演講稿

Think of a hard choice you'll face in the near future. It might be between two careers -- artist and accountant -- or places to live

-- the city or the country -- or even between two people to marry -- you could marry Betty or you could marry Lolita. Or it might

be a choice about whether to have children, to have an ailing parent move in with you, to rai your child in a religion that your

partner lives by but leaves you cold. Or whether to donate your life savings to charity.

00:41Chances are, the hard choice you thought of was something big, something momentous, something that matters to

you. Hard choices em to be occasions for agonizing, hand-wringing, the gnashing of teeth. But I think we've misunderstood

hard choices and the role they play in our lives. Understanding hard choices uncovers a hidden power each of us posss.

01:05What makes a choice hard is the way the alternatives relate. In any easy choice, one alternative is better than the

other. In a hard choice, one alternative is better in some ways, the other alternative is better in other ways, and neither is

better than the other overall. You agonize over whether to stay in your current job in the city or uproot your life for more

challenging work in the country becau staying is better in some ways, moving is better in others, and neither is better than

the other overall.

01:40We shouldn't think that all hard choices are big. Let's say you're deciding what to have for could have high

fiber bran cereal or a chocolate donut. Suppo what matters in the choice is tastiness and healthfulness. The cereal is better

for you, the donut tastes way better, but neither is better than the other overall, a hard choice. Realizing that small choices can

also be hard may make big hard choices em less intractable. After all, we manage to figure out what to have for

breakfast, so maybe we can figure out whether to stay in the city or uproot for the new job in the country.

02:22We also shouldn't think that hard choices are hard becau we are stupid. When I graduated from college, I couldn't

decide between two careers, philosophy and law. I really loved philosophy. There are amazing things you can learn as a

philosopher, and all from the comfort of an armchair. But I came from a modest immigrant family where my idea of luxury was

having a pork tongue and jelly sandwichin my school lunchbox, so the thought of spending my whole life sitting around in

armchairs just thinking, well, that struck me as the height of extravagance and frivolity. So I got out my yellow pad, I drew a

line down the middle, and I tried my best to think of the reasons for and against each alternative.I remember thinking to

mylf, if only I knew what my life in each career would be like. If only God or Netflix would nd me a DVD of my two possible

future careers, I'd be t. I'd compare them side by side, I'd e that one was better, and the choice would be easy.

03:34But I got no DVD, and becau I couldn't figure out which was better, I did what many of us do in hard choices: I took the

safest option. Fear of being an unemployed philosopher led me to become a lawyer,and as I discovered, lawyering didn't quite

fit. It wasn't who I was. So now I'm a philosopher, and I study hard choices, and I can tell you that fear of the unknown, while a

common motivational default in dealing with hard choices, rests on a misconception of them. It's a mistake to think that in hard

choices, one alternative really is better than the other, but we're too stupid to know which, and since we don't know which, we

might as well take the least risky option. Even taking two alternatives side by side with full information, a choice can still be

hard. Hard choices are hard not becau of us or our ignorance; they're hard becau there is no best option.

04:39Now, if there's no best option, if the scales don't tip in favor of one alternative over another, then surely the alternatives

must be equally good. So maybe the right thing to say in hard choices is that they're between equally good options. But that

can't be right. If alternatives are equally good, you should just flip a coin between them, and it ems a mistake to think, here's

how you should decide between careers, places to live, people to marry: Flip a coin.

05:09There's another reason for thinking that hard choices aren't choices between equally good e you have a

choice between two jobs: you could be an investment banker or a graphic are a variety of things that matter in

such a choice, like the excitement of the work, achieving financial curity, having time to rai a family, and so on. Maybe the

artist's career puts you on the cutting edge of new forms of pictorial expression. Maybe the banking career puts you on the

cutting edge of new forms of financial manipulation. Imagine the two jobs however you like so that neither is better than the

other.

05:56Now suppo we improve one of them a bit. Suppo the bank, wooing you, adds 500 dollars a month to your

salary. Does the extra money now make the banking job better than the artist one? Not necessarily. A higher salary makes the

banking job better than it was before, but it might not be enough to make being a banker better than being an artist. But if an

improvement in one of the jobs doesn't make it better than the other, then the two original jobs could not have been equally

good. If you start with two things that are equally good, and you improve one of them, it now must be better than the

other. That's not the ca with options in hard choices.

