
The Problem of Thinking Too Much (2003) [pdf] - lainon
http://statweb.stanford.edu/~cgates/PERSI/papers/thinking.pdf
======
wazoox
This made my day:

To be honest, the academic discussion doesn't shed much light on the practical
problem. Here's an illustration: Some years ago I was trying to decide whether
or not to move to Harvard from Stanford.I had bored my friends silly with
endless discussion. Finally, one of them said, "You're one of our leading
decision theorists. Maybe you should make a list of the costs and benefits and
try to roughly calculate your expected utility. "Without thinking, I blurted
out, "Come on, Sandy, this is serious."

~~~
Bartweiss
Feynman tells an intriguingly similar story from another angle.

When he moved from Cornell to Caltech, he had a sort of Buridan's Ass
situation where each one would beat the other's offer and leave him with no
way to make a decision. Even the weather wouldn't cooperate, with the snow
driving him out of Cornell and smog driving him out of Caltech. He eventually
landed at Caltech, basically arbitrarily, and realized the solution to the
problem:

" _But I decided then never to decide again. Nothing—absolutely nothing—would
ever change my mind again. When you’re young, you have all these things to
worry about—should you go there, what about your mother. And you worry, and
try to decide, but then something else comes up. It’s much easier to just
plain decide. Never mind—nothing is going to change your mind._ "

So when Chicago came calling later, trying to recruit him, he refused. Didn't
listen to the offer, didn't consider it when they told him, just refused
outright over his prior condition. Interesting to see how many people have
decided that formal analysis is a hopeless way of approaching this problem.

~~~
gowld
Young people are experimental and open to novelty. Old people are conservative
and prefer the status quo. The combination selects for a robust society.
That's an evo-bio trope

~~~
yeahitslikethat
Is because of memory. Old people remember how things were and want those
memories to be continuously valuable.

If everything changes they have nothing over the younger competition.

------
the_greyd
Thinking should be a time boxed activity, with time proportional to the
priority of the thing at hand. As a classic overthinker I've realized my
overthinking is a weird amalgamation of perfectionism and procrastination.
That took me a long time to accept, since I've always rationalized my
overthinking as ultimately a good thing. If you assume that action (instead of
thinking) is the primary unit in the world, then you can see that thinking is
just a tool which informs action.

~~~
tachyonbeam
I found it also useful to realize that there are many situations in life where
there are just too many unknowns. You're faced with two possible futures:
should I go to University A or B? This choice is necessarily going to
radically alter your life: depending which university you pick, you'll make
different friends, date different people, hang out in different spots, maybe
live in different cities. Based on this choice, the life you'll have in 5
years will be completely different. How do you pick which future to choose
from, which one is better?

The thing is, you simply have no way to know. What exact future you'll end up
with is about as predictable as the weather on this day five years from now.
You have no idea who are the people you haven't yet met that are going to
change your life, what roadblocks you'll find on the way, whether you'll
suddenly fall into a depression, etc. You can only rely on objective metrics
(trends, statistics), testimonials, and general gut feeling.

For myself, 3 years ago, after my studies, I was wondering whether I should
relocate to silicon valley for a big tech job or not. It was scary. I loved my
hometown, had many friends, etc. I figured, however, that I might as well do
this sort of experiment (moving to another city/country) while I'm young and
have no spouse or property. I did make the move, and unfortunately, I didn't
enjoy my big tech job, nor did I enjoy living in silicon valley, it wasn't a
good experience, so I moved back, thankfully with a decent wad of cash to wipe
my tears with.

I didn't like silicon valley, but I don't regret my decision to try it. Why,
because I also knew that I kind of had to try it, because if I didn't, there
might always be some FOMO in the back of my mind (what if I'd taken this big
silicon valley job, would my live be better right now?). Now I've done it,
I've been there, and I know what it's like. The pressure/temptation is gone.
So my two cents are to trust your gut, do commit to decisions, and also don't
be overly afraid of experimenting when you're young: it might not work out,
but you'll learn something along the way.

~~~
copperx
I'm halfway reading "Stumbling on Happiness," and one takeaway is that indeed
people are happier when they take action and it doesn't turn out to be as
expected, than when they do nothing. Your experience fits exactly that.

Coincidentally, I'm reading the book because I'm trying to decide whether to
leave my small city teaching job at a and move to SV to get a big tech job.
And the book and your experience suggest that it is better to leave and fail
to thrive than to never leave at all. But may I ask why didn't you like it, or
what should I look out for?

