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Wild Problems

A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us

ebook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 2 weeks
From the host of EconTalk, a guide to decision-making when you can't crunch the numbers
Algorithms and apps analyze data and tell you how to beat the traffic, what books to buy, what music to listen to, and even who to date—often with great results. But what do you do when you face the big decisions of life—the "wild problems" of who to marry, whether to have children, where to move, how to forge a life well-lived—that can’t be solved by measurement or calculation?
In Wild Problems, beloved host of EconTalk Russ Roberts offers puzzled rationalists a way to address these wild problems. He suggests spending less time and energy on the path that promises the most happiness, and more time on figuring out who you actually want to be. He draws on the experience of great artists, writers, and scientists of the past who found creative ways to navigate life’s biggest questions. And he lays out strategies for reducing the fear and the loss of control that inevitably come when a wild problem requires a leap in the dark.

Ultimately, Roberts asks us to see ourselves and our lives less as a problem to be solved than a mystery to be experienced. There's no right decision waiting to be uncovered by an app or rational analysis. Reality is harder than that and, perhaps, a little more interesting. 
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from June 27, 2022
      Many “big decisions can’t be made with data, or science, or the usual rational approaches,” contends Roberts (How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life), president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, in this lucid treatise. Wild problems, according to the author, are the major life decisions—such as choosing a career path and deciding how to devote one’s time—that resist rational analysis and call for alternative modes of evaluation. Roberts tells of how Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, and Johannes Kepler attempted to quantify such decisions as whether and whom to marry using balance sheets of pros and cons, which the author suggests are ineffective because of their reliance on subjective judgments (Is each pro equal to each con? How does one decide?). He is equally critical of optimization, arguing that imperfectly reducing a matrix of considerations to a single measurement by which to judge which option is “best” obscures the complexity of choosing a partner or where to go to college. Instead, Roberts recommends that readers “privilege your principles” and base one’s choices on “what kind of person you want to be and who you might want to become.” Roberts’s thought-provoking take on the limits of data and the overquantification of contemporary life provides a bold and original perspective on how humans can make better decisions. Daniel Kahneman’s fans will find much to ponder.

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