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Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us
From the host of EconTalk, a guide to decision-making when you can't crunch the numbers
Algorithms and apps analyze data and tell you how to beat the traffic, what books to buy, what music to listen to, and even who to date—often with great results. But what do you do when you face the big decisions of life—the "wild problems" of who to marry, whether to have children, where to move, how to forge a life well-lived—that can’t be solved by measurement or calculation?
In Wild Problems, beloved host of EconTalk Russ Roberts offers puzzled rationalists a way to address these wild problems. He suggests spending less time and energy on the path that promises the most happiness, and more time on figuring out who you actually want to be. He draws on the experience of great artists, writers, and scientists of the past who found creative ways to navigate life’s biggest questions. And he lays out strategies for reducing the fear and the loss of control that inevitably come when a wild problem requires a leap in the dark.
Ultimately, Roberts asks us to see ourselves and our lives less as a problem to be solved than a mystery to be experienced. There's no right decision waiting to be uncovered by an app or rational analysis. Reality is harder than that and, perhaps, a little more interesting.
Algorithms and apps analyze data and tell you how to beat the traffic, what books to buy, what music to listen to, and even who to date—often with great results. But what do you do when you face the big decisions of life—the "wild problems" of who to marry, whether to have children, where to move, how to forge a life well-lived—that can’t be solved by measurement or calculation?
In Wild Problems, beloved host of EconTalk Russ Roberts offers puzzled rationalists a way to address these wild problems. He suggests spending less time and energy on the path that promises the most happiness, and more time on figuring out who you actually want to be. He draws on the experience of great artists, writers, and scientists of the past who found creative ways to navigate life’s biggest questions. And he lays out strategies for reducing the fear and the loss of control that inevitably come when a wild problem requires a leap in the dark.
Ultimately, Roberts asks us to see ourselves and our lives less as a problem to be solved than a mystery to be experienced. There's no right decision waiting to be uncovered by an app or rational analysis. Reality is harder than that and, perhaps, a little more interesting.
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First published August 9, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 184 reviews
September 6, 2022
A necessary slap in the face for my logical mind
October 3, 2022
First half was incredible, some of the best stuff I’ve read this year (and it’s been a good year of reading already). Second half dragged a little, but great reframing of certain types of problems and decision making.
September 29, 2022
I was coming here to write a screed about how this book is written for a caricature of a rationalist (economist?) who earnestly believes the most vapid and textureless version of human decision making is literally true. About how that person doesn’t really exist and that his arguments fall flat for a reasonable human. But as I got here, I found the many reviews from people claiming that this work was useful for them and helped disabuse them of the notion that everything is quantifiable and that they wish they’d read it when younger.
So. I guess I still feel like there were only a few morsels of actually useful insights in this book, for me. But I guess I have to acknowledge that there are people who need to hear even the parts that seemed obvious to me.
Things I liked:
* His assertion that one of the reasons that considering pros and cons of a transformative choice is problematic is that you don’t know whether to consider them with the value system of the pre- or post-transformation version of yourself. I guess I would have thought this on an intuitive level but have never seen someone spell it out so clearly.
* The more actionable advice in the later chapters which was more prescriptive. While not earth-shattering, it’s in the vein of advice from a trusted friend or elder, and I can easily simulate many people in my head who would benefit from this advice and who hadn’t heard it from another source before.
Probably I would have been more receptive to this book if it hadn’t been extremely obvious what the author thought was the right answer to his main example questions. As far as he’s concerned, you should marry and you should have kids. The wealth of examples where it was the right decision are barely offset by a few bones thrown like “well, Kafka decided not to marry and he ended up being Kafka, so I guess that worked out.” Unsatisfying. And when he’s coming up with reasons, both “narrow utilitarian” ones and “flourishing”-relevant ones to weigh on the issue of kids, his biases really come out in his unexamined assumptions. He presents as a given that having kids makes your life experience richer — which is poorly defined, but by my rubric that probably trumps almost any other argument. “Oh well some people might like to cultivate closer friendships instead,” his suggested counterpoint, doesn’t quite cut it.
Lastly, he falls prey to the great scourge of nonfiction books with an angle — stretching to great lengths to pad his examples and see that angle everywhere in the world. We start with “deciding to marry is a wild problem” and by the end we’re at “running the New England Patriots is a wild problem” and “investing is a wild problem.”
So. I guess I still feel like there were only a few morsels of actually useful insights in this book, for me. But I guess I have to acknowledge that there are people who need to hear even the parts that seemed obvious to me.
Things I liked:
* His assertion that one of the reasons that considering pros and cons of a transformative choice is problematic is that you don’t know whether to consider them with the value system of the pre- or post-transformation version of yourself. I guess I would have thought this on an intuitive level but have never seen someone spell it out so clearly.
* The more actionable advice in the later chapters which was more prescriptive. While not earth-shattering, it’s in the vein of advice from a trusted friend or elder, and I can easily simulate many people in my head who would benefit from this advice and who hadn’t heard it from another source before.
Probably I would have been more receptive to this book if it hadn’t been extremely obvious what the author thought was the right answer to his main example questions. As far as he’s concerned, you should marry and you should have kids. The wealth of examples where it was the right decision are barely offset by a few bones thrown like “well, Kafka decided not to marry and he ended up being Kafka, so I guess that worked out.” Unsatisfying. And when he’s coming up with reasons, both “narrow utilitarian” ones and “flourishing”-relevant ones to weigh on the issue of kids, his biases really come out in his unexamined assumptions. He presents as a given that having kids makes your life experience richer — which is poorly defined, but by my rubric that probably trumps almost any other argument. “Oh well some people might like to cultivate closer friendships instead,” his suggested counterpoint, doesn’t quite cut it.
Lastly, he falls prey to the great scourge of nonfiction books with an angle — stretching to great lengths to pad his examples and see that angle everywhere in the world. We start with “deciding to marry is a wild problem” and by the end we’re at “running the New England Patriots is a wild problem” and “investing is a wild problem.”
August 23, 2022
Wild Problems : A Guide to the Decisions that Define Us (2022) by Russ Roberts ruminates on how to make the big decisions in life that we all face. Roberts is the host of the excellent Econtalk podcast and is an academic economist who was educated at The University of Chicago.
I’ve been listening to Econtalk for at least a decade and listened to almost every episode, long enough, so that with others who have read this I ‘hear’ the book being read in Russ’s voice and almost feel like the Econtalk start music should start each chapter. For regular Econtalk listeners it’s also worth noting that a number of the themes in the book will be familiar.
The big decisions in life, whether or not to marry, who to marry, to have children, what career to choose and so on are decisions made in great uncertainty and are decisions where we don’t really know how things will turn out until we have made these decisions.
Roberts describes how Darwin chose to marry or not marry, namely by writing a list of pros and cons but then largely ignoring the list after thinking things through and deciding. Roberts also includes how an academic with expertise on decision making actually made decisions about his own career that were made with great uncertainty.
Roberts discusses the ‘Vampire problem’, namely that you don’t really know what being a vampire would be like until you are one and relates that to having children. The book puts decisions that can be changed, such as choosing a career in a different category. Roberts also reflects on persistence vs giving things up and discusses the value of trying different things. He writes about how his PhD led him toward being a podcast host and reflects on how he got his PhD decades before podcasts appeared.
Wild Problems is a very good discussion of how we should think about the big decisions we all make in our lives. It’s not too long and Roberts writes well. It’s a book that would be very much worth reading for young adults and for anyone pondering how to spend their life.
I’ve been listening to Econtalk for at least a decade and listened to almost every episode, long enough, so that with others who have read this I ‘hear’ the book being read in Russ’s voice and almost feel like the Econtalk start music should start each chapter. For regular Econtalk listeners it’s also worth noting that a number of the themes in the book will be familiar.
The big decisions in life, whether or not to marry, who to marry, to have children, what career to choose and so on are decisions made in great uncertainty and are decisions where we don’t really know how things will turn out until we have made these decisions.
Roberts describes how Darwin chose to marry or not marry, namely by writing a list of pros and cons but then largely ignoring the list after thinking things through and deciding. Roberts also includes how an academic with expertise on decision making actually made decisions about his own career that were made with great uncertainty.
Roberts discusses the ‘Vampire problem’, namely that you don’t really know what being a vampire would be like until you are one and relates that to having children. The book puts decisions that can be changed, such as choosing a career in a different category. Roberts also reflects on persistence vs giving things up and discusses the value of trying different things. He writes about how his PhD led him toward being a podcast host and reflects on how he got his PhD decades before podcasts appeared.
Wild Problems is a very good discussion of how we should think about the big decisions we all make in our lives. It’s not too long and Roberts writes well. It’s a book that would be very much worth reading for young adults and for anyone pondering how to spend their life.
August 30, 2022
Read this in one sitting on a train. I knew most of the material already from the podcast but wanted to explore the book to get a bit more detail. Unfortunately, it didn't add much from what's already been said. I'd highly recommend the book for those that don't listen to EconTalk.
My favourite line is "What was once destiny is now a decision".
Looking at decisions with the outlook of what can result in flourishing is a lovely way to look at things. Far more engaging than just a pros/cons list and a risk assessment. I'm happy to say I did the coin-flip trick when choosing between living in Berlin or San Francisco (it was an online poll, but the exercise had the same result). When I started cheering for Berlin to win the poll, I knew I had made my choice.
My favourite line is "What was once destiny is now a decision".
Looking at decisions with the outlook of what can result in flourishing is a lovely way to look at things. Far more engaging than just a pros/cons list and a risk assessment. I'm happy to say I did the coin-flip trick when choosing between living in Berlin or San Francisco (it was an online poll, but the exercise had the same result). When I started cheering for Berlin to win the poll, I knew I had made my choice.
October 28, 2022
Related to:
- Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
- From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life
I enjoyed it but wasn't blown away. Will try How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness
--
MY NOTES
Wild problems are the big decisions all of us have to deal with as we go through life. A lot of wild problems can give us butterflies and make our hearts ache. Knowing which path is the best one can’t be answered until we arrive in that distant land known as the future, a land we know fully only when we arrive. That tends to unnerve us. Lacking nerve, we procrastinate.
65-68
For certain problems—I call them tame problems—the relentless application of science, engineering, and rational thought leads to steady progress.
71-72
But the big decisions we face in life, the wild problems—whether to marry, who to marry, whether to have children, what career path to follow, how much time to devote to friends and family, how to resolve daily ethical dilemmas—these big decisions can’t be made with data, or science, or the usual rational approaches.
72-74
Carved into the wall of the building that houses the economics department when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago is a quote from Lord Kelvin: “When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.” The modern world has taken Lord Kelvin to heart.
78-80
Tame Problems Goals are clear and objectively assessed. How to get to Chicago from New York Techniques for success can be tested and verified. Recipes work. Making an omelet Claims can be verified; results can be replicated. Science Landing on the moon Increasing the battery life of a cell phone The secretary problem (see chapter 7) Checkmate in three moves Wild Problems Goals are subjective and hard to measure. Whether to go to Chicago There is no manual, road map, recipe, or algorithm for success. Writing Hamlet Paths to success don’t replicate. Craft Parenting Choosing a career Deciding who to marry Life
88-102
If you’re not careful, you’re like the person under the streetlight searching for lost keys. Did you lose them here? asks a passerby who volunteers to help. No, says the seeker, but the light’s better here. Using a flashlight to make the area under the streetlight even brighter might seem like a rational response, but if the keys are far from the light and deep in the shadows, you’re only fooling yourself into thinking you’re getting closer to finding them. By focusing on what you know about and can imagine, you’re ignoring the full range of choices open to you.
108-111
Franklin told Priestley to take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle, creating two columns, one of pros and one of cons. The virtue of this technique, wrote Franklin, was that when we face a wild problem, our mind will sometimes focus on one set of effects and then later on another. By taking a few days to try to accumulate all the pluses and minuses, we can survey them all at the same time. So far, it’s not much different from what Darwin did, but Franklin takes it a step further. He encourages Priestley to look at the pros and cons and “endeavour to estimate their respective Weights.” When he sees a pro that is of roughly the same magnitude as a con, or three pros that add up to two cons, they cancel each other out, and he should cross them out. And by doing so Priestley can find out “where the Balance lies”
177-183
Daniel Kahneman suggested doing something similar when you’re trying to decide on the best job candidate when you’re hiring someone. If you’re not careful, you might be charmed by someone’s personality or by a misleading first impression. Or a gut reaction to some attribute or another could cause you to overvalue a candidate. Better to decide in advance the top six attributes that are important to the job, and assign each candidate a score from 1 to 5 on each attribute based on the interview, conversations with references, a writing sample, and whatever else you have. Then add up the scores and hire the person with the highest score.
187-192
The mathematical name for a number that describes physical concepts like area is scalar. Its origin is the Latin word for ladder, “scala”—something that helps you to climb. It’s the same Latin word for scale—either a noun, to name things that help you measure, or a verb, as in to scale the highest peaks, to rise.
219-221
Kahneman writes in Thinking, Fast and Slow, “Whenever we can replace human judgment by a formula, we should at least consider it.”