~~~
tachyonbeam
Things I did like: I was on a small team, my team and manager were great
people, and I got along with everyone. The work environment was very
comfortable, great food, they got me a super comfortable chair when I
complained about back pain, etc. The pay was great too, enough to save 40-80K
per year depending on spending habits (and still live comfortably!)

One thing I didn't like was living in the silicon valley suburbs. It felt like
a small town with nothing going on for me. It was really car-centric, my
apartment came with a covered parking spot because they just assumed that of
course you have a car. If I had to do it again I'd get a job in SF and live in
SF. I don't want long commutes and I don't want to live in suburbs. Since
you're from a small town, YMMV. The SV suburbs might feel like a big upgrade
to you, and having to drive everywhere might be something you're already used
to.

Another thing was that the work was dry. This might be very different for you
based on what employer and job you pick. My team was doing mostly maintenance
and incremental upgrades on a product many years old. I found that dreadfully
boring. I need something creative. This is something I didn't know then. My
current job doesn't pay nearly as much but the work offers a lot more novelty
and creative freedom. If I had to do it again, I'd make sure to join a team
that's working on a project that has me genuinely excited, preferably a team
that's building something rather than doing maintenance.

It was also really hard for me to be uprooted from my hometown where I'd
always lived and away from my friends. What made it even harder was that I
fell into a depression right before moving to California. My mother was
suddenly hospitalized, right as I was going through other stressful things and
preparing for an international move. The extra stress was too much. Then I
landed in California, and I had to start my first job, and I didn't have any
friends there to support me. It's hard to boostrap a network of friends
starting from nobody, and it's even harder when you're depressed... You have
no energy to go out and you're coming from a place where you need people to
help and support you, rather than a place of "I'm a fun person to spend time
with".

Lastly, while I lived in California, after being on antidepressants for a bit
and feeling more hopeful again, I tried dating, and I hated my experience. It
feels, to me, like SV has an overabundance of men, because of the constant
inflow of tech workers. If you're a single guy, you're moving to a place where
there are too many men. In any other city, being a successful tech worker is
something that will earn you points, but in SV, every woman knows they could
date a Google engineer if they wanted to, at least that's how it seemed to me.
Lots of ghosting and being treated in ways that I found disrespectful. To make
matters more complicated, lots of people in and around SF are polyamorous,
which is not something I want to get involved with.

~~~
copperx
I can't thank you enough for your story. It's incredibly valuable to me.

May I ask how do you feel now about your current life? Did you leave the
States?

~~~
tachyonbeam
Yes I moved back two years ago. I don't regret leaving. I make less money, but
still live comfortably. I can afford a two bedroom apartment a 15-minute walk
away from work. I'm back in a bit city so there are as much social activities
as I could want.

If you're asking if I'm happy, I would say I'm definitely more emotionally
stable. I've been at the same job since I came back and currently don't plan
to leave. I still feel down from time to time, not completely fulfilled, but I
think I'd feel that way anywhere. I feel a little lost these days because I
don't really know what I want to do with my life. I feel like I lack purpose.

Dating here in a big city seems easier than in the Silicon Valley suburbs.
It's tricky (because dating is tricky), but I have no trouble getting dates. I
did lose touch with many acquaintances after being away for a year. Party
friends, when you stop going out with them regularly, stop thinking about you.
I have a small number of close friends that I had before I left and I
generally feel like I get enough social.

------
js8
I have realized some time ago that when some decision is difficult to make, it
is likely that both outcomes are equally good (or bad), or at least, equally
indeterminable. If one of them was much better, then the decision would be
obvious!