06:43So now we've got a puzzle. We've got two jobs. Neither is better than the other, nor are they equally good. So how are

we suppod to choo? Something ems to have gone wrong here. Maybe the choice itlf is problematic and comparison

is impossible. But that can't be right. It's not like we're trying to choo between two things that can't be compared. We're

weighing the merits of two jobs, after all, not the merits of the number nine and a plate of fried eggs. A comparison of the

overall merits of two jobs is something we can make, and one we often do make.

07:28I think the puzzle aris becau of an unreflective assumption we make about value. We unwittingly assume that

values like justice, beauty, kindness, are akin to scientific quantities, like length, mass and weight. Take any comparative

question not involving value, such as which of two suitcas is are only three possibilities. The weight of one is

greater, lesr or equal to the weight of the ties like weight can be reprented by real numbers -- one, two, three

and so on -- and there are only three possible comparisons between any two real numbers. One number is greater, lesr, or

equal to the other. Not so with values. As post-Enlightenment creatures, we tend to assume that scientific thinking holds the

key to everything of importance in our world, but the world of value is different from the world of science. The stuff of the one

world can be quantified by real numbers. The stuff of the other world can't. We shouldn't assume that the world of is, of

lengths and weights, has the same structure as the world of ought, of what we should do.

08:51So if what matters to us -- a child's delight, the love you have for your partner — can't be reprented by real

numbers, then there's no reason to believe that in choice, there are only three possibilities --that one alternative is better,

wor or equal to the other. We need to introduce a new, fourth relationbeyond being better, wor or equal, that describes

what's going on in hard choices. I like to say that the alternatives are "on a par." When alternatives are on a par, it may matter

very much which you choo, but one alternative isn't better than the other. Rather, the alternatives are in the same

neighborhood of value, in the same league of value, while at the same time being very different in kind of value. That's why the

choice is hard.

09:48Understanding hard choices in this way uncovers something about ourlves we didn't know. Each of us has the

power to create reasons. Imagine a world in which every choice you face is an easy choice,that is, there's always a best

alternative. If there's a best alternative, then that's the one you should choo, becau part of being rational is doing the

better thing rather than the wor thing, choosing what you have most reason to choo. In such a world, we'd have most

reason to wear black socks instead of pink socks, to eat cereal instead of donuts, to live in the city rather than the country, to

marry Betty instead of Lolita. A world full of only easy choices would enslave us to reasons.

10:38When you think about it, it's nuts to believe that the reasons given to you dictated that you had most reason to

pursue the exact hobbies you do, to live in the exact hou you do, to work at the exact job you do. Instead, you faced

alternatives that were on a par — hard choices — and you made reasons for yourlf to choo that hobby, that hou and

that job. When alternatives are on a par, the reasons given to us, the ones that determine whether we're making a

mistake, are silent as to what to do. It's here, in the space of hard choices, that we get to exerci our normative power, the

power to create reasons for yourlf, to make yourlf into the kind of person for whom country living is preferable to the urban

life.

11:43When we choo between options that are on a par, we can do something really rather can put our very

lves behind an option. Here's where I stand. Here's who I am. I am for banking.I am for chocolate donuts. This respon in

hard choices is a rational respon, but it's not dictated by reasons given to us. Rather, it's supported by reasons created by

us. When we create reasons for ourlves to become this kind of person rather than that, we wholeheartedly become the

people that we are. You might say that we become the authors of our own lives.

12:33So when we face hard choices, we shouldn't beat our head against a wall trying to figure out which alternative is

better. There is no best alternative. Instead of looking for reasons out there, we should be looking for reasons in here: Who am

I to be? You might decide to be a pink sock-wearing, cereal-loving, country-living banker, and I might decide to be a black

sock-wearing, urban, donut-loving we do in hard choices is very much up to each of us.

13:11Now, people who don't exerci their normative powers in hard choices are drifters. We all know people like that. I

drifted into being a lawyer. I didn't put my agency behind lawyering. I wasn't for lawyering. Drifters allow the world to write the

story of their lives. They let mechanisms of reward and punishment -- pats on the head, fear, the easiness of an option — to

determine what they do. So the lesson of hard choices: reflect on what you can put your agency behind, on what you can be

for, and through hard choices, become that person.

13:57Far from being sources of agony and dread, hard choices are precious opportunities for us to celebrate what is

special about the human condition, that the reasons that govern our choices as correct or incorrect sometimes run out, and it

is here, in the space of hard choices, that we have the power to create reasons for ourlves to become the distinctive people

that we are. And that's why hard choices are not a cur but a godnd.

14:29Thank you.

14:32(Applau)