229-230
The bigger mystery isn’t what goes on behind closed doors when couples are free to be themselves, but rather what happens behind closed eyes when married men or women reflect on how marriage alters their sense of self and how that sense of self ripples through the rest of their experience of life.
316-318
Joining a married couple for a pleasant dinner may tell you something of how the couple gets along and whether they are happy. But you have little access to their inner life. This hidden inner world creates an asymmetry as we try to imagine the world we’ll be living in if we are to make the leap in the dark when facing a wild problem.
318-320
Elizabeth Stone said it painfully well: “Making the decision to have a child—it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
366-367
Hein says that when you face a dilemma and can’t decide what to do, flip a penny in the air. Not as the way to make the decision, but as the way to discover “what you’re hoping,” in Hein’s words. While the penny is spinning, you’ll sense what you want the outcome to be.
430-432
“Q.E.D.” that Darwin had written fascinated me—quod erat demonstrandum—that which was to be demonstrated, meaning proven.
459-460
The Greeks called the condition of a life well-lived eudaemonia. That word is sometimes translated as happiness or contentment. Those words fall short of capturing eudaemonia. “Flourishing” is a better translation and the word I will use here.
505-507
To flourish as a human being is to live life fully. That means more than simply accumulating pleasures and avoiding pain. Flourishing includes living and acting with integrity, virtue, purpose, meaning, dignity, and autonomy—aspects of life
510-512
To flourish as a human being is to live life fully. That means more than simply accumulating pleasures and avoiding pain. Flourishing includes living and acting with integrity, virtue, purpose, meaning, dignity, and autonomy—aspects of life that are not just difficult to quantify but that you might put front and center, regardless of the cost.
510-513
You don’t get married or have children because it’s fun or worth it. Having a child is about more than just the accumulated pleasure and pain that comes your way because there is a child in your life. You have a child because it makes your entire life richer even if it makes your bank account poorer.
513-515
John Stuart Mill said, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
563-564
Type 1 or Type 2 experience. The difference? A Type 1 experience is nice the whole time—nothing too stressful, mostly positive. You enjoy it while you’re in the middle of it and you enjoy it after. A day at the beach. A walk in the park. A Type 2 experience is hard. There are moments of pain that have to be endured—difficult days with a lot of altitude gained over a fairly short distance, streams to be crossed without your shoes where the water runs so cold your feet go numb while you’re crossing, heavy gear to be carried on the trek that hurts your back or feet. But a Type 2 experience is one that you never forget, one that makes you stronger, and when you overcome the obstacles in the way, you feel like you’ve accomplished something. A Type 2 experience can teach you something about yourself. A Type 2 experience has a chance to be more than pleasant. It can be exhilarating. You might not enjoy it (much) while you’re in the middle of it. But you enjoy it after it’s over and in a different way than a Type 1 experience.
628-635
There is a parable of the teacher who gives a student a challenge: Here is a stone. Here is a tower with one hundred stairs to the top. Your job is to bring the stone to the top of the tower. Cradling the heavy stone, the student manages to get it to the door of the tower. But the door is very narrow and the stone is too wide. No matter how the student turns the stone, it cannot fit through the door. The task you have given me is impossible, cries the student. The teacher takes a hammer and cracks the stone open so that the pieces all fit easily through the door. The stone is your heart, says the teacher. Only a broken heart can rise upward.
639-644
Why bother? When I pose this question to people, they usually answer, But what if everyone stayed home? The economist’s response is that whether they stay home or not is unaffected by whether you stay home or vote. So rationally, you should stay home. Instead of voting, use the time to mow your lawn or read to a child, make money consulting, or volunteer at a soup kitchen. Instead of voting, the rational choice is to find the best alternative use of your time.
750-754
The economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith thought that flourishing, and the contentment it produces, is trickier than it looks. In his little-known masterpiece The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he wrote that “man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.” By “loved,” he meant not just cared about but praised, appreciated, admired, and respected. We want to matter. And by “lovely,” Smith meant worthy of praise, appreciation, admiration, and respect. And writing in 1759, when he said “man,” he meant human beings. Smith’s idea of being loved and lovely is very close to what I am calling flourishing here.
803-808
If Penelope faces these same assumptions, there is an algorithm for her to follow if she wants to maximize her chance of marrying the best man among the 108 suitors. Interview 37 percent of the suitors—in this case, that amounts to forty interviews. Penelope won’t marry any of these forty. These interviews are a way to learn about the quality of what Ithaka has to offer in the way of husbands. Note the best one of the forty. Suppose the best of the first forty turns out to be Elatus. You don’t marry Elatus—after all, you’ve turned him down so he’s lost to you. But you use Elatus as a measuring stick—the benchmark—for the remaining sixty-eight. As soon as you reach someone better than Elatus, you marry him. There’s a chance that Elatus is the best candidate. Then none of the sixty-eight remaining candidates surpasses him. You’re then stuck with the 108th suitor. In that case, Penelope doesn’t get the best husband. Assuming that she meets suitors in random order, the expected quality of the last man to be interviewed would be the average quality of the group. But of course, in actuality, the 108th man could be quite horrific. Expected well-being ex ante and actual well-being ex post can be very different. What’s impressive is that this strategy has a surprisingly high chance of giving Penelope the best among the bunch. How high? If she follows this strategy, her odds of getting the best husband are 37 percent. Not bad. Both the proportion of the suitors you interview and the odds you’ll find the best match by following this rule have 37 percent in them. This is not a coincidence. In the general case, you take the number of suitors and divide that number by e, Euler’s number. Euler’s number can be represented in a number of ways, including the infinite series which adds up to roughly 2.71828 . . . where the ellipsis represents an infinite number of digits after the decimal point. If you interview n/e suitors (where n is the number of suitors—in Penelope’s case, 108) and pick the first one who exceeds your benchmark, your Elatus, the odds of getting the best candidate among the n suitors is 1/e, which comes to 37 percent. Why e should figure into this calculation is one of those elegant mysteries of mathematics. How beautiful is that?
849-867
This is the insight of social scientist Herbert Simon, who argued that optimization (finding the best outcome) is beyond our human limitations. What I’m calling “settling” here is closely related to what Simon called “satisficing,” a combination of satisfying and sufficing, doing the best we can with our limited knowledge.
928-930
This is the idea of Chesterton’s Fence, named for an insight of G. K. Chesterton’s. When you come across something that doesn’t make sense to you—a fence in the middle of nowhere with no apparent purpose—you might be tempted to tear it down. Before you do, you should try to find out why it’s there—it may have a cause or purpose that isn’t obvious.
991-994
There’s a saying of unknown origin: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
1051-1052
what poet Dana Gioia calls “a capacity for solitude.”
1053-1053
Adam Smith was aware that how we see ourselves doesn’t always correspond to how we really are. He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct.
1091-1094
It is certainly the case that people struggle to live up to their principles when keeping those principles is expensive. One of my favorite summaries of this idea is the expression “where you stand depends on where you sit.”
1275-1277
Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
1277-1278
In an often told story that is probably apocryphal, the British playwright George Bernard Shaw asks a beautiful woman at a dinner party if she would be willing to go home with him for the night in exchange for one million British pounds. She admits that she would think about it. OK, he responds, how about ten pounds? What do you take me for? she asks, insulted. We’ve already established that, he responds, we’re just talking price.
1280-1283
The rule is simple: Privilege your principles. Your decisions define who you are. Don’t make trade-offs when it comes to your essence. Live with integrity. Do the right thing and respect yourself. That at least should be the starting place.
1312-1314
The seventeenth-century French writer La Rochefoucauld wrote, “Virtues are swallowed up by self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.”
1399-1400
There is a much-repeated story on the internet, usually told about a Native American elder. Here is Eliot Rosen’s version from his book Experiencing the Soul. A Native American Elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: “Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.” When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, “The one I feed the most.”
1412-1416
We have a good dog and a bad one fighting each other all the time. Feed the good dog. Feed it often enough and it starts to win the fights with the bad dog.
1419-1420
Use this idea for living. Try to have more experiences than fewer. Try stuff. Stop doing the stuff that isn’t for you. Embrace the opportunities that make your heart sing. Spend less time trying to figure out in advance what those might be and more time taking chances as long as you can opt out at a low enough cost. Exploring can turn out much better than a planned itinerary.
1485-1487
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, “The only way to understand marriage is to get married. The only way to understand whether a certain career path is right for you is to actually try it for an extended period. Those who hover on the edge of a commitment, reluctant to make a decision until all the facts are in, will eventually find that life has passed them by. The only way to understand a way of life is to take the risk of living it.” All the facts are never in.
1529-1532
William Faulkner once described writing a book as getting “the character in your mind. Once he is in your mind, and he is right, and he’s true, then he does the work himself. All you need to do then is to trot along behind him and put down what he does and what he says.”
1536-1538
When science fiction author Orson Scott Card teaches creative writing, he has the students give one another feedback on their drafts. But instead of grading the students based on their final essays, he grades them on the quality of the feedback they gave their classmates. His insight was that becoming a great writer requires becoming a great editor—learning to revise is essential to writing well. That’s true of life, too. Don’t worry about the rough draft. As long as you’re able to kill your darlings and take advantage of optionality, you will thrive.
1617-1620
Life is like a book that you are writing and reading at the same time. You might have a plan for how it turns out. But for it to be a great book, it needs to be savored and chewed and digested along the way, like a book you read that changes your life. And you have to prepare for a plot twist and maybe two or three.
1624-1626
A 3x3 Rubik’s Cube has forty-three quintillion combinations. That’s a forty-three with eighteen zeros after it. Turning a Rubik’s Cube randomly is not very likely to lead to a solution. You need a plan, an algorithm—which is just a fancy word for a series of actions or procedures that logically produce a particular outcome.
- Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
- From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life
I enjoyed it but wasn't blown away. Will try How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness
--
MY NOTES
Wild problems are the big decisions all of us have to deal with as we go through life. A lot of wild problems can give us butterflies and make our hearts ache. Knowing which path is the best one can’t be answered until we arrive in that distant land known as the future, a land we know fully only when we arrive. That tends to unnerve us. Lacking nerve, we procrastinate.
65-68
For certain problems—I call them tame problems—the relentless application of science, engineering, and rational thought leads to steady progress.
71-72
But the big decisions we face in life, the wild problems—whether to marry, who to marry, whether to have children, what career path to follow, how much time to devote to friends and family, how to resolve daily ethical dilemmas—these big decisions can’t be made with data, or science, or the usual rational approaches.
72-74
Carved into the wall of the building that houses the economics department when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago is a quote from Lord Kelvin: “When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.” The modern world has taken Lord Kelvin to heart.
78-80
Tame Problems Goals are clear and objectively assessed. How to get to Chicago from New York Techniques for success can be tested and verified. Recipes work. Making an omelet Claims can be verified; results can be replicated. Science Landing on the moon Increasing the battery life of a cell phone The secretary problem (see chapter 7) Checkmate in three moves Wild Problems Goals are subjective and hard to measure. Whether to go to Chicago There is no manual, road map, recipe, or algorithm for success. Writing Hamlet Paths to success don’t replicate. Craft Parenting Choosing a career Deciding who to marry Life
88-102
If you’re not careful, you’re like the person under the streetlight searching for lost keys. Did you lose them here? asks a passerby who volunteers to help. No, says the seeker, but the light’s better here. Using a flashlight to make the area under the streetlight even brighter might seem like a rational response, but if the keys are far from the light and deep in the shadows, you’re only fooling yourself into thinking you’re getting closer to finding them. By focusing on what you know about and can imagine, you’re ignoring the full range of choices open to you.
108-111
Franklin told Priestley to take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle, creating two columns, one of pros and one of cons. The virtue of this technique, wrote Franklin, was that when we face a wild problem, our mind will sometimes focus on one set of effects and then later on another. By taking a few days to try to accumulate all the pluses and minuses, we can survey them all at the same time. So far, it’s not much different from what Darwin did, but Franklin takes it a step further. He encourages Priestley to look at the pros and cons and “endeavour to estimate their respective Weights.” When he sees a pro that is of roughly the same magnitude as a con, or three pros that add up to two cons, they cancel each other out, and he should cross them out. And by doing so Priestley can find out “where the Balance lies”
177-183
Daniel Kahneman suggested doing something similar when you’re trying to decide on the best job candidate when you’re hiring someone. If you’re not careful, you might be charmed by someone’s personality or by a misleading first impression. Or a gut reaction to some attribute or another could cause you to overvalue a candidate. Better to decide in advance the top six attributes that are important to the job, and assign each candidate a score from 1 to 5 on each attribute based on the interview, conversations with references, a writing sample, and whatever else you have. Then add up the scores and hire the person with the highest score.
187-192
The mathematical name for a number that describes physical concepts like area is scalar. Its origin is the Latin word for ladder, “scala”—something that helps you to climb. It’s the same Latin word for scale—either a noun, to name things that help you measure, or a verb, as in to scale the highest peaks, to rise.
