines providing nuanced details to the "meaning".
- stephancoral 10y agoRight, my bad. Thanks for the clarification
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jyriand 10y agoI have used Tarot cards to give me some perspective on some descisions. As a side effect I start to experience a lot more of unexplainable synchronicities in my daily life and in connection with the decision. Most striking example: I was at a point where I needed to decide if I should break up with my girlfriend. I was doing the taro spread to get the answer and at the same time my girlfriend called and told me that she met this one guy and she would like to go on a date with him.
- miceeatnicerice 10y agoBeing faithful to chance events is a great way to organise your knowledge - it basically subordinates facts to wit. Fight the facts! Become self-aware! That's how I think it works anyway. Difficult to follow through with on the larger scale, though - which is where the little synchronicities come in.
- mabbo 10y agoMy grandmother's family arrived at the docks in England in the early depression years, and flipped a coin. Heads, Australia; Tails, Canada. I don't know how the coin affected their happiness with the decision they made. All I know is that two generations later, I'm sitting in -9C temperatures in mid-march because of "tails".
- ceedan 10y agoReally got the tail-end of that deal......... i had to
- segmondy 10y agoIf they had gotten heads, you won't exist. :)
- xyzzy4 10y agoHis/her consciousness might exist inside a different person though.
- mabbo 10y agoNo, I pretty definitely wouldn't exist. My father's family has been in Canada a lot longer, and I'm half him.
- xyzzy4 10y agoOk but maybe your father or mother would've had a baby with someone else, and then you'd be that person.
- samangan 10y agoYou are your 'current' feelings and your past memories. The reason for the downvotes is that from your logic mabbo is every person who has ever existed in the history of the human species. Since every person has their own current feelings and past memories, saying mabbo would have been that person instead is a little meaningless.
- buro9 10y agoI coin toss, but I don't let the outcome determine the action. Instead I let how I feel about the outcome determine the action. Most of the time a coin toss is not required as I am quite decisive, but if I feel particularly paralysed by an opportunity or decision, and unable to determine the best course of action... then I will toss a coin and look at the outcome, and decide whether or not I feel at peace with the outcome, whether there is regret. I act on the immediate feeling of the outcome, not the outcome itself.
- FTA 10y agoI've read a few different books that say we make decisions from our gut or emotions--logic is only used to try and justify it to ourselves.
- saeranv 10y agoYeap. There's some research that suggests the unconscious mind is better at making complex decisions then the conscious mind. [1][2] "Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only consider a subset of information, which they weight inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice. In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with" [1] [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8732-sleeping-on-it-best-for-complex-decisions/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8732-sleeping-on-it-b... [2]http://people.hss.caltech.edu/~steve/rightchoice.pdf http://people.hss.caltech.edu/~steve/rightchoice.pdf
- CamperBob2 10y agoIt's also been strongly argued via FMRI research that our decisions are made before our conscious mind is aware of them. Of course, FMRI machines have also diagnosed brain activity in a dead fish, so...
- tvanantwerp 10y agoThis is a great technique that I also use. Sometimes it's hard to understand what you really want out of a binary choice. But as soon as you see what fate has decided for you, that gut reaction of elation or dread tells you what you should actually pursue.
- itstriz 10y agoIndividuals who are told by the coin toss to make a change are much more likely to make a change and are happier six months later than those who were told by the coin to maintain the status quo. I wonder if they removed the coin and just split people into groups that maintain status quo and groups that always make the change if the results would be similar. Perhaps the urge people have to consider the change in the first place is a good indicator that it is a change they actually do want to commit to.
- notahacker 10y agoThe theory is that a cohort whose uncertainty over a decision is so close to 50/50 that a coin toss has a large statistical effect on whether they make the change or not[1] ought to be close to 50/50 on whether it has a desirable outcome in the event they change (allowing for a degree of risk aversion, and making the fairly standard economic assumptions that humans primarily optimise for an analogue of [future] satisfaction, and their errors in predicting their future satisfaction are random rather than systematically skewed towards underestimating or overestimating their future outcome) In practice, it's likely the choice of reported happiness over a six month followup period as the indicator of whether it worked is the major factor here; many negative aspects of a decision take much longer to take effect (get even more bored/frustrated with the new job, miss their ex despite the shortcomings in their relationship, realise that going back to school is costing a lot of money and not advancing them in any way) It's possible that the larger fraction of people who are happy six months after making the change they agonised over is entirely cancelled out if you ask them after 24. [1]the paper seems to suggest the coin had a statistically significant impact on the sample group's decision making even if their ex ante predictions of their probability of making the change were greater or less than 50%
- asifjamil 10y agoI wonder how this study can be used as evidence against determinism, ie., that humans really do possess free will. If the coin toss relevantly affects the person's decision, then it seems like random chance plays a key role in affecting our experience, right?
