At the end of a long ponder, Jane Galt asks:
So it is entirely possible that society might be better off with pro-childcare socialisation for women.
But then a little voice whispers . . . I'm one of those happy professional women. What about me, dammit?!
In the comments, Trudie responds:
Giving up a fully active career involves a higher price if that career is/was a successful one. But the "income effect" from your successful career should still put you on a higher indifference curve, unless of course you become obsessed with regret. If you can fight regret, the child/career choice will take care of itself.
The same can be said about marriage and the difficulties of two-career families. It never ceases to amaze Trudie how many agonies boil down to regret. So what are the best rational choice strategies for pre-empting the general possibility of regret?...
Trudie can think of a few approaches:
1. Practice major life shifts, so you get used to regret and thus can bear it more easily. In other words, try to make the costs of regret smaller.
2. Hire eminent psychotherapists to administer electric shocks every time you feel regret. Try to make the costs of regret higher, so that you won’t regret so much.
3. Drink yourself senseless after making life commitments. Attack your memory.
4. Have so many kids there will be no time or energy for regret. One should suffice.
5. Hire someone to force the choice upon you, whether by posting a bond with a friendly blogger or approaching the Russian Mafia. Or, once you get pregnant, do something unpardonable and post it on YouTube, being sure to alert your blogger enemies.
6. Realize that you value control more than any of these options for overcoming regret, so live with the regret and enjoy that sense of control for all it is worth.
7. Get over #6 by studying Leibniz, Holbach, and other determinists.
Trudie believes that Tyler is good at managing regret. Surely we shouldn’t just let regret manage us. But what is best to do?
An female acquaintance of mine works as a high powered securities lawyer. She’s dodging the career/child decision by having her eggs frozen. Should she wish to have children after her biological clock has stopped ticking, she plans to have them unthawed, fertilized in vitro, and implanted into a surrogate.
I think that if I’m having so much trouble deciding between two choices that I must be close to indifferent between the two. The closer to indifference, the harder it is to determine which I prefer. Therefore, once I’ve agonized over a decision for a bit, I realize I’ll likely be just as happy with either option. So, I toss a coin, pick one, and never look back.
The discussion raises an interesting question: Does regret serve any useful purpose? If not, why is it so persistent?
“The discussion raises an interesting question: Does regret serve any useful purpose? If not, why is it so persistent?”
Perhaps regret is a signal to others that we value them, even though we’ve made choices against their interests.
Suppose two players repeatedly play different, non-zero sum games with each other. Suppose in the current game, Player A chooses among two sets of payoffs (say, [(A: 10, B: 1), (A: 6, B: 6)] (even better if the payoffs are somewhat uncertain, at least the payoffs to others or suppose the payoffs are not known to B)
Afterwards, A could cheaply claim that she still wants to cooperate in future games. It would be much more convincing to B, though, if A shows regret, which implies that A suffers a decrease in payoff. This may also convince B that the choice A made really was better, given the pain incurred by the regret.
It would be an interesting experiment if people feel more regret for choices that only impact themselves versus choices that impact others (including unborn children?).
-Kevin
How about if the husband stays home if he has the worse carreer. Oh, how freaking brilliant I am!
Embrace the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. When facing a decision which has the prospect of creating future regret, choose based on the outcome of a ‘random’ quantum event. Then, if ever facing regret in the future, console yourself that an alternate-reality version of yourself has experienced the other path.
(As one of the earlier coin-flip commenters noted, merely to contemplate placing yourself at the mercy of a random process may reveal other aspects of your preferences. If there’s one path you know you can’t resist even if the ‘flip’ goes the other way, you can skip the flip — and also perhaps, the regret — since one path is no longer plausible.)
Have a child while a teen. If you have one at fifteen you will only be 27
when it is 12 and hopefully has considerable ability to look after itself.
That leaves you the rest of your life to have a career in. It also gives
you plenty of time to look for a husband while you’re still young if you
are interested in one of those things.
To answer my own question (a relative ‘duh’ for a resident of the state): our attempted abortion ban. I guess I should add that our abortion ban failed, but it is still difficult to get an abortion.
So, as Dan suggests, SD might be a buyer’s market.
Well, actually, for a lot of other good reasons as well…
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