219-221
Kahneman writes in Thinking, Fast and Slow, “Whenever we can replace human judgment by a formula, we should at least consider it.”
229-230
The bigger mystery isn’t what goes on behind closed doors when couples are free to be themselves, but rather what happens behind closed eyes when married men or women reflect on how marriage alters their sense of self and how that sense of self ripples through the rest of their experience of life.
316-318
Joining a married couple for a pleasant dinner may tell you something of how the couple gets along and whether they are happy. But you have little access to their inner life. This hidden inner world creates an asymmetry as we try to imagine the world we’ll be living in if we are to make the leap in the dark when facing a wild problem.
318-320
Elizabeth Stone said it painfully well: “Making the decision to have a child—it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
366-367
Hein says that when you face a dilemma and can’t decide what to do, flip a penny in the air. Not as the way to make the decision, but as the way to discover “what you’re hoping,” in Hein’s words. While the penny is spinning, you’ll sense what you want the outcome to be.
430-432
“Q.E.D.” that Darwin had written fascinated me—quod erat demonstrandum—that which was to be demonstrated, meaning proven.
459-460
The Greeks called the condition of a life well-lived eudaemonia. That word is sometimes translated as happiness or contentment. Those words fall short of capturing eudaemonia. “Flourishing” is a better translation and the word I will use here.
505-507
To flourish as a human being is to live life fully. That means more than simply accumulating pleasures and avoiding pain. Flourishing includes living and acting with integrity, virtue, purpose, meaning, dignity, and autonomy—aspects of life
510-512
To flourish as a human being is to live life fully. That means more than simply accumulating pleasures and avoiding pain. Flourishing includes living and acting with integrity, virtue, purpose, meaning, dignity, and autonomy—aspects of life that are not just difficult to quantify but that you might put front and center, regardless of the cost.
510-513
You don’t get married or have children because it’s fun or worth it. Having a child is about more than just the accumulated pleasure and pain that comes your way because there is a child in your life. You have a child because it makes your entire life richer even if it makes your bank account poorer.
513-515
John Stuart Mill said, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
563-564
Type 1 or Type 2 experience. The difference? A Type 1 experience is nice the whole time—nothing too stressful, mostly positive. You enjoy it while you’re in the middle of it and you enjoy it after. A day at the beach. A walk in the park. A Type 2 experience is hard. There are moments of pain that have to be endured—difficult days with a lot of altitude gained over a fairly short distance, streams to be crossed without your shoes where the water runs so cold your feet go numb while you’re crossing, heavy gear to be carried on the trek that hurts your back or feet. But a Type 2 experience is one that you never forget, one that makes you stronger, and when you overcome the obstacles in the way, you feel like you’ve accomplished something. A Type 2 experience can teach you something about yourself. A Type 2 experience has a chance to be more than pleasant. It can be exhilarating. You might not enjoy it (much) while you’re in the middle of it. But you enjoy it after it’s over and in a different way than a Type 1 experience.
628-635
There is a parable of the teacher who gives a student a challenge: Here is a stone. Here is a tower with one hundred stairs to the top. Your job is to bring the stone to the top of the tower. Cradling the heavy stone, the student manages to get it to the door of the tower. But the door is very narrow and the stone is too wide. No matter how the student turns the stone, it cannot fit through the door. The task you have given me is impossible, cries the student. The teacher takes a hammer and cracks the stone open so that the pieces all fit easily through the door. The stone is your heart, says the teacher. Only a broken heart can rise upward.
639-644
Why bother? When I pose this question to people, they usually answer, But what if everyone stayed home? The economist’s response is that whether they stay home or not is unaffected by whether you stay home or vote. So rationally, you should stay home. Instead of voting, use the time to mow your lawn or read to a child, make money consulting, or volunteer at a soup kitchen. Instead of voting, the rational choice is to find the best alternative use of your time.
750-754
The economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith thought that flourishing, and the contentment it produces, is trickier than it looks. In his little-known masterpiece The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he wrote that “man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.” By “loved,” he meant not just cared about but praised, appreciated, admired, and respected. We want to matter. And by “lovely,” Smith meant worthy of praise, appreciation, admiration, and respect. And writing in 1759, when he said “man,” he meant human beings. Smith’s idea of being loved and lovely is very close to what I am calling flourishing here.
803-808
If Penelope faces these same assumptions, there is an algorithm for her to follow if she wants to maximize her chance of marrying the best man among the 108 suitors. Interview 37 percent of the suitors—in this case, that amounts to forty interviews. Penelope won’t marry any of these forty. These interviews are a way to learn about the quality of what Ithaka has to offer in the way of husbands. Note the best one of the forty. Suppose the best of the first forty turns out to be Elatus. You don’t marry Elatus—after all, you’ve turned him down so he’s lost to you. But you use Elatus as a measuring stick—the benchmark—for the remaining sixty-eight. As soon as you reach someone better than Elatus, you marry him. There’s a chance that Elatus is the best candidate. Then none of the sixty-eight remaining candidates surpasses him. You’re then stuck with the 108th suitor. In that case, Penelope doesn’t get the best husband. Assuming that she meets suitors in random order, the expected quality of the last man to be interviewed would be the average quality of the group. But of course, in actuality, the 108th man could be quite horrific. Expected well-being ex ante and actual well-being ex post can be very different. What’s impressive is that this strategy has a surprisingly high chance of giving Penelope the best among the bunch. How high? If she follows this strategy, her odds of getting the best husband are 37 percent. Not bad. Both the proportion of the suitors you interview and the odds you’ll find the best match by following this rule have 37 percent in them. This is not a coincidence. In the general case, you take the number of suitors and divide that number by e, Euler’s number. Euler’s number can be represented in a number of ways, including the infinite series which adds up to roughly 2.71828 . . . where the ellipsis represents an infinite number of digits after the decimal point. If you interview n/e suitors (where n is the number of suitors—in Penelope’s case, 108) and pick the first one who exceeds your benchmark, your Elatus, the odds of getting the best candidate among the n suitors is 1/e, which comes to 37 percent. Why e should figure into this calculation is one of those elegant mysteries of mathematics. How beautiful is that?
849-867
This is the insight of social scientist Herbert Simon, who argued that optimization (finding the best outcome) is beyond our human limitations. What I’m calling “settling” here is closely related to what Simon called “satisficing,” a combination of satisfying and sufficing, doing the best we can with our limited knowledge.
928-930
This is the idea of Chesterton’s Fence, named for an insight of G. K. Chesterton’s. When you come across something that doesn’t make sense to you—a fence in the middle of nowhere with no apparent purpose—you might be tempted to tear it down. Before you do, you should try to find out why it’s there—it may have a cause or purpose that isn’t obvious.
991-994
There’s a saying of unknown origin: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
1051-1052
what poet Dana Gioia calls “a capacity for solitude.”
1053-1053
Adam Smith was aware that how we see ourselves doesn’t always correspond to how we really are. He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct.
1091-1094
It is certainly the case that people struggle to live up to their principles when keeping those principles is expensive. One of my favorite summaries of this idea is the expression “where you stand depends on where you sit.”
1275-1277
Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
1277-1278
In an often told story that is probably apocryphal, the British playwright George Bernard Shaw asks a beautiful woman at a dinner party if she would be willing to go home with him for the night in exchange for one million British pounds. She admits that she would think about it. OK, he responds, how about ten pounds? What do you take me for? she asks, insulted. We’ve already established that, he responds, we’re just talking price.
1280-1283
The rule is simple: Privilege your principles. Your decisions define who you are. Don’t make trade-offs when it comes to your essence. Live with integrity. Do the right thing and respect yourself. That at least should be the starting place.
1312-1314
The seventeenth-century French writer La Rochefoucauld wrote, “Virtues are swallowed up by self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.”
1399-1400
There is a much-repeated story on the internet, usually told about a Native American elder. Here is Eliot Rosen’s version from his book Experiencing the Soul. A Native American Elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: “Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.” When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, “The one I feed the most.”
1412-1416
We have a good dog and a bad one fighting each other all the time. Feed the good dog. Feed it often enough and it starts to win the fights with the bad dog.
1419-1420
Use this idea for living. Try to have more experiences than fewer. Try stuff. Stop doing the stuff that isn’t for you. Embrace the opportunities that make your heart sing. Spend less time trying to figure out in advance what those might be and more time taking chances as long as you can opt out at a low enough cost. Exploring can turn out much better than a planned itinerary.
1485-1487
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, “The only way to understand marriage is to get married. The only way to understand whether a certain career path is right for you is to actually try it for an extended period. Those who hover on the edge of a commitment, reluctant to make a decision until all the facts are in, will eventually find that life has passed them by. The only way to understand a way of life is to take the risk of living it.” All the facts are never in.
1529-1532
William Faulkner once described writing a book as getting “the character in your mind. Once he is in your mind, and he is right, and he’s true, then he does the work himself. All you need to do then is to trot along behind him and put down what he does and what he says.”
1536-1538
When science fiction author Orson Scott Card teaches creative writing, he has the students give one another feedback on their drafts. But instead of grading the students based on their final essays, he grades them on the quality of the feedback they gave their classmates. His insight was that becoming a great writer requires becoming a great editor—learning to revise is essential to writing well. That’s true of life, too. Don’t worry about the rough draft. As long as you’re able to kill your darlings and take advantage of optionality, you will thrive.
1617-1620
Life is like a book that you are writing and reading at the same time. You might have a plan for how it turns out. But for it to be a great book, it needs to be savored and chewed and digested along the way, like a book you read that changes your life. And you have to prepare for a plot twist and maybe two or three.
1624-1626
A 3x3 Rubik’s Cube has forty-three quintillion combinations. That’s a forty-three with eighteen zeros after it. Turning a Rubik’s Cube randomly is not very likely to lead to a solution. You need a plan, an algorithm—which is just a fancy word for a series of actions or procedures that logically produce a particular outcome.
August 14, 2022
What are wild problems? They are the big decisions in life we have to make that are full of uncertainty—who to marry, have children, where to live, what career choice, etc. They are in contrast to tame problems, which can be made more easily using traditional cost-benefit analysis. Wild problems cannot be solved with data and algorithms. Life is to be experienced not solved. Russ Roberts, host of my favorite podcast, EconTalk, has written an important book for all those who believe everything can be measured. Something both he and I have changed our minds about. The only problem is it took me too long. I wish I would have read this book in my twenties.
I love how he debunks the idea of scalars—the mathematical name for a number that describes physical concepts, and boils down complexity into a single number so you can make comparisons. Too often, these comparisons apples to oranges, and end up just giving you the illusion of knowledge, and precision. Russ supplies many ways of proving this, such as Charles Darwin’s list of pros and cons of getting married, to the choice of whether you should transform into a vampire. The mind cannot see its own advancement, and there is really no way of knowing—until you experience it—how being married, having children will change you.
The book is also an excellent take down of utilitarianism, and that there is more to life than happiness. You cannot do a cost-benefit analysis of a wild problem is another illusion.
Flourishing is a better aim, and I like the way Russ explains his concept of flourishing:
[From Adam Smith’s] The Theory of Moral Sentiments, “man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.” By “loved,” he meant not just cared about but praised, appreciated, admired, and respected. [By]“lovely,” Smith meant worthy of praise, appreciation, admiration, and respect. being loved and lovely is very close to what I am calling flourishing here.
How do you deal with wild problems? Semi-spoiler alert, but this is worth noting:
"Start by facing your ignorance. Wild problems are not the kinds of problems with answers. It’s glorious, something like going to Rome for the first and only time. Wouldn’t you rather be surprised than have it all mapped out for you? No guidebook, not even the best one, can tell you who to travel with."
I also found the word “lexicographic” useful: It means its outside the model. You don’t consider tradeoffs, just right vs. wrong (such as returning a wallet you found, and no one saw you, with $1,000 in cash). Ethics is about how we meet the challenge of doing the right thing when that will cost more than we want to pay, according to the Josephson Institute. Russ calls it “Privilege your principles.” Humans are the only animals that have desires about our desires. We should aspire of have a conscience.
I also loved the 4-part critique Russ wrote on utilitarianism. It is fantastic, and a bit different than the book. You can find the 4th part here, and it links to the first three:
https://russroberts.medium.com/apples...
My co-host, Ed Kless, and I have had the honor of interviewing Russ on our podcast, The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy. You can listen to that interview here:
https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/213
This is an excellent book, which I highly recommend to all my “what you measure you can manage” colleagues. There’s more to life than your ruler.
Notable
The epigraph: Tastes, smells, the sensations of heat and cold, beauty, pleasure, all the affections and appetites of the mind, wisdom, folly, and most kinds of probability, with many other things too tedious to enumerate, admit of degrees, but have not yet been reduced to measure, nor, as I apprehend, ever can be. . . . Until our affections and appetites shall themselves be reduced to quantity, and exact measures of their various degrees be assigned, in vain shall we essay to measure virtue and merit by them. This is only to ring changes upon words, and to make a show of mathematical reasoning, without advancing one step in real knowledge. —Thomas Reid, “An Essay on Quantity,” 1748
Writer Elizabeth Stone said it painfully well: “Making the decision to have a child—it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
I love how he debunks the idea of scalars—the mathematical name for a number that describes physical concepts, and boils down complexity into a single number so you can make comparisons. Too often, these comparisons apples to oranges, and end up just giving you the illusion of knowledge, and precision. Russ supplies many ways of proving this, such as Charles Darwin’s list of pros and cons of getting married, to the choice of whether you should transform into a vampire. The mind cannot see its own advancement, and there is really no way of knowing—until you experience it—how being married, having children will change you.
