
People may know the best decision and not make it: study - dnetesn
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-people-decisionand.html
======
PeterisP
Well, there's the old 'exploit-vs-explore' tradeoff, and it's well known in
decision theory that without perfect information (and in real life, there's
never perfect information) it's not optimal to always take the 'best' decision
according to currently known information, sometimes you should take a
potentially worse choice just to gain information about how good that other
alternative is.

The multi-armed bandit problem ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-
armed_bandit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit)) is a
theoretical simplification of this concept.

~~~
mannykannot
In particular, the study mentioned here does not seem to take this into
account.

In summary, it took the form of a simple game, for which many players deduced
the optimal strategy. They then modified its behavior, without notifying the
subjects, so that the optimal strategy remained the same, but was less
successful, and many players strayed from the optimal behavior. So were they
exploring? Had they simply lost confidence in their earlier assumptions about
how the game worked? We don't know why they strayed, because "while the answer
to that is beyond the scope of this study, Krajbich said, it likely takes a
lot of mental energy and planning to always make decisions based on your
knowledge of the environment."

Notice, in that quote, the willingness to speculate about a cause despite an
experimental design that could not deliver evidence on the issue... (To be
fair, I probably would not have noticed that inconsistency if Krajbich had
picked a putative explanation that _I_ speculate is more probable.)

~~~
AmericanChopper
Opportunity cost seems to be at least one of the factors it's not accounting
for. If you know a strategy that produces a reasonable reward consistently,
then trialing a strategy that produces a higher reward less consistently is a
risk, and you can't know whether it will pay off in the long term until you've
already committed to forgo the consistent rewards for the period of your trial
run. This study could have just as easily been about risk aversion.

Then you also have the opportunity cost of what you choose to optimize.
Perhaps making sub-optimal choices is fine in areas that aren't important to
you for whatever reason. You have to make choices all day, you don't have
enough time or energy to optimize all of them. If you want to succeed in
whatever your highest priority goals are, then I'd suggest that you should
only bother to optimize things that are actually going to help you achieve
them. Devoting significant effort to optimizing things that don't matter is
usually called bike-shedding, and I think a lot of us would have experienced
how that can come at the expense of things that actually matter.

I'd also suggest that focusing on overly narrow set of factors can skew the
results. The author talked about commute routes, and I know that my usual
commute route is sub-optimal from a time perspective. I know there are routes
that can give me 5-10 minutes in time. But I usually don't choose them,
because I'm usually not optimizing for time on my commute. After a days work,
I'll usually prefer to take the slow mindless crawl down the freeway, over the
20-left-turn route that gets me home some inconsequential amount of time
faster.

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OnlyOneCannolo
Story of my life.

Jokes aside, the article starts with the assumption that there's an absolute
"best" result, and doesn't really consider that "best" is relative to your
value system.

If you choose to take the slower route home, maybe you just find it less
frustrating. If you don't choose the optimal game strategy, maybe you just
want the thrill of a big win because you didn't care if you lost.

And even if you do have the same values as the article assumes, all of that
stuff about humans being bad predictors and naturally being inclined to
gambler's fallacy and such is nothing new.

~~~
derefr
> Jokes aside, the article starts with the assumption that there's an absolute
> "best" result, and doesn't really consider that "best" is relative to your
> value system.

I'm pretty sure the article is grounded in a utilitarian framework where
"best" means "the thing that gets you the most of what you personally want."

~~~
smogcutter
The study as described pretty clearly defines “best” as “gets the greatest
reward as defined by the game”.

But this is actually totally beside the point of the article, which is that
we’re bad at recognizing small differences in probability and over weight
recent experience. The headline is misleading, it isn’t really about
deliberately making bad choices. When the winning pattern was clear players
chose it more often, and when it was less apparent they chose it less often.

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darkerside
This presupposes that past performance predicts future results. In a world
where we have incomplete information and a limited timeframe to assess
relative to the universe of possibilities (the real world), a 60% chance is
effectively indistinguishable from a coin flip. Once you introduce the
possibility of an antagonistic opponent who might flip the odds at any given
time, and account for the early mover's advantage of being first to adapt to
new information, acting on what's always worked in the past starts to look
naive.

~~~
skat20phys
I also think the random deviation from "best" strategy isn't realistic.

In the real world, true randomness is kind of unusual. There's usually some
kind of spatial or temporal autocorrelation.

So something might change in a quasi-random way, but it often doesn't just
return to "normal" immediately. There's often something continuing (like an
antagonist, or some environmental variable that decays over time, but slowly).

So these random "blips" do happen in reality, but they're not normal. What's
more normal is for there to be changes, and for those changes to be somewhat,
but not completely, stable with some decay. They might not decay at all.

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hpoe
It seems to me this, evolutionary speaking, this would make sense. A sudden
change in the rewards can indicate that the environment has changed, and
rather than acting as you always have you should act in the way that maximizes
the rewards you get in this new environment. At least in situations where it
is not obvious why the environment changed.