- pliny 10y agoTo the extent that a human is otherwise deterministic, a coin toss is too. You have plenty of noise in the inputs that determine your actions by way of brain, even without coins, but it's still the state of your brain + those inputs that determine the next state of your brain and therefore your actions.
- laughingman2 10y agoI have strong view that there is no such thing as free will.In close scrutiny any definition of free will falls apart. Wittgenstien's view that most philosophical problems of dissolve by understanding that the question involved is nonsensical or not defined properly. I think events 1. follow Cause -> Effect (Casual) 2. Or they Random (If we don't find evidence for a deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics) There is no 3rd option. Some people try to derive free will from randomness, which means they are essentially saying that their "free will" is equivalent to blind selection without any regard for causes, which contradicts the normal common sense(nonsense?) use of the word.
- BadCookie 10y agoI've made this argument to myself and I can't find fault with it, but it does really bother me. Can it be true that I have no control over my life? I find that hard to swallow at a gut level but can't explain how it might be otherwise.
- hodwikSE 10y agoIt's not that you have no "control", it's that there is no "you". You are the set of reactions to external stimuli that a certain system goes through.
- imrehg 10y agoKinda relevant piece art: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern_Are_Dead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern_A...
- dzuc 10y ago"Life is but a gamble! Let flipism chart your ramble!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipism
- megawatthours 10y agoRelevant and very entertaining read: The Dice Man
- jmartinpetersen 10y agoFor a novelist's take on making life changing decisions based on chance, Luke Rhinehart's "The Dice Man" comes recommended.
- stephancoral 10y ago"No Country For Old Men" also comes to mind
- nimchimpsky 10y agothe dice man is about one guy basing every life decision around coin tossing. Funny, bit dated, worth a read imo.
- dev360 10y agoI was going to mention that book. Pretty hilarious.
- binarymax 10y agoWhen stuck on a decision, sometimes I use this trick: I flip a coin, and while it's in the air, I pay close attention to how I want it to land. The subconscious tends to show itself when I am tuned in at that moment. Then I just use that feeling as the decision and ignore the coin. No regrets so far!
- lawnchair_larry 10y agoSopranos fan?
- hyfgfh 10y agoI usually wait until I'm very tired, I sit in a couch and then ask myself "should I do X?". If I can get up it is a yes...
- handojin 10y agoDuring a corporate training once, our tables were given the task of deciding which of a set of personas would receive a liver transplant based on some provided biographical data. The big reveal was undoubtedly to be how our biases informed our decision. I convinced the rest of the participants that choosing was in fact immoral and the only fair way to decide who lived and died was a lottery. The explanation that Alice the loose woman (really! old material I guess) was getting a new liver because she was lucky was not a well received.
- differentView 10y agoEven if not random, there's an argument that Alice would bring happiness to more people.
- js2 10y agoI recently listened to a Radio Lab episode (Playing God) about triage. Researches offered a group of citizens options for how to allocate care. The three methods they were allowed to choose from were: 1. Try to save the most lives or years of life (younger or healthier patients). 2. Pick people who will be most helpful given the medical situation (doctors, first responders who will help save others). 3. Randomly via a lottery. You can listen to folks struggle with the decision. Not much agreement: http://www.radiolab.org/story/playing-god/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/playing-god/ start listening around 35 minutes; I can't find a transcript.
- taneq 10y agoI don't understand how it's 'more moral' to abdicate responsibility to the toss of a coin than to choose as best you can based on what you know. That seems like saying the 'moral' answer to a trolley problem is to run away from the lever so that whatever happens is 'not your fault'.