The book is also an excellent take down of utilitarianism, and that there is more to life than happiness. You cannot do a cost-benefit analysis of a wild problem is another illusion.
Flourishing is a better aim, and I like the way Russ explains his concept of flourishing:
[From Adam Smith’s] The Theory of Moral Sentiments, “man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.” By “loved,” he meant not just cared about but praised, appreciated, admired, and respected. [By]“lovely,” Smith meant worthy of praise, appreciation, admiration, and respect. being loved and lovely is very close to what I am calling flourishing here.
How do you deal with wild problems? Semi-spoiler alert, but this is worth noting:
"Start by facing your ignorance. Wild problems are not the kinds of problems with answers. It’s glorious, something like going to Rome for the first and only time. Wouldn’t you rather be surprised than have it all mapped out for you? No guidebook, not even the best one, can tell you who to travel with."
I also found the word “lexicographic” useful: It means its outside the model. You don’t consider tradeoffs, just right vs. wrong (such as returning a wallet you found, and no one saw you, with $1,000 in cash). Ethics is about how we meet the challenge of doing the right thing when that will cost more than we want to pay, according to the Josephson Institute. Russ calls it “Privilege your principles.” Humans are the only animals that have desires about our desires. We should aspire of have a conscience.
I also loved the 4-part critique Russ wrote on utilitarianism. It is fantastic, and a bit different than the book. You can find the 4th part here, and it links to the first three:
https://russroberts.medium.com/apples...
My co-host, Ed Kless, and I have had the honor of interviewing Russ on our podcast, The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy. You can listen to that interview here:
https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/213
This is an excellent book, which I highly recommend to all my “what you measure you can manage” colleagues. There’s more to life than your ruler.
Notable
The epigraph: Tastes, smells, the sensations of heat and cold, beauty, pleasure, all the affections and appetites of the mind, wisdom, folly, and most kinds of probability, with many other things too tedious to enumerate, admit of degrees, but have not yet been reduced to measure, nor, as I apprehend, ever can be. . . . Until our affections and appetites shall themselves be reduced to quantity, and exact measures of their various degrees be assigned, in vain shall we essay to measure virtue and merit by them. This is only to ring changes upon words, and to make a show of mathematical reasoning, without advancing one step in real knowledge. —Thomas Reid, “An Essay on Quantity,” 1748
Writer Elizabeth Stone said it painfully well: “Making the decision to have a child—it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
September 15, 2022
I will admit to a bias here. I like Russ Roberts. He just seems like such a kind, curious, intelligent person. And let's face it, there are not enough of these in the world. So could such positive feelings push my rating from a 3 star to a 4? Probably. But I also feel like there is a potential for a negative if you have listened to Econ Talk to any extent because so much of the ground covered in this book has been explored there.
So that is the tension I found interesting as I read. Those who listen to Russ and appreciate him as a thinker, podcaster, writer and person will like the book because of the author and all that comes with that. But on the flip side, there is very little new or particularly insightful in the book for fans either. So there is an irony that a reader with no exposure to Russ might actually get more out of the book than an avid fan.
The book basically does two things: it reminds us that human flourishing is what we are all after (or what most of us will say we are after). But in a world drive by science and data, life hacks and decision making systems, this can get lost. The book tries to bring character, virtue, growth, meaning, fulfillment, etc. back into the picture. Not what choice gives me the most pleasure or maximizes my utility, but what makes me more like the person I want to be, or makes the world a better place, or deepens my relationships, or gives my life more meaning. Wild Problems involve deeper issues and potential impact than a simple pro/con list can address.
The second, related, theme is that if life is more art than science, then we should live more like artists not engineers. Leave space for exploration, enjoy the journey not just the relentless pursuit of a particular destination, test things out and adjust, balance planning with attentive waiting.
All of this can come close to cliché but that doesn't mean it isn't true or even profound. And I think it is in some way counter-cultural these days. Most of us could use the reminder to think big picture in this way.
This is a quick and easy read. It would make a great gift for young people just embarking on the path to adulthood or anyone wrestling with decisions and change.
So that is the tension I found interesting as I read. Those who listen to Russ and appreciate him as a thinker, podcaster, writer and person will like the book because of the author and all that comes with that. But on the flip side, there is very little new or particularly insightful in the book for fans either. So there is an irony that a reader with no exposure to Russ might actually get more out of the book than an avid fan.
The book basically does two things: it reminds us that human flourishing is what we are all after (or what most of us will say we are after). But in a world drive by science and data, life hacks and decision making systems, this can get lost. The book tries to bring character, virtue, growth, meaning, fulfillment, etc. back into the picture. Not what choice gives me the most pleasure or maximizes my utility, but what makes me more like the person I want to be, or makes the world a better place, or deepens my relationships, or gives my life more meaning. Wild Problems involve deeper issues and potential impact than a simple pro/con list can address.
The second, related, theme is that if life is more art than science, then we should live more like artists not engineers. Leave space for exploration, enjoy the journey not just the relentless pursuit of a particular destination, test things out and adjust, balance planning with attentive waiting.
All of this can come close to cliché but that doesn't mean it isn't true or even profound. And I think it is in some way counter-cultural these days. Most of us could use the reminder to think big picture in this way.
This is a quick and easy read. It would make a great gift for young people just embarking on the path to adulthood or anyone wrestling with decisions and change.
October 14, 2022
What's the big idea and/or unique approach of this book?
The core idea is really good, important, even. Some problems, tackle known situations, where we know the rules, and the key to winning is to execute with excellence. But some problems are not tame and domesticated. These problems are full of unknowns, and there is no easy way to take back your decision. These problems include who to marry, whether to marry even, what to do with your career, etc. He calls these wild problems.
I was eager to hear his system for dealing with wild problems. I was sad to discover that his system is very, very basic, and didn’t offer a lot of practical wisdom or real insight.
How am I smarter, better, or wiser because of it?
I am better because the overall question is the right question and that’s a big part of thinking well: asking the right question. But I am not better in actually solving wild problems.
Was I entertained/did it keep my attention?
The storytelling was good, so I did actually keep reading probably beyond the point I should.
Would I recommend it to others?
No. Read the book summary on this one.
The core idea is really good, important, even. Some problems, tackle known situations, where we know the rules, and the key to winning is to execute with excellence. But some problems are not tame and domesticated. These problems are full of unknowns, and there is no easy way to take back your decision. These problems include who to marry, whether to marry even, what to do with your career, etc. He calls these wild problems.
I was eager to hear his system for dealing with wild problems. I was sad to discover that his system is very, very basic, and didn’t offer a lot of practical wisdom or real insight.
How am I smarter, better, or wiser because of it?
I am better because the overall question is the right question and that’s a big part of thinking well: asking the right question. But I am not better in actually solving wild problems.
Was I entertained/did it keep my attention?
The storytelling was good, so I did actually keep reading probably beyond the point I should.
Would I recommend it to others?
No. Read the book summary on this one.
October 4, 2022
Really good. Some very helpful advice about flourishing and thinking about problems in the right way. This would be a great gift for a college grad.
August 1, 2023
Wild Problems is a reflective criticism of the central dogma of the author's chosen discipline, economics. Broadly, it analyzes where the scientific method and utilitarian ethics can resolve human problems (tame problems) and where they fail (wild problems). The analysis is qualitative, but is still useful for readers as Roberts does outline heuristics for managing wild problems. Although I'm not sure that the work earned its book length treatment of the subject, I think it productively opens up avenue of thought that have been closed off in the minds of many young, intelligent people.
There are a number of communities, especially online, that are particularly enamored with frameworks that optimize expected utility in philanthropic or political settings. In non-economic speak, they essentially aim to extend the approaches of utilitarianism, rationalism, and quantitative analysis to answer ethical and political questions in ways that maximize the amount of good done. This tendency runs through groups like practical liberal technocrats to idealistic effective altruists to right-wing rationalists. Roberts is targeting folks like this, and asking them to exercise a bit more epistemic humility and to think more expansively about their and others' values and principles.
I would have liked to see Roberts assemble a more robust decision framework than just providing a few heuristics and general guidance. This desire probably seems to resist the message of the book, but I think it is necessitated by Roberts' rhetorical choices. He tries to make most of his claims in a value neutral way so as accommodate a broader audience. Vague hints of Roberts' natalism and traditionalism bleed through occasionally, but the work would have been improved by a full-throated defense of what a minimal conception of the Good should contain. Of course, Roberts could caveat this argument by acknowledging that conceptions of the Good vary substantially among people, but outlining his principles would helpfully orient his claims for readers (this can be inferred by those who are frequent EconTalk listeners though but I am thinking of readers who come to this book without that background).
My extended review on Holodoxa
Also, the work has some commentary on Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, but appears mum on the work of Smith's best friend David Hume. I would have enjoyed having more commentary on those works relative to understanding wild problems.
This is a quick read and provides some helpful rejoinders to EA paperclip machines so why not pick it up! In related work, I'd also recommend Erik Hoel's "Why I am not an effective altruist"
There are a number of communities, especially online, that are particularly enamored with frameworks that optimize expected utility in philanthropic or political settings. In non-economic speak, they essentially aim to extend the approaches of utilitarianism, rationalism, and quantitative analysis to answer ethical and political questions in ways that maximize the amount of good done. This tendency runs through groups like practical liberal technocrats to idealistic effective altruists to right-wing rationalists. Roberts is targeting folks like this, and asking them to exercise a bit more epistemic humility and to think more expansively about their and others' values and principles.
I would have liked to see Roberts assemble a more robust decision framework than just providing a few heuristics and general guidance. This desire probably seems to resist the message of the book, but I think it is necessitated by Roberts' rhetorical choices. He tries to make most of his claims in a value neutral way so as accommodate a broader audience. Vague hints of Roberts' natalism and traditionalism bleed through occasionally, but the work would have been improved by a full-throated defense of what a minimal conception of the Good should contain. Of course, Roberts could caveat this argument by acknowledging that conceptions of the Good vary substantially among people, but outlining his principles would helpfully orient his claims for readers (this can be inferred by those who are frequent EconTalk listeners though but I am thinking of readers who come to this book without that background).
My extended review on Holodoxa
Also, the work has some commentary on Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, but appears mum on the work of Smith's best friend David Hume. I would have enjoyed having more commentary on those works relative to understanding wild problems.
This is a quick read and provides some helpful rejoinders to EA paperclip machines so why not pick it up! In related work, I'd also recommend Erik Hoel's "Why I am not an effective altruist"
September 27, 2022
Lovely little book. Worth a reread from time to time.
August 9, 2022
Russ Roberts is a podcast legend, perhaps a bit of an underground legend, but a legend nonetheless. A lot of smart people listen to Russ and his erudite, incisive interviews with some of the most brilliant people in the world. Part of what sets Russ apart from other podcasts is, not only his brilliance and knowledge, but his infectious warmth and kindness as a host, his sobering, common sense analysis, and the his deep intellectual curiosity. Now, Russ brings all these wonderful qualities to a brilliant book bursting with advice, insight and his trademark warmth and erudition. I enjoy Russ, always, and as I read the book I could hear the words being spoken in his voice and it was a comfort. Well worth a read.
December 20, 2022
As someone who will be getting married incredibly soon, I may at bullseye of Professor Robert's targeted audience. I am not confident on what marriage will hold...but if I were to grab 15 minutes with anyone on the planet right now, it would be with this esteemed professor. On the promises and pitfalls of marriage naturally. Do I have to spell it out. The teacher and the material delivered.
A wonderful book about the limits of rational models, the beautiful of leaps of faith and the courage to explore a life beyond pleasure and comfort.
Strongly recommend listening to an October 2022 podcast with Russell Roberts and Sam Harris as a companion piece .
A wonderful book about the limits of rational models, the beautiful of leaps of faith and the courage to explore a life beyond pleasure and comfort.
Strongly recommend listening to an October 2022 podcast with Russell Roberts and Sam Harris as a companion piece .
September 27, 2022
This book calls itself a guide so I thought it was going to be like a map, showing me the best path through "wild problems" but really it is closer to a tour guide. You go by several different wild problems (most frequently having kids, getting married, and becoming a vampire) and you can sort of marvel at how complex they are.
The book is frustrating because it reads more like a "how not to" book than a how to book. A lot of ink is spilled over methods that are not effective at solving wild problems and only towards the very end does it give something resembling actionable advice
The book is frustrating because it reads more like a "how not to" book than a how to book. A lot of ink is spilled over methods that are not effective at solving wild problems and only towards the very end does it give something resembling actionable advice
December 1, 2022
Some interesting historical anecdotes, but ultimately it's a clumsy and dilletentish argument for virtue ethics. The main problem is just how philosophically messy it is. An example that comes to mind is that sometimes 'the way humans do things' is used as a normative justification for those things (e.g. "consequentialism is incorrect because look here's a way people do things which implies they have a non-consequentialist value system"). I just felt like very few of the arguments even tried to stand on firm footing.