~~~
Zyst
Yeah, this also reminded me of the way that Neural networks that play video
games might make a new connection that is not super efficient, but by a
combination of reasons ended up being more effective than it might usually be
in that scenario.

The AI's often end up giving that pathway a try a few more times before giving
up on it.

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keiferski
_Akrasia_ (/əˈkreɪziə/; Greek ἀκρασία, "lacking command"), occasionally
transliterated as acrasia or Anglicised as acrasy or acracy, is described as a
lack of self-control or the state of acting against one's better judgment. The
problem goes back at least as far as Plato. In Plato's Protagoras Socrates
asks precisely how it is possible that, if one judges action A to be the best
course of action, one would do anything other than A?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia)

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bcoates
Anyone have a link to the actual study? The analogy with the streets makes it
sound like subjects are following correct bandit-algorithm strategy because
they don't know (and have no way of knowing) the variability in outcomes is
truly random

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Ensorceled
People are generally bad at probability without training, if you introduce
random chance into any process it’s really going to throw most people.

Also, it’s a black box. You try something and it gives you the best rewards.
You try it again and it works again! Then it fails. Your immediate reaction is
not “let’s run a long experiment and see what the p value is”, your reaction
is “I guess it’s random”

~~~
sova
Consider something simple and everyday like a test to see if you have <virus>.
There is a true positive, false positive, true negative, and false negative.
It could be any one of the four. When we think that there are only two
outcomes, we lose track of probability quickly.

~~~
ska
You can't really look at these independantly. There are lots of ways to slice
up the results, you just to be careful and clear about what you are doing.

~~~
Ensorceled
I know from actual experience that trying to explain why medical false
positives can cause more harm than good to the layman is ludicrously hard.

~~~
sova
Accept/Reject H0 truth tables should be commonplace placards in hospitals

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bluerobotcat
It strikes me that in at least some of these examples, the subject may know
the best decision, but they might not know that they know it.

For example, you might have prior experience that your gut is more reliable
than your conscious thinking.

Or in the example of Main Street and Spruce Street, the subject might have
taken the new experience that the Spruce Street route was faster than expected
to wonder whether they _really_ know that Main Street is usually the better
route.

Anyway. If you liked this article, you may be interested in looking up
experimental philosophy or epistemology.

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friendlybus
For a scientific article Krajbich's placing too much emphasis on luck in
analyzing decision making.

Successful sportsman have always been comfortable with a small margin of
advantage. Leagues and ladder tables put teams of similar ability together in
match-ups, large differences are uncommon and seen as unsporting if too
frequent.

People build their own structures for dealing with work and life, there's no
structure you can bring to a point & click symbol matching game that would
help inside the rules of the test. You could escape the test environment and
reverse engineer the code in real life, or accelerate the test environment
with a clicking bot and data-log the patterns. You could bring knowledge and
grokked intuition from another field into a complex task for an advantage, but
none of that here. Exploring alternative hypothesis in real life is useful
because there is infinite (though diminishing returns) in adding to a better
work skill or structure.

I don't know what value people are expected to get out of this article.

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vikramkr
In the type of experiment they were running, an almost gambling type situation
with small amounts of money at stake and some element of random chance, I know
that I personally wouldn't always follow the "correct" strategy just because
if there isn't enough at stake it might be more fun to go for the "worse"
option. Although if there were real high stakes then I don't know how I would
behave. I think @hpoe's hypothesis that it has to do with signaling the
environment has changed makes a lot of sense. It's hard to know what you would
do in an experiment without being in it of course since you can rationalize
anything, but I do know that in prior psych/econ studies I've been a subject
in I've found it sometimes fun to deliberately gamble the riskier option when
it's only a few pennies out of ten bucks for the session at stake.

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skybrian
I wonder if this has anything to do with an explore/exploit trade-off where
you might not always do the optimal thing to see if something changed?

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malshe
Article title:

Mouse tracking reveals structure knowledge in the absence of model-based
choice

Link to the article:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15696-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15696-w)

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hestipod
I feel trapped by this because I cannot count on others to make the best
decision..or right decision ethically and for decency...seems they choose to
make the best for THEM at my expense. My life was ruined by medical errors. I
was told to "trust the professionals" and when I did they damaged me and took
from me, then the systems and people meant to help when that happens refused.
Family bailed. Years and years of this culminated in a suicide attempt
recently that failed due to intervention, and those same professionals and
family ignored my documented wishes to be let go and "saved" me into a worse
situation with even more needs and less to no help. They don't care about me
at all...just the best decision for THEIR feelings.