So indeed, if you can't decide, spin a penny. You save time and the outcome
will be similar.

~~~
taneq
The advice my mum gave me was similar: If you don't know which way to choose,
flip a coin, and _see how you feel about the outcome_. That will tell you what
you really wanted to choose.

~~~
athenot
That is also the poem in the conclusion of the article:

 _Whenever you’re called on to make up your mind,_

 _and you’re hampered by not having any,_

 _the best way to solve the dilemma, you’ll find,_

 _is simply by spinning a penny._

 _No—not so that chance shall decide the affair while you’re passively
standing there moping;_

 _but the moment the penny is up in the air, you suddenly know what you’re
hoping._

------
skizm
Most decisions aren't A or B, they're I want A, but B is much
safer/easier/etc. So the coin flip method (you'll make up your mind while it
is in the air) doesn't help since you already know what you want. Pros and
cons lists don't help since you already know them. Probability multiplied by
reward doesn't help much, since you'll really only make the decision once, not
continuously.

The only sure fire thing I've found helps is you imagine the realistic worst
possible case scenario if you decide on doing thing A (the thing you really
want) and if you can live with that, do thing A.

~~~
augbog
Yup agree. That and also understanding why you want A more than B which
usually leads to understand why B doesn't give you those same things. At some
point there is a balance of how much risk you are willing to put to get what
you want.

------
nathanasmith
My problem with thinking too much is when I'm faced with a decision, I find I
often have a preferred course of action already in mind and whether that
course happens to be objectively better than the alternative is completely
immaterial to my ability to think long and abstractly enough about it to
reason myself into believing that it is. I have had to train myself to turn
off this abstract thinking as necessary. The upshot is when I do, the actual
correct answer to the situation often strongly presents itself and immediately
seems obvious.

~~~
pingec
How do you turn it off, how do you train for that? I cannot really do that
that's why I ask for a second and third opinion and then talk it out.

~~~
nathanasmith
>How do you turn it off, how do you train for that? I cannot really do that
that's why I ask for a second and third opinion and then talk it out.

Imagine you're a programmer and you're in some kind of professional rut. You
consider your options. You could learn a functional language, maybe get into
mobile development, find something else to do altogether, or any other of
myriad paths. If you think long and hard enough about any single option you
can probably convince yourself it's the right choice. Or maybe you get
overwhelmed and just give up. The question is too abstract and so are the
alternatives hence the overthinking.

What I do is take the abstract and make it concrete. Instead of looking at
this monster problem from the inside, I picture the end result. What am I
actually trying to accomplish; what will my life look like when I do. When I
see that and it usually comes pretty easily, what to do is simple. Ask myself
what's the very next specific action I can take to accomplish that vision. If
the answer isn't obvious I get even more specific. Maybe I need to literally
get up out of my chair. Whatever. I do that thing, ask the question again, do
the next thing, then the next until I'm done.

------
norswap
The conclusion is where the gold is at:

> One of the most useful things to come out of mystudy is a collection of the
> rules of thumb my friends use in their decision making. For example, one of
> my Ph.D. advisers, Fred Mosteller, told me, “Other things being equal,
> finish the job that isnearest done.” A famous physicist offered this advice:
> “Don’t waste time on obscure fine pointsthat rarely occur.” I’ve been told
> that Albert Einstein displayed the following aphorism in his office: “Things
> that are difficult to do are beingdone from the wrong centers and are not
> worth doing.” Decision theorist I. J. Good writes, “The older we become, the
> more important it is to usewhat we know rather than learn more.” Galen
> offered this: “If a lot of smart people have thought about a problem [e.g.,
> God’s existence, life on other planets] and disagree, then it can’t be
> decided.”

> Whenever you’re called on to make up your mind, and you’re hampered by not
> having any,the best way to solve the dilemma, you’ll find, is simply by
> spinning a penny. No — not so that chance shall decide the affairwhile
> you’re passively standing there moping; but the moment the penny is up in
> the air, you suddenly know what you’re hoping.

------
mapcars
Like we learn how to use our hands one should learn how to use our brains when
needed, and when not needed how to put it down, that's all.

