Dr. Ellen Langer

Now, the way people think they should make a decision is to do some kind of cost-benefit analysis.

That's nice if you live in the world where there really are good things and bad things.

When you recognize that the things themselves are neither good nor bad, that means every cost is a benefit, every benefit is a cost, you add them up, they're not going to tell you what to do.

Now, even beyond that, you have people telling you, gather information.

This sounds good, but it's ridiculous, let me tell you.

If there were only 10 pieces of information that could possibly be considered to make your decision, certainly having eight pieces of that information is more helpful than having two pieces of information.

But the amount of information you could collect is almost endless.

And if you think for, you know, let's say there are a million pieces of information, the difference between 5 and 15 is meaningless, right?

Put a 5 over a million versus 15 over a million and, you know, you're talking about a tiny bit of information.

There's no natural endpoint to the information you could collect.

Now, you're collecting the information, and you say, okay, now I have enough.

The next piece you could have collected could have changed it all.

You know, should I buy the house?

So, all right, I like the ceilings, there are enough closets, near the schools, you know, everything is wonderful, I'm going to buy the house.

And then you find out they're going to put a highway right in front of the house that the government has just decided on.

You didn't know about it, and it's a bad decision.

But absolutely isn't a bad decision.

Well, maybe it's a good decision because then they'll pay you to get rid of the house so they can enlarge the house.

So the point is there's no natural endpoint to the information to make the decision.

There's no natural endpoint to an assessment of the advantages or disadvantages to any of those alternatives.