I'd love to live...have wanted to the entire time...but people can only take
so much. I had one great chance a couple years ago, only one in all this time,
and more health issues and my fear of suffering more caused me to lose that.
There isn't enough help...people just take more and ignore and throw
platitudes. What all of this life has taught me is 99% of people are in it
entirely for themselves and how I lived and what I believed in was naive and
stupid. So the best decision for me now is to get out of this shit world but I
am not even allowed to do that. Just more nonsense and symptom
covering...never root cause solutions. There is no lifeline...no
support...just rationalization and calculus devaluing my life. "Best
decisions".

~~~
jl2718
People are scared. It looks a lot like selfishness, but it’s not. Lots of
people in this forum read your words and want to help but they’re scared. What
if they make it worse? The more they care, the more scared they are, the more
selfish they look. I guarantee that there are people out there that feel just
as bad as you, and you can make them feel better too, if you’re not too scared
to help.

~~~
hestipod
I guess I just feel hopeless because I cannot manage things on my own anymore,
like I used to when life was good, and I cannot find enough help to survive. I
have been failed over and over by systems and people and saying that is used
as something being wrong with ME. Admittedly a couple of very rare times I
have failed to grab on to a helping hand out of fear and situations making
things worse, and I don't know if those things would have worked or not, and
those rare instances seem to paint me in an even worse light as someone who is
beyond help and NEVER acts or does the right thing even though that isn't
true, but mostly there isn't any help. That's why I ended up where I am.
People seem to think they would always be capable of finding a way out...I
thought so too...the reality is different. I wish I had succeeded in leaving
this world because I see no way to survive in it that is accessible to me. I'd
be getting social assistance in most first world countries. I am angry, alone,
in pain, exhausted, and hopeless...and that annoys and offends and I
understand why but it still hurts. Just have no idea what to do...feel adrift
and hopeless in a way I never imagined possible.

~~~
jl2718
It seems to me that your suffering, and maybe all suffering, is quite
existential rather than confined to a specific problem that could be solved.
You may find that you're in the first stages of an enlightenment, where you
realize that nothing can fill the void inside you, and that seems bad. And
then maybe you'll see that nothing can bring you happiness, and that's worse.
But also nothing can bring you pain, and that's a little better. And so the
world around you is not in control, so that's okay, but not quite worth it.
But maybe something bigger than the world is in control, and that's scary and
hard to believe. But then there must be a reason for you to be here, and that
is enough, and all that you'll ever need.

I wouldn't know. I haven't been as far as you on the path.

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tasty_freeze
A college roommate was an impulsive guy, and always got himself into jams
because of his impulsivity. He wasn't dumb and was fully aware he was making a
bad choice before/during/after each act.

He explained it this way. He'd get a desire to do or say something and it
would grab his attention and gnaw at him and distract him until it was
released. He'd rather do the dumb thing and deal with the consequences than
live with that gnawing feeling.

Everyone, rightly, thought he was an asshole.

~~~
wwright
This sounds like intrusive thoughts:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusive_thought](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusive_thought)

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moosey
> Krajbich said the results of this study suggest that many times we will take
> the route that worked yesterday and ignore the evidence of what normally
> works best.

I think that this is an example of "Denominator Neglect" I read about in the
book "The Organized Mind", by Levetin. There is a section about organized
decision making for complicated decisions. Medical decisions is in this group.
At the same time, for most uncomplicated decisions, his advice is just to be
more decisive.

Still, here are the basic steps that he outlined, I believe (from memory...):
1) Arm yourself with the best possible statistics about your procedure (things
like NNT are good to know). 2) Understand your own biases. 3) Understand your
own tolerance for regret. If a low chance of failure (5% or so) happens, can
you ignore outcome bias? 4) If you still can't make up your mind, talk to your
friends and family about your core values.

He also talks about how to converse with your doctor, understanding the
incredible quality of knowledge that they have, while understanding some of
the gaps that they might have.

I strongly recommend this book.

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jl2718
I really despise when ‘researchers’ make such belittling claims about ‘people’
(not them of course). The first assumption when observing something, anything,
should be that there is a good reason for it. Assuming that other people are
stupid is the similar but opposite fallacy as assuming that a stage performer
has magic powers.

As in other posts here, it’s not hard to find good explanations for this
observation.

~~~
abnry
Yes, there are always hidden cognitive costs. Many claims of "irrational"
behavior by economists or psychologists don't account for them. Or their model
failed to consider the whole picture or long term concerns.

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iwangulenko
The study says that "we will take the route that worked yesterday and ignore
the evidence of what normally works best"

If you just drove a route yesterday, you remember it best and maybe that is
why you chose it again, not because of some "evil human bias"?

