There comes a point in pretty much everyone’s life when they come to some sort of realization as to what life actually is about and how they should live it. Everyone has their own strategy and they stick by it. But more than that, there are an array of strategies for people to choose from, with each person thinking their strategy is better. As the old adage goes, some people view the glass half full while others view it as half empty. We all have our labels that oftentimes we use to describe ourselves. You can think of the words you would use to label yourself. Think about that now. You are a certain kind of person that can be described by this label which itself can apply to a large number of people. Is this an argument for inevitable conformity? Of course not since we are a combination of many labels unique to us. We have a set of strategies that we use that can be different from anybody else’s set. These strategies shape our personalities and have a significant impact on a our lives.
The religious ones know their strategy from early on. They live life in accordance with what their God wants. They assign life a meaning or purpose and perform actions to coincide with it. An important part of this is that they have to maintain consistency. Any break from this strategy is disallowed. Those that do break from serving their creator were probably not very religious in the first place. So, the religious choose their strategy early on and they stick by it. Not only that, but they (members of the same set of beliefs) believe everyone else should stick by it as well. They believe they have found the correct strategy and everyone else should adopt it.
The question is if these things (consistency and belief in its correctness) are generally true for every strategy. We go back to the optimist/pessimist example. Are the actions of an optimist or pessimist consistent? Well, they would have to be since while their definitions are broad, they have a definite meaning reflected by their usage. We use them as labels all the time. Moreover, these labels are actually useful because they are supposed to tell us a lot about a person. Which one are you, an optimist or a pessimist? That is not rhetorical question. I am an optimist because I always look on the bright side of things. I believe that is the way everyone should live. Well that’s not true because there was that one time after I took the SAT when I thought that I did really poorly and my score would be horrible and I wouldn’t be able to get into any good colleges and all of my career goals would be erased before I did anything and yeah I was really pessimistic then. But generally, I am an optimist. So we do occasionally break consistency but such deviations are insignificant. We are still left with a question, however, because as insignificant as it was, why did I break consistency in the first place? After all, I believe that everyone should be an optimist. Optimism is the optimal strategy for everyone to take in life. So if I believe that, why do something to the contrary?
The answer should be obvious. While I believe optimism is the best approach and a much better strategy than pessimism, it is by no means a strict code that everyone needs to follow exactly. Like me, one should generally be an optimist. It is fine to be a pessimist once in a while and there are no doubt circumstances when even the most optimist of people will become a pessimist. But we are left with yet another question of why this is the case. Why can’t we treat all of our strategies as dogma like the religious? What are these so called “circumstances” and why do they exist? Why do they force our strategies to be general rather than absolute?
There are two reasons why
The first one is a little bit more practical and involves risk propensity. I use risk propensity because it is one of the best measures of determining someone’s actions. We have already discussed how risk propensities can vary drastically within the human population. Some people are way more likely to take risks than others. But here I want to discuss a deeper layer to the situation. Just because these people are more likely to take greater risk than others doesn’t mean that they will always take greater risks than others. Therefore, risk propensity does not vary drastically within the human population but within an individual as well. Therefore, labels like risk acceptant and risk averse have the same problem as labels like optimist and pessimist (and it doesn’t have to do with the fact that they are strongly correlated). What is the significance of this? Well risk propensity is traditionally a function dependent on probability and payoff. If we can apply a label of risk propensity to someone, he/she should have a constant risk propensity at all times (or at least it would be within some margin). This is clearly not the case. In reality, risk propensity is dependent on a near infinite amount of variables. It depends on what time you woke up that day, what you ate, what your best friend said to you, what music you listened to. Most of all, it depends heavily on prior experience. If I was burned by being too risk acceptant on a previous occasion, I am more likely to be more risk averse on the next occasion. And that is a fundamental point that I feel is not stressed enough. We all have our labels but that effect our actions but it does not and should not mean we have to obey these labels. Once again, we all have the ability to change.