~~~
kekebo
Just that learning to halt subvocal speech even for a couple of seconds seems
to be a much harder task than learning keeping an untrained hand still. There
seems to be active resistance, a compulsion to internally vocalize, even
(/especially) when detrimental. Unlearning it seems possible but no easy task,
requiring a large amount of hours and determination in my experience.

~~~
kaybe
Is there a good way to notice you're doing subvocal speech?

~~~
kekebo
Mindfulness type exercises / learning internal silence was the only effective
strategy i found. I can still get carried away in my thoughts but there's a
learned recurring return into silence that also gives room for meta cognitions
of various sorts. The more I "practice" the more subconscious those silent
moments appear, the higher their frequency and the easier it is to maintain
longer stretches of them - and the more enjoyable it is to entertain them, in
the beginning it can feel like a pointless bore.

~~~
gowld
Doea that help you _notice_ , or help you get better at suppressing it via
practice and "muscle memory"?

~~~
kekebo
The more quiet moments there are to reflect upon my thinking, the easier it
becomes to notice and correct. I wouldn't call it suppressing, trying to apply
'force' in cognition usually leads to more internal conflict instead of
resolution, at least in my experience.

------
smallnamespace
Is 'thinking about thinking' correctly actually an unsolvable problem?

Let's say I'm trying to do X.

\- Level 0 might be: do the first thing that comes to mind

\- Level 1 may be 'consider your possible choices and do a cost-benefit
analysis'

Most people would say that Level 1 is preferable, but only for 'weighty'
decisions where the cost of thinking is outweighed by the benefit of making a
better decision. For example, nobody does rational deliberation for 'should I
brake at this red light?'

So in practice, we seem to do some level of rational metacognition that takes
into account the cost of thinking about a problem.

What about level 3? Are there large classes of problems where it's not really
worth it to 'think about whether to think' \- you should _always_ ponder them,
or never? And what about levels beyond yet?

~~~
vokep
Or maybe that is just what level 2 would be? Level 1 is doing cost-benefit
analysis on all problems. Level 2 might be doing cheap meta analysis to
determine if energy can be saved and a level 0 solution used, or if more
thinking is required. I would think there is a top level, which is full
memorization of the space in which thinking might occur. Than instead of any
thinking taking place, a reference is made to this memory-truth-table and the
correct action is produced in response. Such a truth-table sounds maybe a bit
paradoxical though. Does it take into account its own presence in the
situation?

------
mcguire
" _Whenever you’re called on to make up your mind,and you’re hampered by not
having any,the best way to solve the dilemma, you’ll find,is simply by
spinning a penny.No—not so that chance shall decide the affairwhile you’re
passively standing there moping;but the moment the penny is up in the air,you
suddenly know what you’re hoping._ "

A friend introduced me to a related version of this that works pretty well:
toss a coin, see what result comes out, and then decide if you are happy or
disappointed. If you still don't care, go with the coin. Or don't; it doesn't
matter.

------
firstinstinct
Related: Our first instinct is far too often wrong (finantial times, 10 May
2019, Tim harford, pay walled article).

Another related article: Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major
Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness Steven D. Levitt
[https://www.nber.org/papers/w22487](https://www.nber.org/papers/w22487)

------
localhostdotdev
oh nice, i didn't know where the coin flipping quote came from:
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Piet_Hein](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Piet_Hein)

------
throwayEngineer
This is a very Academia driven problem.

They have been so detached from problem solving that they forget how to
problem solve.

Modeling a human randomness with math didn't give you perfect data and
conclusions?

What was the original problem? To solve something unsolvable with our current
understanding of biology?

Industry asks better questions and finds solutions. Academia waddles around in
theoreticals, and makes minimal meaningful progress.

Edit, to clarify. Academia picks a unreal problem, and can't find a logic
driven solution. Industry picks real problems, and doesn't make money unless
they solve it. We should be learning to solve problems from Industry, not our
underachieving professors.

~~~
apocalypstyx
And yet much profit has been derived from the privatization of publicly-funded
academia.

~~~
throwayEngineer
This is the exception, not the rule.

