The architecture review
had two options on the table.
A queue,
or direct calls between services.
Last month
you had sent your vote by email.
Today the summary slide
put your name under the queue.
So when someone asked why,
you told them.
Retries for free.
The consumers can fall behind
without falling over.
One service down
does not take the other with it.
You spoke for five minutes.
It was fluent.
It was convincing.
Afterwards
a colleague forwarded your email.
You had voted
for direct calls.
In 2005
Petter Johansson, Lars Hall
and their colleagues
published an experiment in Science.
People were shown
two photographs of faces
and asked which was more attractive.
Then the experimenter
handed them the card they had chosen
and asked them to explain their choice.
Except on some trials
it was not the card they had chosen.
A card trick
had swapped it
for the face they had rejected.
Most of the time
nobody noticed.
And they explained anyway.
They gave reasons,
specific and confident,
for a choice they had not made.
Some praised details
that only the swapped face had.
The researchers called it
choice blindness.
Later studies found it
in tastes of jam,
in smells of tea,
and in moral and political views,
where people argued fluently
for positions
they had rejected minutes earlier.
The finding is not
that people are careless.
It is that the reasons
were not stored with the choice.
They were built
when somebody asked for them,
out of whatever was in front of you.
The slide was in front of you.
So were your colleagues,
waiting.
Which means
how easily the reasons come
tells you nothing
about whether they were yours.
So check what you chose
before you defend it.
When your position is summarised for you,
in a slide,
a ticket,
or a manager's recap,
read the summary back
against what you actually wrote.
When you make a real decision,
write down what you picked
and the two reasons
that actually moved you,
at the time,
in your own words.
Not for anyone else.
For the version of you
who will one day be asked
and will answer
before checking.
And when you notice
you are arguing well
for something,
ask one question first.
Did I choose this,
or was I handed it?
– Serguey Asael Shinder
Top comments (0)