That leads into the next reason which is our freedom of choice. This is not about free will, but something much simpler. Whether or not we have free will doesn’t change the fact that the choice exists. At any point there are multiple actions we can take, and even if we are pre-destined to choose one does not change the fact that there exist other choices that could have been made. Let’s explain it this way. Right now I’m sitting down at my computer typing this. I do this even though I have an infinite number of actions I can take. One of these infinite actions is doing jumping jacks while watching tv. So, I have a choice between continuing to type this or doing jumping jacks. Now, I’m obviously going to choose to continue typing and maybe that always was and will be my choice. In fact, I might be destined to continue typing and not do jumping jacks. The choice of doing jumping jacks will never be chosen. But since we do not know our destiny beforehand, it doesn’t change the fact that I can imagine doing it. I know that choice exists as a possibility. I am fully capable of acknowledging jumping jacks as just one of the possible actions I could take. Again, this is “freedom of choice” or rather, “freedom of acknowledging choice” is much more basic than free will but still it is still important. The reason is because unlike free will, we can limit this freedom. If you keep applying labels to yourself, you tend to believe you can only pursue actions that follow these labels. Sometimes I think I’m a really lazy person. At times, I admit to being lazy and not liking exercise. In other words, I submit myself to being lazy because that’s who I think I am. With this mindset, the option of doing jumping jacks is actively removed from my list of choices. It’s not that admitting to being lazy removes it as a possible option of what I would actually do, but that the choice of doing jumping jacks is completely removed from the actions I would even think of. And this might be a fundamental problem of all people. They assign themselves to their specific personalities which in turn prevents them from performing different actions.
But wait, perhaps I have that the other way around. Maybe personalities are set in stone to an extent. I had the choice of jumping jacks and I chose not to because that’s something I would actually never do. In other words, while writing this, the choice of doing jumping jacks was made clear. As in, I was fully aware of this choice and yet I still chose against it. So labels like lazy, optimist, and risk averse may be accurate descriptions of personalities that cannot be changed. But such an argument approaches the free will debate which I promised myself I would avoid. Instead, let’s look at it another way by simplifying it to the most basic concepts.
Once again, the problem here is finding a way to explain our strategies. If we try to address this with individual actions, we are left with no answers because many single choices contradict one another. If we look at our actions on average, we come up with labels to explain the average. Generally, or on average, I’m an optimist. That is my apparent strategy. As mentioned above, this seems like a sufficient explanation for our strategies. But my problem is that by labeling myself as an optimist, I avoid taking pessimistic actions. Pessimism is severely reduced in my thought process. Free will plays no part in it (well, besides the fact that I could be destined to ignore the pessimistic actions, but that’s kind of irrelevant. I want to explain strategies, not destiny.)
This leads us to the conclusion that the labels we give ourselves are more powerful than our actual minds, something which I find ridiculous. I think that humans tend to oversimplify the power of their minds. Labeling myself as a lazy optimist limits the power of my mind to make decisions for itself. Now, that sentence doesn’t really make sense since we’re using our minds to submit to these labels. How can our mind make decisions for itself if it chooses the decision to follow a label? Well, I have to admit I don’t really have an answer here, but I’ll try to explain my thought process. I believe people have a component in their mind that promotes a thought process to submit to a label. But this component is just one part of the mind, the whole of which is capable of promoting several types of thought processes. It’s just that once we develop a label, the label component becomes dominant and many of us choose to submit to it. That explanation is, I admit, a little stupid but it’s the best I can do and the justification is necessary for me to go forward.
Now, where I want to go with this is the idea that the human personality is much more malleable than we think. It is capable of fully analyzing any situation and coming up with different choices. What is my evidence for this? The answer is a combination of analyzing my own thought processes and observing the actions of others. I find it remarkable that alcohol or other drugs can completely alter any personality. One can point and say that this doesn’t count because drugs have an observable impact on the chemistry of the brain (mind). But everything has a chemical nature, which means that thoughts are not only constantly being affected by but also dependent upon “external forces.” So, while it’s true that alcohol alters brain chemistry, so does the breakfast you had that morning, what music you listened to, what your friend said to you, and everything else you perceive. In fact, it is necessary that you perceive these things in order to have thoughts. Just because alcohol has a drastic effect does not mean it is in a completely different category of effects on the mind. I can rationalize this with my own experience with alcohol. When I’m under the influence, my brain does not go into autopilot. I am fully conscious of the decisions I’m making (we’re talking moderate doses of alcohol here). My choices are completely different than they are when I’m sober, but my mind is still working in the same way. It perceives phenomena, analyzes them, and spits out a decision. This leads me to conclude that the brain (mind) is a very intricate, complex, and powerful object that we tend to oversimplify.
