Midlife by Setiya Kieran;

Author:Setiya, Kieran;
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 5057929
Publisher: Princeton University Press

IS IGNORANCE BLISS?

Let me try to shed some light.

At least two paths remain to be explored. One goes deeper than the other, but they are both instructive in their way. According to the first, the pivotal feature of retrospection is that, when you look back on your life, it is given to you, free of risk. Your life so far lies in the past, and there is little or no uncertainty in how it all turned out. The desire to rewrite history, by contrast, is the desire to take a chance, the chance of something better. Whether it is rational to want that now depends on the rationality of being averse to risk, preferring a bird in the hand to two in the bush. In this respect, your situation is very different from the one you faced in prospect, when there were risks to be encountered either way.

Think about Nat, deciding between music and law. In the jargon of economists, Nat is mildly risk averse. She is willing to gamble a bit, but not too much. Suppose she is asked to choose between two bets: ticket A pays forty dollars if a coin comes up heads, ten dollars if it comes up tails; ticket B pays a hundred dollars for heads, nothing for tails. Nat would choose ticket B and she thinks it is irrational not to. (The “expected value” of ticket A, the value of the payoffs discounted by probability, is twenty-five dollars; the expected value of ticket B is fifty.) On the other hand, if she had to choose between ticket B and forty dollars in the hand, she would refuse to gamble. She thinks that’s sensible, too.

What has this got to do with major life decisions? The point is that, from Nat’s perspective, law is like ticket A, a gamble with a low ceiling but a fairly high floor. Things may go better or worse, but she will likely end up in a job with decent pay and have a reasonable quality of life. Music is ticket B, with a higher ceiling but a lower floor. Although Nat loves piano, there is a greater chance of disappointment and professional failure, years of frustration and heartbreak, with little to show for them. On balance, Nat believes that she should take the risk. It is better to gamble on music than law. But she doesn’t follow through. Instead, she applies to law school, choosing the equivalent of ticket A, and the rest is history.

Looking back, her situation has changed. Life as a lawyer has turned out fine. Nat doesn’t hate her job, and it pays well; she has her husband, Al, her friends, hobbies, vacations. Among the range of outcomes she anticipated, this is pretty good, closer to forty than ten. Nat still believes she made a bad decision when she quit piano, choosing ticket A over ticket B. But the question of regret is different. Would she now give up her life as a successful lawyer for a gamble she cannot predict? The answer may well be no.

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