March 12, 2025
Read Introspect instead
I like Russ and I appreciate seeing him make some classic drinking game Russ points but the book is short and doesn't dig all that deep and that makes the sense I've heard all of this before bite harder. It echoes Visa's Introspect but the points are faded by the tempering of wizened experience (no offense Russ). The ultimate issue is that Wild v Tame problems is a theoretical framework I find compelling for a lot of evolutionary problems in econ and thus a lot of economic problems in ecology and while it's obviously out of scope for Russ to tackle that here, I wish he didn't feel so embarrassed about the whole notion of theory work he is challenging and thus contributing to. Unclear how much it was cut to cater to mass audiences vs how much Russ got negatively polarized against it and wanted to just say "no more of that!" And write something in a poetic register. Fair enough but I'm not sure they have to be at odds. Maybe something I could explore myself then!
I like Russ and I appreciate seeing him make some classic drinking game Russ points but the book is short and doesn't dig all that deep and that makes the sense I've heard all of this before bite harder. It echoes Visa's Introspect but the points are faded by the tempering of wizened experience (no offense Russ). The ultimate issue is that Wild v Tame problems is a theoretical framework I find compelling for a lot of evolutionary problems in econ and thus a lot of economic problems in ecology and while it's obviously out of scope for Russ to tackle that here, I wish he didn't feel so embarrassed about the whole notion of theory work he is challenging and thus contributing to. Unclear how much it was cut to cater to mass audiences vs how much Russ got negatively polarized against it and wanted to just say "no more of that!" And write something in a poetic register. Fair enough but I'm not sure they have to be at odds. Maybe something I could explore myself then!
July 11, 2023
Great short read on decision making with some memorable thought experiments like “the vampire problem” - how do you decide to become a vampire, if once you do so, your values change?
You could view it as morally wrong as a normal human to act on vampire-urges, but once you are a vampire yourself, your ethics would change and it might even feel righteous to act on those urges.
Russ argues that there are a lot of decisions we make in life that have a similar flavour, where you can’t objectively compare alternatives: what you value shifts once you move one way or the other.
The latter half of the book is more of a meditation from him on various common wild problems like relationships, careers etc. Worth checking out.
You could view it as morally wrong as a normal human to act on vampire-urges, but once you are a vampire yourself, your ethics would change and it might even feel righteous to act on those urges.
Russ argues that there are a lot of decisions we make in life that have a similar flavour, where you can’t objectively compare alternatives: what you value shifts once you move one way or the other.
The latter half of the book is more of a meditation from him on various common wild problems like relationships, careers etc. Worth checking out.
April 13, 2023
Listened to this via Libby
This was a bit of a dry listen with historical intellectual/the authors personal examples. Great information but needs some translating to everyday life for me.
Some useful frameworks for decision making mentioned and I may use those to further explore topics around decision making
This was a bit of a dry listen with historical intellectual/the authors personal examples. Great information but needs some translating to everyday life for me.
Some useful frameworks for decision making mentioned and I may use those to further explore topics around decision making
June 1, 2025
Just nice to read. nothing groundbreaking but you know, doesn't have to be.
Read
November 24, 2022Wild Problems (2022) is an exploration of decision-making, particularly when it comes to the thornier issues of life that can have the deepest impact. Although the modern world offers algorithms and practical approaches to doing so, calculations are not always the best way to a life well lived.
Russ Roberts is the president of Shalem College in Jerusalem and the John and Jean De Nault Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He hosts the award-winning weekly podcast EconTalk, in which he distills economic concepts with guests such as Michael Lewis, Jill Lepore, Angela Duckworth, Christopher Hitchens, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He is the author of five books, including Gambling with Other People’s Money and How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, and cocreator of the Keynes-Hayek rap videos, which have been viewed more than 12 million times on YouTube. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago.
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When it comes to the toughest of decisions, rationality may need to take a back seat to discovery and principles.
What’s a wild problem?
Wild problems are the ones that no algorithm, app or clinical pro-vs-con list can solve. And they’re everywhere. When it comes to issues like marriage, children and careers – the things that truly define us – sometimes the best way to make a decision is by jumping in with an open mind and strong sense of self. You can’t simply cost these decisions out. After all, the happiness you might feel from the right choice is not something that can be added up like a transaction. It is usually something more ephemeral.
Scientists, philosophers and thinkers have parsed through the problem of decision making, but few have an approach that can be universally applied. We are unique individuals who all have our own paths to happiness. While logic and reasoning can help us decide between things as trivial as toothpaste brands or as clinical as types of surgery, old-fashioned soul-searching might be your best bet to solve a truly thorny Wild Problem. In this book, we’ll break down Russ Roberts’ thoughts on how to tussle with wild problems and not just solve them, but flourish while doing so.
---
Solving “wild problems” requires more than just tackling a pro-con list; it calls for a deeper and more experiential dive into the self.
Decisions, decisions. They’re the bane of our existence.
Pizza or sushi for dinner? Road trip or beach vacation for spring break? Regular braces or Invisalign? Surgery first and chemo later, or vice versa?
The above pairs of choices may seem vastly different from each other, but they have one thing in common. They are what author Russ Roberts defines as “tame problems.” Regardless of how serious and life-altering they are, tame problems have a rational pathway through which you can find a way to a decision. They are quandaries that can be resolved by science, engineering and logic.
What’s the best route to the airport? Check Google maps. Which restaurant to pick for your anniversary dinner? Compare Yelp reviews. Which surgeon should I go with for my operation? Consult others who have undergone this procedure and check out the surgeon’s stats. Whether the end goal is a Mars Rover or a pasta recipe, these decisions have clear conceivable goals.
But what about these trickier questions? Should I have a child? Should I marry? Should I be a jazz musician or computer scientist?
These are complicated problems with no right answer and no clear path to the end goal. Roberts calls these “wild problems.” Just a couple of decades ago, we may have turned to our parents, priests or maybe even our teachers to guide us to these answers, but many of us no longer place as much faith in these bastions of authority. So we’re left to untangle the knots ourselves.
This kind of decision-making is something that thinkers from Erasmus to Benjamin Franklin have wrestled with and written about. Most advocated using some form of a pro-con list when making a decision. It’s certainly a neat and doable solution. However, there’s a fatal flaw with this approach and that is: Some things are simply unknowable.
Roberts calls this the vampire problem.
Let’s say you are trying to decide whether or not to become a vampire. However, you can’t make a pro-con list because while you can imagine what it might be like to actually be one, you don’t really know. The only way to really know is by becoming a vampire. But once you’ve become a vampire, you cannot undo the decision and go back. By this point, it is no longer a choice.
Many of the biggest and most impactful decisions we have to make in life fall in this category. Whether to become a parent, whether to marry, whether to switch careers or move to another country, these goals or results are impossible to truly understand until you are smack dab in the middle of them. And once you’re in – you’ve changed.
That’s why wild problems are a whole different animal than the tamer ones we face in life. As we move on to the next chapter, we’ll learn more about why a pro-con list isn’t an ideal tool with which to address these quandaries.
---
Making decisions based on the goal of living a fulfilling life will lead to richer, happier experiences.
The ancient Greeks gave us democracy, the Western alphabet and the Olympics, to name just a few contributions.
They also introduced us to many interesting ways to think about things. Let’s take the word eudaemonia. Loosely translated, it means “flourishing,” and refers to a richer, more fulfilling way of living, one that cannot be directed by a pro-con list.
Eudaemonia is about more than taking in pleasure and avoiding pain, both of which can be fleeting. It is about taking the long view and truly occupying and relishing your life. It’s about living a life of beauty and integrity and passions, which can sometimes involve pain. Just think about a challenging mountain hike. You might sweat and strain your muscles making it to the top, but conquering the challenge makes it a valuable experience, if not in the moment, then after the fact.
Or think about children, for example – the having of them; the raising of them. Any parent knows that nothing can bring you to your knees in pain or make your heart leap in joy like your child. Pain and pleasure don’t quite cut it to describe the depths and heights of emotion that this decision can have on you, but on a piece of paper, the downsides can easily outweigh the upsides of this decision.
It’s not that people haven’t tried to use a pro-con list to make up their minds on family issues; Charles Darwin and Franz Kafka both wrote down long and detailed lists to try and decide whether they should marry. They tried to weigh the benefits of having a lifelong companion against the demands on their time that might keep them from a fulfilling career.
When making such decisions about your future spouse, Roberts suggests thinking about your future as a trip to Rome. You have a rough idea of what you want to do there. Maybe you’d like to visit the Vatican and the Colosseum, eat some great food and spend a few days driving around Cinque Terre. You ask a bunch of different people, read a lot of message boards, but realize that no one experiences a place the same way and therefore it’s impossible to plan everything based on other people’s input and experiences. You don’t know exactly what you’ll do, but you know you like art, architecture, and beautiful coastlines. So you search for a companion who has similar interests and values and will be a good companion for the ride, and then strap in and hope for the best.
You see, it’s not about making a perfectly rational decision with every piece of information you need. In fact, the flourishing aspect of life may lie in the parts of the decision that you do not fully understand and cannot properly anticipate.
Think of all such wild problems: Where should you work? Who do you choose to be your friends, and how much do you invest in these relationships? How do you vote? Which religion do you follow? The bigger question surrounding all these is, ‘Who am I?’
The answer is deeply personal to each individual. What works out great for one may not for another. Remember Kafka and Darwin and their pro-con lists for marriage? Each came to a different conclusion. Darwin worried about how marriage would stop him from writing, but chose to give it a shot. He ended up happily married with ten kids, a very happy life and obviously, a career that would keep him in history books for centuries. Kafka made the opposite decision: to stay single and focus on writing – and his name is also immortal. They made opposite choices, but each flourished in his own way.
---
When making decisions, be guided by your principles.
We have learned that the end goal of many of life’s major decisions or wild problems is to flourish. But how do we make the decisions that take us here?
It’s not that we are all hedonistic or nihilistic, craving 24-hour abandon or despairing of true meaning. Many of us are perfectly sensible, using tried and tested systems for decision making such as the one defined by economist Ariel Rubinstein. First you ask, ‘what is desirable?’ Then you ask, ‘what is feasible?’ And then you choose the most desirable options among your feasible options.
Sounds like the perfect way to do things… but what about impulse? Coincidence? Uncertainty? Bias? All these can slip into any sensible, rational model of decision-making and throw a spoke in the wheels. What we don’t often realize is that this method itself may not take us to the decision that will allow us to flourish.
Luckily, Roberts has a simple answer: Always make the decision that saves your sense of self.
Here’s a great story to illustrate it. When Roberts and his wife were on vacation, his wife lost a diamond earring, part of an anniversary present, in a hotel room. Although they thoroughly searched the room, they couldn’t find it. She was distraught, especially because they had already arranged to change rooms that day. However, they decided not to let this ruin their day, and stuck to their plans to go out for a hike.
When they came back, they found a note on the side table in their new hotel room. On top of the note, something glittered. There sat the earring.
Turns out, the woman who cleaned their old room found it. When Teodora (that was her name) found out that the previous occupants had switched rooms, she figured out their new room number and left the earring there for them. Why did Teodora go to all this trouble? There was no clear benefit. No reward was advertised, and the process would have taken significant time out of her day. In fact, not returning it and taking it could have benefited her materially. If she had made a pro-con list for keeping the earring or returning it, keeping it may well have won.
Rather than returning the earring based on the utilitarian motive to get a reward, Teodora returned the earring because she saw herself as an honest person who does the right thing. She put her principles first.
Here’s an exercise that can help you make decisions in the same way. Fill in the sentence: I am the kind of person who –.
It can be anything. Pays my taxes. Votes. Takes a dish over when a friend is ill. Donates. Doesn’t say anything behind someone’s back you won’t say to their face. Whatever you decide it is, make it inviolable. Whatever decision you need to take, it should conform with this.
Identifying and sticking to your principles and then doing the things that give your life meaning and purpose is the shortest way to making a decision about a wild problem.
---
Don’t allow decision-making to paralyze you; you always have the option to change course.
The guru for this next set of rules is not a writer, philosopher or economist. Rather, it’s a football coach. Not just any old coach, but perhaps the most storied one alive: Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots.
The NFL Draft is how teams choose from the incoming crop of college players. They do this by reviewing hours of tapes, poring over statistics and interviewing players. Although Belichick has the option to pick some of the top early-round picks – and he does – people have noticed that he’s always willing to trade his early picks for multiple picks later. In other words, he’s okay with losing a top prospect for a bunch of potential ones.
What’s the lesson about decision-making we can learn from observing him? Belichick understands that when he makes that first choice, he does not have all the answers. He’s okay with this uncertainty because he knows that (a) it might work out and (b) if it doesn’t, he can change it up later.