Finally, we have reached the actual conclusion for the reasoning behind strategies. However, it is just a slightly more detailed version of the conclusions two paragraphs above. Strategies do not come directly from our inherent personalities, our brains, our DNA, or from our minds. Instead, they come from the labels we give ourselves. Of course, these labels come from all of the above, so it’s not as profound as it may seem. Another important caveat is that this is only true for strategies, not behavior or personality. What’s the difference you ask? Well, behavior and personality are very closely related, but strategy is a little bit different. The strategies I’m referring to are the ones like I mentioned in the beginning of the article. They are how we think we should live our lives, not how we actually live our lives. A strategy is a general principle that you try to base your life around. Nearly every strategy has a famous or witty quote that goes with it, which are often used as personal mottos. We identify ourselves in relation to all of these mottos allowing us to pick the one that best suits us and our strategy is born. Nevertheless, the idea that strategies are derived from labels is useful. This is because of the fact that we all tend to believe that our personal strategies are the optimal ones.
We have obvious reasons for thinking this. These strategies have helped us before in the past, whereas a different strategy in the same situation would have led to an unfortunate outcome. One time I chose not to gamble all of my money in a casino and I’m glad I did because I would have lost it all. Because of that I promote risk aversion. The obvious problem here is that different circumstances contradict each other in terms of an optimal strategy. If I won big time at the casino I would have promoted risk acceptance. Everyone is well aware of this, but we still continue to debate optimal strategies and continue to use the one we think is the best. We rationalize that there may be a few cases here and there where the optimal strategy would be one different from our personal one, but generally, our personal strategy is the correct one. Sometimes we can use actual evidence to see empirical evidence of one type of strategy working much more often than another. This is called science and we’ve already talked enough about that. But obviously there are strategies where we do not see such a big difference and hence we cannot objectively say there is a superior strategy. A huge portion of debates come down to people arguing over which strategy is superior, each of whom believes their strategy to be the correct one.
It’s no surprise that I think this line of logic is flawed. In order to argue against it, we don’t even need to address the actual stats of how much better each strategy is on average in real life scenarios. All we need to do is understand the idea that strategies come from the labels we give ourselves. There is no actual (good) reason to believe so firmly in one strategy over another and everyone is partially correct in believing their strategy is the optimal one. Of course they are not fully correct since they contradict each other in separate but symmetric circumstances. So we are left with the conclusion that many strategies are not much more successful than their complete opposites. It pays to be risk averse exactly as much as it pays to be risk acceptant. What is the significance of this conclusion? Well, this does not mean that there are no optimal strategies. We use science to determine the answer to this question. We can also use science to find an optimal strategy in a situation where they both seem to succeed and fail an equal amount of time. The optimal strategy would be to use both of them.
And that is the main point. The optimal strategy is to embrace all strategies that seem to work. If sets of strategies are highly debated amongst the most intellectual of scholars, a logical conclusion is that they can all end up being useful in any given situation. As I said, we have powerful brains capable of an incredible amount of analysis. We should be using that to determine our strategy for each situation rather than using one that arose from convincing ourselves that it was the correct one. The latter will only limit our choices and prevent us from being completely analytical about any situation. We think one thing one day and a different thing another day. This is how the mind/brain actually works. We can arrive at the ultimate conclusion that any specific personal strategy is a little silly and nobody has a foolproof “secret to living life.” Everyone has succeeded and failed using the same and different strategies. So the best strategy is to embrace all strategies and live life without labeling yourself as anything. But that’s still one strategy and we should also be using the opposite strategy (as well as all other strategies) which would be to use one specific strategy that arises from a label and then something awesome happens.
