March 2020
How do you make an impossible choice? One technique is to use Path of Least Regret.
As Governments around the world continue to make the impossible choice between the health of their economies and the lives of their citizens, I thought it might be helpful to explore one approach for making an “impossible” decision.
Path of Least Regret recognises the role that emotion plays in human decision-making, in particular the fear of regret related to a mistake or omission.
Let’s say I’m faced with a choice between two outcomes, neither of which is desirable. Using this technique I assume that whichever choice I make will turn out to be wrong. I try to get a feeling for which “wrong” I would regret the most. I then choose the alternative.
So, rather than evaluating my choice with the hope that I’m going to be right, I review it based on the assumption that I’m going to be wrong, and see which outcome I can best live with.
For example, a political leader facing a new communicable disease about which they knew very little, might be faced with the choice of shutting down their country/economy to slow the spread of the disease and potentially save lives; or keeping the country running and potentially see people dying. The key word here is “potentially” because they don’t know how deadly the disease actually is.
Using Path of Least Regret the leader would consider two scenarios (both extreme to provoke the regret):
Which “wrong” decision would the leader regret the least? Whichever they choose, they’re going to be judged by history.
Obviously in both cases if their belief was actually correct, they will have made the “right” choice. But if we always knew we would be right, all of our decisions would be easy. It’s when we think we might be wrong that we get stuck.
Thankfully most of us are not in positions to have to make life and death decisions. But we can use this technique for any unpalatable choice, and there are plenty of those around at the moment.