Is Influence of Personal values and beliefs in Decision Making wrong ?

QuirkyZen

For most of the people personal values and beliefs have a lot of influence in their decisions but there are some people who have managed to keep their beliefs at side and make decisions while being completely neutral. Making decisions based on your personal beliefs and values is not always bad. Sometimes the decisions made according to your personal beliefs can be better than the decisions made if you were neutral. But for those decisions to be better than the ones made neutrally there is one condition. You have to have correct beliefs. What are beliefs and whether ones beliefs are correct or not is a different topic but the thing is that making decisions according to your beliefs is not as bad as we often tend to think about it. But making decisions according to your beliefs has a downside too. If your beliefs are wrong then you will make bad decisions. That is the reason that making decisions while being neutral is often considered best because one's chances of having correct beliefs or a lot closed than his chances of having wrong beliefs. So, the impact of personal beliefs in decision making can be good or bad it just depends on your beliefs.

Echarmion

Making decisions based on your personal beliefs and values is not always bad. Sometimes the decisions made according to your personal beliefs can be better than the decisions made if you were neutral. — QuirkyZen

What metric are you using here to assess how "good" a decision is?

What are beliefs and whether ones beliefs are correct or not is a different topic — QuirkyZen

Well I think you're going to have to elaborate because as it stands it's hard to figure out what you're talking about. You seem to be using "belief" to refer to (moral? religious?) value judgements. But obviously some value judgements are always required when making any decision, so you must be referring to some specific kind of belief?

SophistiCat

↪QuirkyZen

Your question is too general. A lot depends on what decision you are making and which beliefs are influencing it. A decision has to be guided by some beliefs, otherwise it would just be random, and that can't even be called a decision.

Decisions about employee compensation should not be guided by personal likes and dislikes, but they absolutely should be guided by beliefs about work performance and other relevant factors.

On the other hand, a decision about a dinner invitation may well be guided by your personal feelings towards the people you wish to invite.

QuirkyZen

What metric are you using here to assess how "good" a decision is? — Echarmion

Well there is no metric for measuring if a belief is correct or not and that is the reason why being neutral while making a decision is important because only 1 belief or a few beliefs regarding a certain topic can be correct and most beliefs are wrong and that's why mathematically being neutral and making decisions without showing baisenes towards your own beliefs is the best option in most of the cases

QuirkyZen

You seem to be using "belief" to refer to (moral? religious?) value judgements. But obviously some value judgements are always required when making any decision, so you must be referring to some specific kind of belief? — Echarmion

We are talking about beliefs in general whether moral, religious or any other beliefs. Yes we need a belief to make decisions and practically one can't make a decision without the influence of his personal beliefs he will be influenced by his personal beliefs even if a little bit. We need to have some beliefs for our decision and if I'm talking about a neutral decision then we don't take those beliefs from ourselves but we take them from our environment after verifying those.
Hope that your confusion is clear if not then please do inform me.

QuirkyZen

Your question is too general. A lot depends on what decision you are making and which beliefs are influencing it. A decision has to be guided by some beliefs, otherwise it would just be random, and that can't even be called a decision. — SophistiCat

I agree with you on the fact that decision can't be made without beliefs but if you read the title then you will know that I'm not saying that we have to make decisions without any beliefs I'm talking about personal beliefs. Yes we have to use some beliefs and those can even be personal but the rate of success for a decision made by an average man according to his personal beliefs is very low mathematically. I'm basically saying that for a normal person the best option is to not make decisions according to his personal beliefs but he should see the things from neutral point of view (get the information or beliefs from surroundings and verify those) and then he will have higher chances of making a good decision mathematically. But being neutral is in itself a paradox because you still have to somehow verify the information and there will be a influence of personal beliefs even if a bit.

T Clark

there are some people who have managed to keep their beliefs at side and make decisions while being completely neutral. — QuirkyZen

What you're describing is not consistent with what is known about human decision making. Emotions and values are an integral part of thinking and decision making. This from "The Feeling of What Happens" by Antonio Damasio.