What Belichick illustrates is the importance of optionality – this lets you have the freedom to do something without obliging you to do so. Think of a company like Zappos which lets you order shoes online and return them if you don’t like them with free shipping both ways.
How can you translate this mentality in a way that helps you solve Wild Problems? Try doing more things in the hope that some of them will work out. This is really the only way to truly understand a situation. Think of the perfect university, for example. You can ask a bunch of alumni and read posts from students about what it’s like attending that university, but the truth is that you will probably have your own unique experience when you are there. The only way to know is to actually try things for yourself.
We’ve all experienced committing to something and then realizing that it didn’t work out. It can be anything from an entrée at a restaurant to a move across the country or even a relationship. Admit that things go wrong, and when they do, forgive yourself. Learn to become comfortable with moving on from mistakes and undoing them by changing your mind, returning the thing, switching the career – even moving university or divorcing the partner if that’s what it takes.
The thing is, you won’t know until you’ve done it. Instead of worrying about making the right decision, think about finding a bunch of options to choose from, and be prepared both for disappointment as well as to change track.
Maybe celebrated author William Faulkner understood this best. Writing about his process, he said that “once the character is in your mind and he is right, and he’s true, then he does the work himself. All you need to do then is to trot along behind him and put down what he does and what he says.”
This does not mean Faulkner had no control over his process. He revised exhaustively until he came up with a final draft. But artists understand that they have to work with what they don’t know in order to come to their final goal. When we relinquish trying to have control over everything, we allow ourselves the grace to discover true meaning.
It’s like a conversation. Instead of going into life and its many messy problems with a transactional approach that seeks to gain the most points, approach life with genuine curiosity about what you want to learn. Think of yourself as the piece of art: a script or a statue unfolding in its truth, living toward its best expression.
---
Making a decision should not be a utilitarian mechanism by which you derive the most benefit. Rather, the process should put at its heart your sense of self and your principles. Using these as a guide, and giving yourself the grace to make mistakes and start again, will lead you to a life truly well lived.
Russ Roberts is the president of Shalem College in Jerusalem and the John and Jean De Nault Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He hosts the award-winning weekly podcast EconTalk, in which he distills economic concepts with guests such as Michael Lewis, Jill Lepore, Angela Duckworth, Christopher Hitchens, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He is the author of five books, including Gambling with Other People’s Money and How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, and cocreator of the Keynes-Hayek rap videos, which have been viewed more than 12 million times on YouTube. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago.
---
When it comes to the toughest of decisions, rationality may need to take a back seat to discovery and principles.
What’s a wild problem?
Wild problems are the ones that no algorithm, app or clinical pro-vs-con list can solve. And they’re everywhere. When it comes to issues like marriage, children and careers – the things that truly define us – sometimes the best way to make a decision is by jumping in with an open mind and strong sense of self. You can’t simply cost these decisions out. After all, the happiness you might feel from the right choice is not something that can be added up like a transaction. It is usually something more ephemeral.
Scientists, philosophers and thinkers have parsed through the problem of decision making, but few have an approach that can be universally applied. We are unique individuals who all have our own paths to happiness. While logic and reasoning can help us decide between things as trivial as toothpaste brands or as clinical as types of surgery, old-fashioned soul-searching might be your best bet to solve a truly thorny Wild Problem. In this book, we’ll break down Russ Roberts’ thoughts on how to tussle with wild problems and not just solve them, but flourish while doing so.
---
Solving “wild problems” requires more than just tackling a pro-con list; it calls for a deeper and more experiential dive into the self.
Decisions, decisions. They’re the bane of our existence.
Pizza or sushi for dinner? Road trip or beach vacation for spring break? Regular braces or Invisalign? Surgery first and chemo later, or vice versa?
The above pairs of choices may seem vastly different from each other, but they have one thing in common. They are what author Russ Roberts defines as “tame problems.” Regardless of how serious and life-altering they are, tame problems have a rational pathway through which you can find a way to a decision. They are quandaries that can be resolved by science, engineering and logic.
What’s the best route to the airport? Check Google maps. Which restaurant to pick for your anniversary dinner? Compare Yelp reviews. Which surgeon should I go with for my operation? Consult others who have undergone this procedure and check out the surgeon’s stats. Whether the end goal is a Mars Rover or a pasta recipe, these decisions have clear conceivable goals.
But what about these trickier questions? Should I have a child? Should I marry? Should I be a jazz musician or computer scientist?
These are complicated problems with no right answer and no clear path to the end goal. Roberts calls these “wild problems.” Just a couple of decades ago, we may have turned to our parents, priests or maybe even our teachers to guide us to these answers, but many of us no longer place as much faith in these bastions of authority. So we’re left to untangle the knots ourselves.
This kind of decision-making is something that thinkers from Erasmus to Benjamin Franklin have wrestled with and written about. Most advocated using some form of a pro-con list when making a decision. It’s certainly a neat and doable solution. However, there’s a fatal flaw with this approach and that is: Some things are simply unknowable.
Roberts calls this the vampire problem.
Let’s say you are trying to decide whether or not to become a vampire. However, you can’t make a pro-con list because while you can imagine what it might be like to actually be one, you don’t really know. The only way to really know is by becoming a vampire. But once you’ve become a vampire, you cannot undo the decision and go back. By this point, it is no longer a choice.
Many of the biggest and most impactful decisions we have to make in life fall in this category. Whether to become a parent, whether to marry, whether to switch careers or move to another country, these goals or results are impossible to truly understand until you are smack dab in the middle of them. And once you’re in – you’ve changed.
That’s why wild problems are a whole different animal than the tamer ones we face in life. As we move on to the next chapter, we’ll learn more about why a pro-con list isn’t an ideal tool with which to address these quandaries.
---
Making decisions based on the goal of living a fulfilling life will lead to richer, happier experiences.
The ancient Greeks gave us democracy, the Western alphabet and the Olympics, to name just a few contributions.
They also introduced us to many interesting ways to think about things. Let’s take the word eudaemonia. Loosely translated, it means “flourishing,” and refers to a richer, more fulfilling way of living, one that cannot be directed by a pro-con list.
Eudaemonia is about more than taking in pleasure and avoiding pain, both of which can be fleeting. It is about taking the long view and truly occupying and relishing your life. It’s about living a life of beauty and integrity and passions, which can sometimes involve pain. Just think about a challenging mountain hike. You might sweat and strain your muscles making it to the top, but conquering the challenge makes it a valuable experience, if not in the moment, then after the fact.
Or think about children, for example – the having of them; the raising of them. Any parent knows that nothing can bring you to your knees in pain or make your heart leap in joy like your child. Pain and pleasure don’t quite cut it to describe the depths and heights of emotion that this decision can have on you, but on a piece of paper, the downsides can easily outweigh the upsides of this decision.
It’s not that people haven’t tried to use a pro-con list to make up their minds on family issues; Charles Darwin and Franz Kafka both wrote down long and detailed lists to try and decide whether they should marry. They tried to weigh the benefits of having a lifelong companion against the demands on their time that might keep them from a fulfilling career.
When making such decisions about your future spouse, Roberts suggests thinking about your future as a trip to Rome. You have a rough idea of what you want to do there. Maybe you’d like to visit the Vatican and the Colosseum, eat some great food and spend a few days driving around Cinque Terre. You ask a bunch of different people, read a lot of message boards, but realize that no one experiences a place the same way and therefore it’s impossible to plan everything based on other people’s input and experiences. You don’t know exactly what you’ll do, but you know you like art, architecture, and beautiful coastlines. So you search for a companion who has similar interests and values and will be a good companion for the ride, and then strap in and hope for the best.
You see, it’s not about making a perfectly rational decision with every piece of information you need. In fact, the flourishing aspect of life may lie in the parts of the decision that you do not fully understand and cannot properly anticipate.
Think of all such wild problems: Where should you work? Who do you choose to be your friends, and how much do you invest in these relationships? How do you vote? Which religion do you follow? The bigger question surrounding all these is, ‘Who am I?’
The answer is deeply personal to each individual. What works out great for one may not for another. Remember Kafka and Darwin and their pro-con lists for marriage? Each came to a different conclusion. Darwin worried about how marriage would stop him from writing, but chose to give it a shot. He ended up happily married with ten kids, a very happy life and obviously, a career that would keep him in history books for centuries. Kafka made the opposite decision: to stay single and focus on writing – and his name is also immortal. They made opposite choices, but each flourished in his own way.
---
When making decisions, be guided by your principles.
We have learned that the end goal of many of life’s major decisions or wild problems is to flourish. But how do we make the decisions that take us here?
It’s not that we are all hedonistic or nihilistic, craving 24-hour abandon or despairing of true meaning. Many of us are perfectly sensible, using tried and tested systems for decision making such as the one defined by economist Ariel Rubinstein. First you ask, ‘what is desirable?’ Then you ask, ‘what is feasible?’ And then you choose the most desirable options among your feasible options.
Sounds like the perfect way to do things… but what about impulse? Coincidence? Uncertainty? Bias? All these can slip into any sensible, rational model of decision-making and throw a spoke in the wheels. What we don’t often realize is that this method itself may not take us to the decision that will allow us to flourish.
Luckily, Roberts has a simple answer: Always make the decision that saves your sense of self.
Here’s a great story to illustrate it. When Roberts and his wife were on vacation, his wife lost a diamond earring, part of an anniversary present, in a hotel room. Although they thoroughly searched the room, they couldn’t find it. She was distraught, especially because they had already arranged to change rooms that day. However, they decided not to let this ruin their day, and stuck to their plans to go out for a hike.
When they came back, they found a note on the side table in their new hotel room. On top of the note, something glittered. There sat the earring.
Turns out, the woman who cleaned their old room found it. When Teodora (that was her name) found out that the previous occupants had switched rooms, she figured out their new room number and left the earring there for them. Why did Teodora go to all this trouble? There was no clear benefit. No reward was advertised, and the process would have taken significant time out of her day. In fact, not returning it and taking it could have benefited her materially. If she had made a pro-con list for keeping the earring or returning it, keeping it may well have won.
Rather than returning the earring based on the utilitarian motive to get a reward, Teodora returned the earring because she saw herself as an honest person who does the right thing. She put her principles first.
Here’s an exercise that can help you make decisions in the same way. Fill in the sentence: I am the kind of person who –.
It can be anything. Pays my taxes. Votes. Takes a dish over when a friend is ill. Donates. Doesn’t say anything behind someone’s back you won’t say to their face. Whatever you decide it is, make it inviolable. Whatever decision you need to take, it should conform with this.
Identifying and sticking to your principles and then doing the things that give your life meaning and purpose is the shortest way to making a decision about a wild problem.
---
Don’t allow decision-making to paralyze you; you always have the option to change course.
The guru for this next set of rules is not a writer, philosopher or economist. Rather, it’s a football coach. Not just any old coach, but perhaps the most storied one alive: Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots.
The NFL Draft is how teams choose from the incoming crop of college players. They do this by reviewing hours of tapes, poring over statistics and interviewing players. Although Belichick has the option to pick some of the top early-round picks – and he does – people have noticed that he’s always willing to trade his early picks for multiple picks later. In other words, he’s okay with losing a top prospect for a bunch of potential ones.
What’s the lesson about decision-making we can learn from observing him? Belichick understands that when he makes that first choice, he does not have all the answers. He’s okay with this uncertainty because he knows that (a) it might work out and (b) if it doesn’t, he can change it up later.
What Belichick illustrates is the importance of optionality – this lets you have the freedom to do something without obliging you to do so. Think of a company like Zappos which lets you order shoes online and return them if you don’t like them with free shipping both ways.
How can you translate this mentality in a way that helps you solve Wild Problems? Try doing more things in the hope that some of them will work out. This is really the only way to truly understand a situation. Think of the perfect university, for example. You can ask a bunch of alumni and read posts from students about what it’s like attending that university, but the truth is that you will probably have your own unique experience when you are there. The only way to know is to actually try things for yourself.
We’ve all experienced committing to something and then realizing that it didn’t work out. It can be anything from an entrée at a restaurant to a move across the country or even a relationship. Admit that things go wrong, and when they do, forgive yourself. Learn to become comfortable with moving on from mistakes and undoing them by changing your mind, returning the thing, switching the career – even moving university or divorcing the partner if that’s what it takes.
The thing is, you won’t know until you’ve done it. Instead of worrying about making the right decision, think about finding a bunch of options to choose from, and be prepared both for disappointment as well as to change track.
Maybe celebrated author William Faulkner understood this best. Writing about his process, he said that “once the character is in your mind and he is right, and he’s true, then he does the work himself. All you need to do then is to trot along behind him and put down what he does and what he says.”
This does not mean Faulkner had no control over his process. He revised exhaustively until he came up with a final draft. But artists understand that they have to work with what they don’t know in order to come to their final goal. When we relinquish trying to have control over everything, we allow ourselves the grace to discover true meaning.
It’s like a conversation. Instead of going into life and its many messy problems with a transactional approach that seeks to gain the most points, approach life with genuine curiosity about what you want to learn. Think of yourself as the piece of art: a script or a statue unfolding in its truth, living toward its best expression.