- handojin 10y agoThe trolley problem is an interesting frame. For the sake of an unfamiliar reader, in the problem, we have a man standing by the buffers and an out of control trolley car. We're asked to choose between pulling a lever, which will divert the car to the buffers, thus killing the man but saving the people on board the car, or not pulling the lever, which results in the deaths of the trolley passengers but allows the man to live. Choice one: The out of control car is 'not your fault' but deliberately choosing to kill the man would be. You couldn't live with yourself knowing you'd been the cause of his death. You opt not to pull the lever. Choice two: That's crazy. None of this is your fault but it's your 'responsibility' to choose now. It's a simple utilitarian calculus - more lives = better. You pull the lever. My problem with all this is that either response (and people split on the response) is nothing more than a reflection of the unconscious biases of the respondent. This is revealed when we discover that by changing the framing slightly - e.g. asking the question in another language (a different part of the brain is engaged = more utilitarians) or making the killing of the innocent man a direct act (you push him off an overpass = more 'not my faults') - changes the balance of responses in statistically significant ways. The right answer, of course, is to toss a coin and do what it tells you.
- ucaetano 10y agoTwo roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. It is worth remembering that Frost's point is that it actually doesn't make any difference.
- Y_Y 10y agoI tend to think that interpretation has a better claim on the basis of its being grassy and wanting wear. That is to say I think there's a nice irony in the fact that I often hear people espouse that (clearly correct) opinion with the implication it is a better interpretation but has fewer subscribers.
- tutufan 10y ago??? Is that what those lines mean?
- cypherpunks01 10y agoSee this article [1] for an explanation of how the poem is supposedly taught & understood incorrectly. I tend to agree with the claim. The crux is in the 2 paragraphs starting with "Frost’s poem turns this expectation on its head", and the main claim is: "According to this reading, then, the speaker will be claiming “ages and ages hence” that his decision made “all the difference” only because this is the kind of claim we make when we want to comfort or blame ourselves by assuming that our current position is the product of our own choices (as opposed to what was chosen for us or allotted to us by chance)." [1] https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-most-misread-poem-in-america/ https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-most-misr...
- tutufan 10y ago??? Is that what those lines mean?
- phkahler 10y agoStress. They say people will adapt to a "new normal" within 3-6 months of a major life change. I would argue that a person who is on the fence about a major life decision is maintaining a state of stress by not making the decision. Once they make the decision and commit to it, they will achieve the "new normal" in time, but will be freed from the stress of indecision. The relief of that stress should make them happier all by itself.
- lemoncucumber 10y agoMakes me think of the novel White Teeth by Zadie Smith...
- Judgmentality 10y agoWhenever you're called on to make up your mind, and you're hampered by not having any, the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, is simply by spinning a penny. No — not so that chance shall decide the affair while you're passively standing there moping; but the moment the penny is up in the air, you suddenly know what you're hoping -Piet Hein Edit: HN is not friendly towards quoting poems.
- unixhero 10y agoThis is why I love academic economics.
- miceeatnicerice 10y agoAnyone ever come across Alain Badiou? And if so, what's his reputation like? All my small acquaintance with set theory etc has basically come second-hand from trying to read his book, and now I'm left with the probably unjustifiable impression that mathematical reasoning has to come to a crisis, and must admit arbitrariness as a kind of self-reflexive pivot. As for why - I couldn't tell you, but it made sense at the time.
- sedachv 10y agoI read Badiou's Number and Numbers. The first half was a good introduction to the history of attempts to axiomatize various kinds of numbers. The second half was a so-so introduction to surreal numbers. The book seems like some notes that Badiou wrote for himself while studying mathematics. Not really sure where any of the reviewers and blurb-givers got the idea that the book had anything to do with philosophy or capitalism or politics.
- js8 10y agoI look at it as follows: If you are really undecided about something, it really means that the two (or more) options are not discernible enough (given information you have), and so they are, from your perspective, very similar (they can lead to different outcomes but you do not know). So it kinda makes sense to decide it randomly.
- pramit 10y agoSurprised no one mentioned "The Dice Man' here.
- will_pseudonym 10y agoThe title reminds me of No Country For Old Men. https://youtu.be/OLCL6OYbSTw https://youtu.be/OLCL6OYbSTw
- laumars 10y agoWhen I was 18 I left most of my decisions to a coin toss for about a month. It lead to some seriously interesting antics like randomly ending up at squat parties miles from home on a Sunday. The adult part of me wish I kept a record of what happened as I could have published some of the stories. But the 18 year old me who was willing to decide his life by a toss of a coin was hardly going to be the same 18 year old who was responsible enough to keep a record of his activities. For what it's worth though, it was a pretty fun month.