For example, work from my laboratory has shown that emotion is integral to the processes of reasoning and decision making, for worse and for better. This may sound a bit counterintuitive, at first, but there is evidence to support it. The findings come from the study of several individuals who were entirely rational in the way they ran their lives up to the time when, as a result of neurological damage in specific sites of their brains, they lost a certain class of emotions and, in a momentous parallel development, lost their ability to make rational decisions. Those individuals can still use the instruments of their rationality and can still call up the knowledge of the world around them. Their ability to tackle the logic of a problem remains intact. Nonetheless, many of their personal and social decisions are ir- rational, more often disadvantageous to their selves and to others than not. I have suggested that the delicate mechanism of reasoning is no longer affected, nonconsciously and on occasion even consciously, by signals hailing from the neural machinery that underlies emotion. — Antonio Damasio - The Feeling of What Happens.

those decisions to be better than the ones made neutrally there is one condition. You have to have correct beliefs. What are beliefs and whether ones beliefs are correct or not is a different topic but the thing is that making decisions according to your beliefs is not as bad as we often tend to think about it. — QuirkyZen

I don't understand. Can you give me an example of a decision that can be made without values and beliefs? We have discussions here on the forum ad nauseum about what constitutes knowledge. What is knowledge other than beliefs about the state of affairs in the world - something you believe to be true?

QuirkyZen

I don't understand. Can you give me an example of a decision that can be made without values and beliefs? We have discussions here on the forum ad nauseum about what constitutes knowledge. What is knowledge other than beliefs about the state of affairs in the world - something you believe to be true? — T Clark

I am not saying that a decision can be made without beliefs and values but I'm saying that it can be made without personal beliefs and values (though I have mentioned in comments on this discussion that it is impossible to make a decision without influence of personal beliefs but we can make the influence very low).

T Clark

I am not saying that a decision can be made without beliefs and values but I'm saying that it can be made without personal beliefs and values (though I have mentioned in comments on this discussion that it is impossible to make a decision without influence of personal beliefs but we can make the influence very low). — QuirkyZen

Again, I can't think of an example of a decision that can be made without values. When I was an engineer, the first question in any decision making for a course of action was always is it ethical? is it in my client's best interest? Is it consistent with my obligations as a professional engineer.

Moliere

Well there is no metric for measuring if a belief is correct or not and that is the reason why being neutral while making a decision is important because only 1 belief or a few beliefs regarding a certain topic can be correct and most beliefs are wrong and that's why mathematically being neutral and making decisions without showing baisenes towards your own beliefs is the best option in most of the cases — QuirkyZen

How is "being neutral" not a belief? Is it not a belief of yours that it is better to be neutral in making decisions?

So it seems you have a belief without a metric for measuring your beliefs correctness, in which case you should be neutral towards that belief, which would seem like you ought not have a belief at all about whether one ought be neutral, or let their personal beliefs influence their decisions, or to not let their personal beliefs influence their decisions.

QuirkyZen

Again, I can't think of an example of a decision that can be made without values — T Clark

I think there might be a misunderstanding between us because you are saying that a decision cant be made without value and in my last reply I told you that I also believe that decision can't be made without beliefs and values but I also believe that decision can be made without personal beliefs and values(though not 100%)

Igitur

↪QuirkyZen

This has to be more specific. If a decision isn’t based on beliefs (including knowledge) then it must not be a decision (or it’s random/meaningless, depending on whether you allow beliefs that enable you to choose something.
The real question is “Are there personal beliefs that we should ignore when making decisions that x”, x being a variety of things (affect other people, are important, etc). The answer is probably yes, but it's not like it's going to be easy to decide which ones those are.
And before you say that it’s about personal beliefs, you must define what that means to have a meaningful conversation about it.

QuirkyZen

How is "being neutral" not a belief? Is it not a belief of yours that it is better to be neutral in making decisions? — Moliere

You are completely right I I have also talked about this in one comment. We can say that being neutral is a paradox and it contradicts itself but the thing is that if we are being neutral then we have the lowest number of beliefs we can possibly have and thus this is the best option we have.

T Clark

I think there might be a misunderstanding between us because you are saying that a decision cant be made without value and in my last reply I told you that I also believe that decision can't be made without beliefs and values but I also believe that decision can be made without personal beliefs and values(though not 100%) — QuirkyZen

I don't think there is a misunderstanding, just a disagreement. What is ethical is a personal value. Even an understanding that it is necessary to consider ethics is a personal value and belief. All my professional decisions as an engineer took my personal values into account.

Can you provide an example of the kind of decision you are talking about?