---
Making a decision should not be a utilitarian mechanism by which you derive the most benefit. Rather, the process should put at its heart your sense of self and your principles. Using these as a guide, and giving yourself the grace to make mistakes and start again, will lead you to a life truly well lived.
March 1, 2023
I give this 3.5 stars. As a longtime listener to the podcast EconTalk, I was excited to get my hands on the book that the host, Russ Roberts, had recently written and had mentioned a few times on his podcasts. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but while it is on decision making, it has a much different feel than other books on the topic. It’s much more philosophical and lighter on referencing the same 15 psychology studies that most other books mention. He really likes the examples of deciding to get married and deciding to have kids, and uses them a lot! For listeners to the podcast, there isn’t a ton of new material covered, but in some ways it’s a succinct summary of some perspectives and some suggestions on how to deal with what he calls “wild problems.”
A good first step is to define what exactly a “wild problem” is. “Whether to have a child is what I call a wild problem – a fork in the road of life where knowing which path is the right one isn’t obvious, where the pleasure and pain from choosing one path over another are ultimately hidden from us, where the path we choose defines who we are and who we might become. Wild problems are the big decisions all of us have to deal with as we go through life…For certain problems – I call them tame problems – the relentless applications of science, engineering, and rational thought leads to steady progress. But the big decisions we face in life, the wild problems – whether to marry, who to marry, whether to have children, what career path to follow, how much time to devote to friends and family, how to resolve daily ethical dilemmas – these big decisions can’t be made with data, or science or the usual rational approaches.” (3) With some of these questions, it’s impossible to ever gather enough information before you make them, and after you make them, there is not a great way to even tell if you picked the right, or best, one.
One of the first frameworks he introduces is what Benjamin Franklin calls “moral algebra” where you make a list of pros and cons and then remove pairs from both lists that are similar in magnitude and see what you have left. This can have helpful elements, but it’s often hard to compare the benefits of one condition versus the costs of another. One area he uses to illustrate this point is the question of whether to marry. He gives the example of a few famous people who wrestled with the idea of getting married, including Charles Darwin. Darwin made thorough lists of pros and cons (in his journals, which he saved), but unsatisfied with the outcome of the lengths of the lists, to the “pro” column he added “Marry – Marry – Marry Q.E.D” (46) to make things turn out the way he wanted. He wasn’t sure if being married, with all its responsibilities and demands for time, would keep him from being a good scientist. Maybe it kept him from doing certain things he might otherwise have achieved, but he still went on to have a memorable career. He contrasted him with Franz Kafka, who was so intent on preventing distractions to keep him from being a great writer that he never married, preserving his focus on writing and writing alone. (75)
While the book is about making decisions, a lot of it is also about a few themes that Robert enjoys talking about – human flourishing and how you should lean in to experiences that change you. One idea that has grown on me over time is that we do things, like having children, not because it will make us happy, but because it is part of the human experience. “If Darwin knew me well enough to ask me about what it’s like to be a parent, I could talk until the fire in the hearth went cold and the sky began to lighten and the streetlamps went out and the sun rose, burning off the London fog . I would tell him having children connects you to your parents and lets you come closer to them in ways you never could have imagined. That it’s part of the human enterprise that’s unlike almost any other part of the ride. That it’s a bit of immortality. That it changes you and the way you see the world…Not everyone can handle it. Not everyone wants to handle it. Not everyone is given the opportunity to handle it. But if you do become a parent, no matter how the drama turns out, the experience fills your heart like nothing else. I’m a big fan, but that’s me. It may not be you. Does that help? Probably not. That’s the way it is with wild problems.” (38) The question isn’t necessarily “will it make me happy,” but whether I want to grow and gain a perspective that that set of experiences will provide. Additionally, he talks about the idea of flourishing. “What else might there possibly be? What made these seemingly irrational scientists go with their intuition, their instincts, something beyond what reason would suggest as the right decision? Human beings care about more than the day-to-day pleasures and pains of daily existence. We want purpose. We want meaning. We want to belong to something larger than ourselves. We aspire. We want to matter. These overarching sensations – the texture of our lives above and beyond what we call happiness or everyday pleasure – define who we are and how we see ourselves. These longing are at the heart of a life well lived. A life well lived is something more than a pleasant life. The Greeks called the condition of a life well lived eudaemonia…’Flourishing’ is a better translation [than happiness or contentment] and the world I will use here…We human beings flourish by taking our circumstances and making the most of them in fulfilling our human potential. To flourish as a human being is to live life fully…Flourishing includes living and acting with integrity, virtue, purpose, meaning, dignity, and autonomy – aspects of life that are not just difficult to quantify but that you might put front and center, regardless of the cost. You don’t get married or have children because it’s fun or worth it. Having a child is about more than just the accumulated pleasure and pain that comes your way because there is a child in your life. You have a child because it makes your entire life richer even if it makes your bank account poorer.” (53) He continues describing the idea. “Adding up the costs and benefits is the wrong way to think about how to live. Flourishing is something subtler that overarches our day-to-day pleasures and pains. The part of existence I am calling flourishing both transcends and elevates our day-to-day experience. When you become a parent, how you see yourself and what you see as your responsibilities change. This sense of self – this sense of being a parent – transcends your daily life experiences. Who you are is now more than what you experience. But being a parent also elevates your daily life because there is this new creature who is now part of your life.” (63) As a person who has studied economics as well, I think it is important to step back and realize that it can be hard to quantify everything, and put everything that is meaningful in the model. Sometimes the things that are easy to measure, like money, are not the best way to measure how well off, or happy, a person is. “Instead of voting, use the time to mow your lawn or read to a child, make money consulting, or volunteer at a soup kitchen. Instead of voting, the rational choice is to find the best alternative use of your time. Tell this to a voter and they never respond, ‘What a great point! If my vote is essentially worthless, the rational thing to do is to do something that isn’t worthless.’ Instead, a person who votes gets angry at the economist. Only an economist is puzzled by this anger. People vote because they think it’s the right thing to do – it is part of their identity as a citizen. They vote because they don’t want to see themselves as shirkers. They want to see themselves as responsible citizens who have an obligation to vote and who believe in fulfilling their obligation. They don’t see themselves as suckers for voting. They see themselves as admirable. Only an economist seduced by narrow utilitarian considerations would call that irrational.” (81)
The next chapters move on from framing the problem to providing some suggestions on how to deal with them. One idea that he talked about that I found useful is the importance of actually making decisions. “You might respond by saying that it’s wrong to ‘settle,’ to be content with someone who is merely OK rather than someone great. Actually, I’m saying something worse. I’m not encouraging you to settle; I’m telling you that you have to settle. The best spouse/partner/career/city doesn’t exist and it’s not just because they’re hard to find. It’s not a meaningful concept. This is the insight of social scientist Herbert Simon, who argued that optimization (finding the best outcome) is beyond our human limitations…The fear that we’re settling can paralyze us – it can be an excuse to not make any decision at all. Settling isn’t the right word anyway. Settling means to willingly accept an inferior option. When it comes to marriage or all kinds of wild problems, inferior is rarely on the table. We face options where some aspects of the decision appear better than others but other aspects are worse. What some people call ‘settling’ is simply realizing that it is time to make a decision and there is no reason to think there is a better option. That’s not settling. That’s deciding.” (101) I tend to procrastinate when deciding, so this was a useful message for me to hear.
I also liked his chapter on the tension between simple utilitarianism and flourishing. “The rule is simple: Privilege your principles. Your decisions define who you are. Don’t make tradeoffs when it comes to your essence. Live with integrity. Do the right thing and respect yourself. That at least should be the starting place. Putting your principles above the day-to-day costs and benefits is about more than ethics or the virtue of honesty that we confront when we find a lost wallet or are offered a consulting opportunity that is highly lucrative but ethically questionable. Privileging your principles is about what kind of person you want to be and who you might want to become. It’s about visiting a friend I the hospital when it feels like you have better things to do. It’s about listening to that friend who needs to share something even though you’re in a hurry to run an errand that you’re itching to finish. It’s about voting when you’re dreading the wait in line.” (145) Some of these come more naturally than others, but we often need to nurture these tendencies to make sure they stay. “In most areas of life, especially the important ones, our desires aren’t fixed in the way economists usually think of them. Many of our desires are in conflict. We all have urges that we long to indulge and sometimes these urges sit uneasily with us. Sometimes we long to limit our urges, whether food, sex, money, or the app on your phone that you spend time with compulsively. We have a good dog and a bad one fighting each other all the time. Feed the good dog. Feed it often enough and it starts to win the fights with the bad dog.” (156)
When it comes to making decisions, he framed some best practices with some examples from observations of the football coach Bill Belichick. These include: 1) Optionality is powerful 2) Don’t assume that what works for them works for you. When you can, put the shoes on. Test-drive the car. 3) Sunk costs are sunk 4) Grit and persistence are overrated. (167) Since we don’t know how things will turn out, it can be important to try a lot of different things (e.g. date before getting married). “Use this idea for living. Try to have more experiences than fewer. Try stuff. Stop doing the stuff that isn’t’ for you. Embrace the opportunities that make your heat sing. Spend less time trying to figure out in advance what those might be and more time taking chances as long as you can opt out at a low enough cost…We fear making a decision so we want more information…There is no easy way to deal with this trade –off but perhaps it is helpful to be aware of the reality that many times the delay in making a decision is not simply because we don’t have information. We delay because we don’t like making decisions.” (165) The allure of more information is very strong for me. “We say to ourselves that we need more time to gather information, ignoring that more information isn’t going to help – it’s just a form of procrastination. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, ‘The only way to understand marriage is to get married. The only way to understand whether a certain career path is right for you is to actually try it for an extended period. Those who hover on the edge of a commitment, reluctant to make a decision until all the facts are in, will eventually find that life has passed them by. The only way to understand a way of life is to take the risk of living it’…It’s not a mistake when you can’t do any better. So spend less time on figuring out the ‘right’ decision and more time on thinking about how to widen your options and how to cope with disappointment if the decision turns out badly.” (169)
Overall, Roberts encourages readers to savor the journey and not try to optimize every step of the way, or agonize over every small decision. “Instead of seeing life as a series of decision nodes where you maximize happiness or well-being looking ahead as best you can, I’ve suggested that you see it instead as a journey. Should I take company…and if so, who should I ask to come with me? On that journey, how should I treat my fellow travelers? How might I experience the trip if I try to find an itinerary that emerges from our shared vision and not just what makes me the happiest? What principles should I use and how might I implement them on the journey? How do I make room for serendipity, the unexpected and the unavoidable reality that the unexpected is to be expected? Do I have the courage to let the path emerge and unfold? Do I have the courage to let my self, my essence, and how I live and love emerge and unfold as well, as something organic rather than mechanical? These questions don’t have answers. They’re not problems to be solved, but mysteries to be experienced, tasted, and savored. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of not just in your philosophy but in what you might expect down the road as you go through life…In the meantime, you can continue to work on yourself as an artifact you craft.” (187)
As I mentioned earlier, frequent listeners of the podcast EconTalk will find many of the themes of this book very familiar. Overall, I think I like him a little more as a podcaster than as a writer. I have slightly different expectations for books than for podcasts, and the book did not have the type of flow and detail that I tend to prefer in books. While he did talk a little bit about tools for solving these problems, it was a bit more of sharing philosophy than providing a lot of ideas for tackling tough problems, or giving many examples of how others have had success dealing with these types of problems. I didn’t disagree with a lot of what he said, but it was a lot of the philosophy of how to live a life where you embrace what it is to be human rather than as much focus on wrestling with unanswerable problems. I still liked a lot of the ideas and comments, but not quite enough to give the book 4 stars. I recommend this book to anyone who is wrestling with big questions, like whether to get married or have kids, and needs reassurance or permission to make a decision even though they might not have as much information as they like to have before proceeding.
A good first step is to define what exactly a “wild problem” is. “Whether to have a child is what I call a wild problem – a fork in the road of life where knowing which path is the right one isn’t obvious, where the pleasure and pain from choosing one path over another are ultimately hidden from us, where the path we choose defines who we are and who we might become. Wild problems are the big decisions all of us have to deal with as we go through life…For certain problems – I call them tame problems – the relentless applications of science, engineering, and rational thought leads to steady progress. But the big decisions we face in life, the wild problems – whether to marry, who to marry, whether to have children, what career path to follow, how much time to devote to friends and family, how to resolve daily ethical dilemmas – these big decisions can’t be made with data, or science or the usual rational approaches.” (3) With some of these questions, it’s impossible to ever gather enough information before you make them, and after you make them, there is not a great way to even tell if you picked the right, or best, one.
