Coin-flip decision making

I remember some years ago, I came across the following question on OKcupid: “Do you make important life decisions based on coin flips?” My immediate reaction of course was “No,” since I would trust my rational analysis and judgement more than random chance. Browsing through the various other responses though, there was one that was very inspiring, and deeply impacted the way I both view the world and the way I make decisions now:

“Yes, because if you’re at the point where you’re considering a coin flip, then you’ve probably already spent hours and hours deliberating the alternatives, and feel that the pros and cons of each potential decision are such that the results have similar expected value or expected utility. At that point, it’s probably better to just flip a coin and decide, rather than waste more time thinking about it.”

This thought is incredibly deep because it not only teaches the concept of diminishing marginal returns (e.g. of evaluating a decision delta), but it also teaches action over deliberation. In cases where coin flips are actually being considered, picking either alternative probably gives better results than further wasting time thinking.

In my interactions with very many smart people, I have noticed a strong tendency to agonize over decisions, from minor things like how to code a particular algorithm to major bifurcations like which school’s tenure-track offer to accept. In some of the latter cases, the decision making process can even be a full-time job that lasts for months. The irony, of course, is that making a rapid decision with marginally lesser expected value would have yielded much better career advancement: those months could have been much better spent recruiting your initial grad students and postdocs, or planning your first grant application.

This of course is not to discount the value of doing logical analysis; making a coin flip decision to vacation near ISIS headquarters is clearly not a good decision. Many unsuccessful people tend to overvalue the importance of luck (which is why they buy lottery tickets), and should emphatically not be making more decisions based on coin flips. But many highly intelligent people that I interact with may consider if they would perhaps be more successful with more chance in their life.