~~~
pnw_hazor
I often disregard traffic app route recommendations if I am unfamiliar with
the route.

Taking an unfamiliar route takes more cognitive energy even through it may get
me to my destination sooner. Sometimes I can't be bothered.

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jsanford9292
First sentence states:

"When faced with a decision, people may know which choice gives them the best
chance of success, but still take the other option."

THIS CAN BE RATIONAL.

"Best chance of success" ignores weightings.

Say Spruce St. is slower than Main St. by 2 mins on a normal day. And Main St.
had a 90-min delay yesterday. If there is even a 3% chance that Main St. has a
similar delay today, it is smarter to take Spruce St.; even though Main St.
has the best "chance" of success (97% of the time you will get home faster
with Main St.).

Maybe the actual study does not make this mistake, but the wording of the
article certainly does.

~~~
taneq
Exactly. Another thing (also illustrated by your example) is that consequences
can be really nonlinear with respect to your scoring function, whatever that
is. Take investing, for example - the "rational" thing to do is to mortgage
everything, leverage yourself to the hilt and buy as many hot button shares as
possible. This totally ignores the fact that, while you'll eventually come out
on top, going bankrupt will end your game with a massive loss. Or in your
case, maybe +/\- 5 minutes is pretty linear but if you're 45 minutes late then
you'll get fired. You'd never risk it to save 2 minutes.

~~~
jsanford9292
Precisely. Decision-making is more complicated than it seems and people
actually intuit a lot of it (such as nonlinear consequences).

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weinzierl
> _" People may know the best decision–and not make it"_

This idea is so old that it goes back at least as far as to the ancient
greeks. They even had a name for it, they called this concept _" Akrasia"_.

~~~
friendlybus
Did they have any insight?

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Neil44
We are feeling beings that think, not thinking beings that feel.

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crimsonalucard
You know how cells with cancer or defects commit suicide in the human body?
Maybe this is a macro level aspect of the same phenomenon. Humans take the
most risky high reward choice to self select the best candidate for
reproduction.

Only it's not natural selection, more like preprogrammed cell death happening
at the macro level. Similar to ants sacrificing themselves for the queen.

------
S_A_P
Anecdotally, I can say Ive made a less than ideal decision and been very
cognizant of it at the time. As Neil44 says in the comments we are feeling
beings that think. I dont think Im unique when I, to use a trival example,
weigh the cost of staying up later and watching another episode on netflix vs
getting the sleep I need. Instant dopamine vs long term consequences...

------
cmauniada
It's common knowledge that people don't want to strain their mental ability
when making decisions. So, it makes sense that people will go the easier route
when making choices. Mental fatigue when making decisions is a real deal
breaker. It is my belief that it gets worst if you don't pay attention to how
you are making decisions.

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throwaway7612
When the probabilities change people need some time to estimate the new
probabilities, an in real life the transition usually is linear, so perhaps
they detect that the previous winning strategy is becomming worse, that is
they try to predict the future using a linear model not expecting an instanct
change in probabilities.

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stevenking86
This is a super exploitable human behavior when playing with novices at poker.
Even smart folks can just become a bit to curious about seeing more cards even
though they know it's not rational. Making the best decision requires
discipline and maybe going against "instinct" and "gut feeling"

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JoeAltmaier
Another study that only works in 'study-space'. That is, when people know they
are in a study, they try to second-guess the study organizer. They value
guessing what the investigator is trying to do, over any trivial monetary
reward provided by the exercise.

People are not rhesus monkeys.

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Shivetya
I noticed none of the tests, suggested or used, involved making decisions that
affected others. There can be many times when others involved that you cannot
take the best decision but instead must take the most acceptable. These are
not necessarily the same thing

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zarmin
This kinda sounds like an executive function problem, but something doesn't
ADHD up.

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ta1234567890
More evidence that the rationality assumed as the pilar of economic theory
just doesn't exist.

Humans are deeply irrational, we make decisions mostly based on our emotions
which are heavily influenced by our social environment.

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andarleen
At a more basic level, and on point with the title rather than the article,
the best decision is should make is stop smoking yet i keep smoking. Wondering
what other decisions i make are similar to this one.

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erynvorn
Define 'Best'.

Visiting a doctor/ER when sick is usually the best decision, not these days.

Same for obvious choices: sit and look at TV or walk around the neighborhood.
I know some places I would not walk around.

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dchyrdvh
They don't know what to study and they don't have strong enough intuition to
guide them in the discovery process.

------
known

       Watch 1 hour TV;
    
       Walk for 1 hour;
    

People opt to Watch TV despite knowing Walk is a better decision

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sacman08
No S#*+

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finphil
Interesting research.

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carapace
No, people make the best decisions they can, because _evolution_. The brain is
a gland.

