I do. I decide to obtain more complete information.
Should or must? Cause that is a fact of life.
Here’s another mind bender: not making a decision or delaying it, is itself an impulsive/compulsive decision. Sometimes indecision or inaction has consequences. Sometimes decisions that paralyze you are inconsequential. You never have complete information. Making a decision is doing the best with what you have in the moment.
What do you do when complete information is unattainable or unattainable in a reasonable time?
Oh shit is this another thing I do that’s related to autism? I cannot do things I dont completely know the reason for, I also won’t do things unless I know its actually for sure going to be useful down the road.
There are 3 things possibly at play here.
Are you trying to make decisions about the same question? If the top score in a game is currently 87 out of 100, and the last player takes their turn. The announcer says the player scored “Ninety…” they won. It doesn’t matter if the complete information is “Ninety-five”, “Ninety-nine” or even “Ninety… just flat ninety” … the final player is the winner. You dont need the second digit. Knowing the score is in the range of 90-99 isn’t COMPLETE information, but it is ENOUGH information… To answer “did this player win” … if you wanted to know if they beat the world record score of 97, then you’d need the second digit. You only need fully complete information if you need a fully complete answer.
Another option is that you already have complete information. “I tossed a coin 10 times and 8 times it landed on heads” – what happened the other 2 times? You already know. Just because no one said it doesnt mean you don’t have it. Not everything needs to be said explicitly for it to be true. “There’s 2 types of people in the world: those that can derive missing data.”
The third option is just that it truly doesn’t matter, usually because of the rule of the first point. How long it takes to get to the destination, whether 3 hours or 4 hours, or 3.5 hours… doesnt matter if the destination closes in 2 hours. “More than 2” is complete enough. Some things are ok with vague answers because the question was vague. Someone may have said “how long does it take to get there” but that truly doesnt matter, because the secret real question was “Can we arrive before the store closes”
Your list of cases can be paraphrased thus:
- Case 1: information known is incomplete, but sufficient.
- Case 2: information known is complete, and sufficient.
- Case 3: see case 1.
Yes, those cases are easy to deal with, even on the spectrum.
Hard cases are where information is insufficient, and consequences of the decision are serious.
Neurotypicals (& ADDers) facing genuinely insufficient information often prefer a decision regardless - instead of admitting they cannot yet make a sound one. They prioritise impatience over correctness; short-term over long-term.
That bias is a factor in much social, environmental, and economic harm.
I’m aware. Those cases all extend though. Because a lot of times the decision isn’t intended to be a concrete answer.
I just had to conduct an interview. I got to talk to the person for a whole hour. And now I need to determine if we should hire this person.
I definitely have insufficient information. No interview process has ever finished with an abundance of complete information (well, if the candidate is bad enough or just screaming slurs the whole time, that’s pretty complete). And yet I have to make a serious decision that has real consequences for my company AND for the candidate.
I don’t get the option to gather more information. I get it. This case is not fun to deal with.
But regardless of what the company says, the question isn’t “do I think this person will without a doubt be our top employee” or “WILL this person succeed” … the question is “Given the information at hand, do I think there is a higher likelihood of the person succeeding or struggling?” I can make a decision based on “given the information at hand” … and when I do, I always qualify it as such.
If I say yes, and they hire the person, and they don’t fit at the company, I can still just point to “they answered all the interview questions properly” and it’s not my fault things went poorly. I may also say no to amazing candidates who just didn’t represent themselves well in the interview. Even if I cannot make a sound decision, I have to make one though.
And maybe I’m just unlucky in life, but I feel like I face a lot of situations where I need to make decisions with incomplete information just because more information isn’t available, or time is truly a factor in the decision. Some of life is always going to require some guesswork. And we can just try our best to make educated guesses. There is no such thing as “complete” information.
But I fully agree with you that there are situations where some people are just impatient, and corners are cut. But a lot of neurotypicals often don’t like those people too. That’s not just “neurotypicals do this” … that’s “lazy/impatient people do this” and I guess I’m lucky in the sense that I rarely have to deal with this, but then again, I work in a field where basically everyone is on the spectrum.
I fully agree with you that there are situations where some people are just impatient, and corners are cut
👍
a lot of neurotypicals often don’t like those people too
Unfortunately, that is not my experience.
the question isn’t “do I think this person will without a doubt be our top employee” or “WILL this person succeed” … the question is “Given the information at hand, do I think there is a higher likelihood of the person succeeding or struggling?” […] If I say yes, and they hire the person, and they don’t fit at the company, I can still just point to “they answered all the interview questions properly” and it’s not my fault things went poorly.
This is an instance of your case 1, which is not really what this thread is about.
Yep. It’s maddening. It’s also a skill, same as anything else. It requires regular exercise. I hope this doesn’t sound condescending; it’s how I had to walk myself through these kinds of situations in the early days.
For trivial decisions like what to get for dinner, flip a coin to determine. If you feel yourself regretting the coin flip, just do the other choice. It’s what you subconsciously wanted more.
For important decisions, start with the knowledge that you will likely never know everything. Then, realize that beyond a certain level of seriousness, there is rarely an ideal outcome; there are only outcomes whose drawbacks you can live with or work around.
From there, curate the info that will help you. Break available info into pieces. Write shit down or draw pictures. Put together some questions. Those are your known unknowns. The more you do this kind of stuff, the more of a feel you’ll have for how these known unknowns will work out. But, even at the beginning, thinking through these questions will give you more confidence.
Spend a little time working through places where unknown unknowns will trip you up. A good way to do this is to imagine you’ve made the decision, and asking yourself what you’ll be regretting next week. Another good thing is to think back to similar decisions made by others, and thinking about what caused issues for them. Again, the more you do this, the more of a feel you’ll have for how things will go.
Show your work with your decision. “I’ve assumed A and am recommending Decision D. We’ll have extra work around X and Y, but those can be mitigated far more than the consequences for Decision E.”
Yeah it’s not perfect and you’ll make mistakes, but you’ll develop more instinct around what’s available to work with.
From there, curate the info that will help you. Break available info into pieces. [Analyse] unknown unknowns … Show your work …
This is a perfect illustration of, “I decide to obtain more complete information.”
Thank you for confirming I’m not the only person who does this!
I tend to to think in probabilities. So something is more likely than the other with just a bit and then depending on the quality of information I get it rises. I generally am pretty unwilling to say something is definately so.