One of the first frameworks he introduces is what Benjamin Franklin calls “moral algebra” where you make a list of pros and cons and then remove pairs from both lists that are similar in magnitude and see what you have left. This can have helpful elements, but it’s often hard to compare the benefits of one condition versus the costs of another. One area he uses to illustrate this point is the question of whether to marry. He gives the example of a few famous people who wrestled with the idea of getting married, including Charles Darwin. Darwin made thorough lists of pros and cons (in his journals, which he saved), but unsatisfied with the outcome of the lengths of the lists, to the “pro” column he added “Marry – Marry – Marry Q.E.D” (46) to make things turn out the way he wanted. He wasn’t sure if being married, with all its responsibilities and demands for time, would keep him from being a good scientist. Maybe it kept him from doing certain things he might otherwise have achieved, but he still went on to have a memorable career. He contrasted him with Franz Kafka, who was so intent on preventing distractions to keep him from being a great writer that he never married, preserving his focus on writing and writing alone. (75)
While the book is about making decisions, a lot of it is also about a few themes that Robert enjoys talking about – human flourishing and how you should lean in to experiences that change you. One idea that has grown on me over time is that we do things, like having children, not because it will make us happy, but because it is part of the human experience. “If Darwin knew me well enough to ask me about what it’s like to be a parent, I could talk until the fire in the hearth went cold and the sky began to lighten and the streetlamps went out and the sun rose, burning off the London fog . I would tell him having children connects you to your parents and lets you come closer to them in ways you never could have imagined. That it’s part of the human enterprise that’s unlike almost any other part of the ride. That it’s a bit of immortality. That it changes you and the way you see the world…Not everyone can handle it. Not everyone wants to handle it. Not everyone is given the opportunity to handle it. But if you do become a parent, no matter how the drama turns out, the experience fills your heart like nothing else. I’m a big fan, but that’s me. It may not be you. Does that help? Probably not. That’s the way it is with wild problems.” (38) The question isn’t necessarily “will it make me happy,” but whether I want to grow and gain a perspective that that set of experiences will provide. Additionally, he talks about the idea of flourishing. “What else might there possibly be? What made these seemingly irrational scientists go with their intuition, their instincts, something beyond what reason would suggest as the right decision? Human beings care about more than the day-to-day pleasures and pains of daily existence. We want purpose. We want meaning. We want to belong to something larger than ourselves. We aspire. We want to matter. These overarching sensations – the texture of our lives above and beyond what we call happiness or everyday pleasure – define who we are and how we see ourselves. These longing are at the heart of a life well lived. A life well lived is something more than a pleasant life. The Greeks called the condition of a life well lived eudaemonia…’Flourishing’ is a better translation [than happiness or contentment] and the world I will use here…We human beings flourish by taking our circumstances and making the most of them in fulfilling our human potential. To flourish as a human being is to live life fully…Flourishing includes living and acting with integrity, virtue, purpose, meaning, dignity, and autonomy – aspects of life that are not just difficult to quantify but that you might put front and center, regardless of the cost. You don’t get married or have children because it’s fun or worth it. Having a child is about more than just the accumulated pleasure and pain that comes your way because there is a child in your life. You have a child because it makes your entire life richer even if it makes your bank account poorer.” (53) He continues describing the idea. “Adding up the costs and benefits is the wrong way to think about how to live. Flourishing is something subtler that overarches our day-to-day pleasures and pains. The part of existence I am calling flourishing both transcends and elevates our day-to-day experience. When you become a parent, how you see yourself and what you see as your responsibilities change. This sense of self – this sense of being a parent – transcends your daily life experiences. Who you are is now more than what you experience. But being a parent also elevates your daily life because there is this new creature who is now part of your life.” (63) As a person who has studied economics as well, I think it is important to step back and realize that it can be hard to quantify everything, and put everything that is meaningful in the model. Sometimes the things that are easy to measure, like money, are not the best way to measure how well off, or happy, a person is. “Instead of voting, use the time to mow your lawn or read to a child, make money consulting, or volunteer at a soup kitchen. Instead of voting, the rational choice is to find the best alternative use of your time. Tell this to a voter and they never respond, ‘What a great point! If my vote is essentially worthless, the rational thing to do is to do something that isn’t worthless.’ Instead, a person who votes gets angry at the economist. Only an economist is puzzled by this anger. People vote because they think it’s the right thing to do – it is part of their identity as a citizen. They vote because they don’t want to see themselves as shirkers. They want to see themselves as responsible citizens who have an obligation to vote and who believe in fulfilling their obligation. They don’t see themselves as suckers for voting. They see themselves as admirable. Only an economist seduced by narrow utilitarian considerations would call that irrational.” (81)
The next chapters move on from framing the problem to providing some suggestions on how to deal with them. One idea that he talked about that I found useful is the importance of actually making decisions. “You might respond by saying that it’s wrong to ‘settle,’ to be content with someone who is merely OK rather than someone great. Actually, I’m saying something worse. I’m not encouraging you to settle; I’m telling you that you have to settle. The best spouse/partner/career/city doesn’t exist and it’s not just because they’re hard to find. It’s not a meaningful concept. This is the insight of social scientist Herbert Simon, who argued that optimization (finding the best outcome) is beyond our human limitations…The fear that we’re settling can paralyze us – it can be an excuse to not make any decision at all. Settling isn’t the right word anyway. Settling means to willingly accept an inferior option. When it comes to marriage or all kinds of wild problems, inferior is rarely on the table. We face options where some aspects of the decision appear better than others but other aspects are worse. What some people call ‘settling’ is simply realizing that it is time to make a decision and there is no reason to think there is a better option. That’s not settling. That’s deciding.” (101) I tend to procrastinate when deciding, so this was a useful message for me to hear.
I also liked his chapter on the tension between simple utilitarianism and flourishing. “The rule is simple: Privilege your principles. Your decisions define who you are. Don’t make tradeoffs when it comes to your essence. Live with integrity. Do the right thing and respect yourself. That at least should be the starting place. Putting your principles above the day-to-day costs and benefits is about more than ethics or the virtue of honesty that we confront when we find a lost wallet or are offered a consulting opportunity that is highly lucrative but ethically questionable. Privileging your principles is about what kind of person you want to be and who you might want to become. It’s about visiting a friend I the hospital when it feels like you have better things to do. It’s about listening to that friend who needs to share something even though you’re in a hurry to run an errand that you’re itching to finish. It’s about voting when you’re dreading the wait in line.” (145) Some of these come more naturally than others, but we often need to nurture these tendencies to make sure they stay. “In most areas of life, especially the important ones, our desires aren’t fixed in the way economists usually think of them. Many of our desires are in conflict. We all have urges that we long to indulge and sometimes these urges sit uneasily with us. Sometimes we long to limit our urges, whether food, sex, money, or the app on your phone that you spend time with compulsively. We have a good dog and a bad one fighting each other all the time. Feed the good dog. Feed it often enough and it starts to win the fights with the bad dog.” (156)
When it comes to making decisions, he framed some best practices with some examples from observations of the football coach Bill Belichick. These include: 1) Optionality is powerful 2) Don’t assume that what works for them works for you. When you can, put the shoes on. Test-drive the car. 3) Sunk costs are sunk 4) Grit and persistence are overrated. (167) Since we don’t know how things will turn out, it can be important to try a lot of different things (e.g. date before getting married). “Use this idea for living. Try to have more experiences than fewer. Try stuff. Stop doing the stuff that isn’t’ for you. Embrace the opportunities that make your heat sing. Spend less time trying to figure out in advance what those might be and more time taking chances as long as you can opt out at a low enough cost…We fear making a decision so we want more information…There is no easy way to deal with this trade –off but perhaps it is helpful to be aware of the reality that many times the delay in making a decision is not simply because we don’t have information. We delay because we don’t like making decisions.” (165) The allure of more information is very strong for me. “We say to ourselves that we need more time to gather information, ignoring that more information isn’t going to help – it’s just a form of procrastination. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, ‘The only way to understand marriage is to get married. The only way to understand whether a certain career path is right for you is to actually try it for an extended period. Those who hover on the edge of a commitment, reluctant to make a decision until all the facts are in, will eventually find that life has passed them by. The only way to understand a way of life is to take the risk of living it’…It’s not a mistake when you can’t do any better. So spend less time on figuring out the ‘right’ decision and more time on thinking about how to widen your options and how to cope with disappointment if the decision turns out badly.” (169)
Overall, Roberts encourages readers to savor the journey and not try to optimize every step of the way, or agonize over every small decision. “Instead of seeing life as a series of decision nodes where you maximize happiness or well-being looking ahead as best you can, I’ve suggested that you see it instead as a journey. Should I take company…and if so, who should I ask to come with me? On that journey, how should I treat my fellow travelers? How might I experience the trip if I try to find an itinerary that emerges from our shared vision and not just what makes me the happiest? What principles should I use and how might I implement them on the journey? How do I make room for serendipity, the unexpected and the unavoidable reality that the unexpected is to be expected? Do I have the courage to let the path emerge and unfold? Do I have the courage to let my self, my essence, and how I live and love emerge and unfold as well, as something organic rather than mechanical? These questions don’t have answers. They’re not problems to be solved, but mysteries to be experienced, tasted, and savored. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of not just in your philosophy but in what you might expect down the road as you go through life…In the meantime, you can continue to work on yourself as an artifact you craft.” (187)
As I mentioned earlier, frequent listeners of the podcast EconTalk will find many of the themes of this book very familiar. Overall, I think I like him a little more as a podcaster than as a writer. I have slightly different expectations for books than for podcasts, and the book did not have the type of flow and detail that I tend to prefer in books. While he did talk a little bit about tools for solving these problems, it was a bit more of sharing philosophy than providing a lot of ideas for tackling tough problems, or giving many examples of how others have had success dealing with these types of problems. I didn’t disagree with a lot of what he said, but it was a lot of the philosophy of how to live a life where you embrace what it is to be human rather than as much focus on wrestling with unanswerable problems. I still liked a lot of the ideas and comments, but not quite enough to give the book 4 stars. I recommend this book to anyone who is wrestling with big questions, like whether to get married or have kids, and needs reassurance or permission to make a decision even though they might not have as much information as they like to have before proceeding.
October 8, 2023
Fine book.
Read
July 30, 2025The 2nd half of the book gets interesting, 1st half is a little dense to get through.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 3, 2023
3.5 stars rounded down
October 12, 2022
This was good. Not GREAT, but good. Basically, traditional economic theory can't help you with "wild problems," which are problems for which there is no right answer. Whom should I marry? What career should I choose? Which city should I relocate to?
I like how he sums up the whole book with a little poem at the end, called "Travel Advisory."
Beware the urge for certainty,
The mortal lock
The sure thing
The lure of the bird in the hand.
Maybe once or twice put all your eggs in one basket.
Take a chance
On romance.
Ask her out, or him.
Embrace doubt, go out on a limb.
Leave the safety of the streetlight. Leave the comfort of the campfire.
Delight in the night without being a vampire.
Find company. Make friends,
Amends.
The star? Try being one of the cast.
Go far, not fast.
Stretch, reach.
Sometimes go for the highest hanging peach.
Don't run. Walk.
Sometimes wait and watch.
Try smokey scotch.
Not nice?
Try it twice, or thrice.
For principles, ignore the price.
Don't cower.
Flower.
Nourish your inner fire.
Aspire. Aim high. Better still aim higher.
I wish you a life well lived, with time in the pool and time away form the pool
Doing things that are meaningful to you and meaningful to those at your side.
Safe travels.
I like how he sums up the whole book with a little poem at the end, called "Travel Advisory."
Beware the urge for certainty,
The mortal lock
The sure thing
The lure of the bird in the hand.
Maybe once or twice put all your eggs in one basket.
Take a chance
On romance.
Ask her out, or him.
Embrace doubt, go out on a limb.
Leave the safety of the streetlight. Leave the comfort of the campfire.
Delight in the night without being a vampire.
Find company. Make friends,
Amends.
The star? Try being one of the cast.
Go far, not fast.
Stretch, reach.
Sometimes go for the highest hanging peach.
Don't run. Walk.
Sometimes wait and watch.
Try smokey scotch.
Not nice?
Try it twice, or thrice.
For principles, ignore the price.
Don't cower.
Flower.
Nourish your inner fire.
Aspire. Aim high. Better still aim higher.
I wish you a life well lived, with time in the pool and time away form the pool
Doing things that are meaningful to you and meaningful to those at your side.
Safe travels.
January 3, 2023
Good book with the key lesson being that most of life is about wild problems and that we should allow ourselves to embrace uncertainty. I appreciated the idea of living like an artist - allowing your inner self to tell you how you want to live your life.
August 30, 2022
Excellent work intended to get people to think about what's important in life. Some advice work thinking about here. Don't make yourself the star of your life movie (life is more like an ensemble drama than a one-man show). Envision the person you'd like to be, then act like you think that person would behave. Don't be so choosy when it comes to trying something (including when finding a spouse). Ignore sunk costs, but not small benefits that accrue over time (an argument against divorce). And so on. Roberts is a man who clearly knows how to focus on that which is important, without draining the joy out of life.
December 26, 2022
Initially, I wasn’t sure about this book but I found several of the themes and nuggets within to be quite meaningful and useful.
May 27, 2024
A book that supports my life philosophy. It’s great to know my decision strategy is reasonable.
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