Comes from being able to infer that since by now you have not found any clear reason to favor one choice over the other it means that you are close to indifferent and you should pick now, even randomly.
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February 17, 2013 at 11:52 pm
Lones Smith
1. You are ignoring the possibility of being forced to decide ASAP. Fine.
2. Even still, this logic ignores the option value of changing your mind. Optionality comes from uncertainty about what you *will* learn. That you have so far not “found any clear reason to favor one choice over the other” is a *backward looking* notion. But optionality is *forward-looking* — it speaks to the arrival rate of future ideas and/or the thickness of the density of the tail ideas. The second notion is addressed by the paper “Conversational War of Attrition” that Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn (UCLA) and I are now writing up.
Bottom line: I think some indecision is called for your theory of decisiveness.
February 18, 2013 at 10:21 am
Enrique
Perhaps we can restate the claim this way: there is an optimal rate of indecision, but when the cost of not deciding outweighs the cost of any possible decision, then decide randomly
February 18, 2013 at 10:34 am
Joshua Gans
How long did it take you to decide to write that post?