In the absence of information, we make assumptions.
Humans look for patterns. We love to fill in the blanks. And when we don’t know an answer, we fill in those blanks based on our own ideas, often in the absence of evidence. This works well when playing Mad Libs, less well on math tests, and really poorly when it comes to collaborative decision-making.
When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your objective.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
In recent posts, we’ve been exploring how to decide how to make decisions. We’ll cycle back to that topic, but for now my attention has turned to something that needs to happen once a decision has been made: follow through with it.
As promised in an earlier post, here I will work through the steps of a group criteria-setting exercise. This is the how-to of “deciding how to decide before deciding.”
I recently wrote about the importance of having background information at your fingertips when seeking to make wiser decisions faster. So, the story I heard recently about “fake fact checkers” admittedly shook me up.
I am accustomed to calls for evidence-based decision-making in my line of work. Yet the whole notion of “evidence” risks being undermined in our current climate and culture. What does it mean to make a truly wise decision in this era of unabashed misinformation and fake news?
Continue reading “Wisdom and Fake Fact Checking”It’s local election time where I live. I received two tools to help voters decide which candidate to support; this municipal election kit from our local Poverty Elimination Task Force and this app developed to help Toronto voters identify the candidate whose perspectives most closely align with their own. Solid information that’s easy to access — I love it.
Both resources reminded me how much easier it is to make insightful decisions quickly when you have well-curated information at your fingertips.
Continue reading “Curated Information at your Fingertips”