QuirkyZen

↪Igitur

I also agree with you on the thing that if we make a decision without beliefs than that is just a random decision but I'm not saying that we have to make a decision without beliefs but I'm saying that we have to make a decision while trying not to get influenced by personal beliefs(though making a decision without getting influenced by personal beliefs is impossible you will get influenced even if it's very minute)

QuirkyZen

↪T Clark

I get what you are saying
You are trying to say that even if I try not be influenced by personal beliefs that itself is a belief and you are getting influenced by that. Is that what you are trying to say?

T Clark

even if I try not be influenced by personal beliefs that itself is a belief — QuirkyZen

Although this is true, it's not what I've been trying to explain. I thought I expressed myself clearly, perhaps not. To go any further I'm just going to have to repeat myself.

It will really help if you can give us an example of a decision that you or anyone has made without input from personal values and beliefs.

kindred

It will really help if you can give us an example of a decision that you or anyone has made without input from personal values and beliefs. — T Clark

What about a forced decision, one that is imposed upon someone without their consent ?

QuirkyZen

It will really help if you can give us an example of a decision that you or anyone has made without input from personal values and beliefs. — T Clark

A simple example of this is a judge in a courtroom given a decision. There he is not influenced by his personal beliefs and values but rather gets beliefs from external sources.

T Clark

What about a forced decision, one that is imposed upon someone without their consent ? — kindred

How is the person forced? By threats? How could such a decision be neutral?

kindred

That is the reason that making decisions while being neutral is often considered best because one's chances of having correct beliefs or a lot closed than his chances of having wrong beliefs. So, the impact of personal beliefs in decision making can be good or bad it just depends on your beliefs — QuirkyZen

I can make correct decisions based on my taste rather then belief, the sense of taste is subjective to me for example I prefer to drink orange juice instead of cola because I prefer the taste of the former. This means I’m not being neutral yet I’m making the best decision for myself.

We can make unbiased decisions which turn out to be bad decisions for example arbitrarily backing a team to win at a certain sporting event which later turns out to be the wrong decision. That decision could have been easily made by flipping a coin rather than personal values or beliefs on the strength/weakness of such team.

Echarmion

A simple example of this is a judge in a courtroom given a decision. There he is not influenced by his personal beliefs and values but rather gets beliefs from external sources. — QuirkyZen

I think a judge's beliefs about a case are entirely personal beliefs. Indeed it's the judges task to do the judging. A judge must be personally convinced of their decision.

A judge makes a personal effort to be neutral by making sure they only consider factors which are within their purview. It's not that the beliefs are not personal, it's that they're formed by adhering to specific methodology.

kindred

↪T Clark

No threats, but circumstances, such as: you have to work otherwise you will end up on the streets or no food on table is such an example of a forced decision, on the other extreme slavery was a forced decision too or a custodial sentence handed by a judge to a defendant a decision with which the defendant has no choice but to accept.

T Clark

A simple example of this is a judge in a courtroom given a decision. There he is not influenced by his personal beliefs and values but rather gets beliefs from external sources. — QuirkyZen

I disagree. Have you ever read a judges decision in a court case. Just look at recent events in the Supreme Court in the US. How could nine judges come to such differing conclusions about the same facts and laws? There clearly is a connection between their political and personal values and how they voted.

QuirkyZen

↪T Clark

Now that you talk about it like that I think you are right and no decision can be neutral and every decision is influenced by personal beliefs

T Clark

No threats, but circumstances, such as: you have to work otherwise you will end up on the streets or no food on table is such an example of a forced decision, on the other extreme slavery was a forced decision too or a custodial sentence handed by a judge to a defendant a decision with which the defendant has no choice but to accept. — kindred

In the first example, forcing someone to make a decision doesn't force them to make a neutral one. As for slaves and convicted criminals, there are no decisions involved at all. Crooks don't decide to go to jail. Slaves don't decide to do the work their owners tell them to.

T Clark

Now that you talk about it like that I think you are right and no decision can be neutral and every decision is influenced by personal beliefs — QuirkyZen

You're new to the forum, so maybe you don't know how rare that kind of acknowledgment is. I appreciate it.

kindred

In the first example, forcing someone to make a decision doesn't force them to make a neutral one — T Clark

The first example is a decision not based on neutrality, values or beliefs though. We’re not always making decision based on neutrality, personal beliefs or values but based on circumstances for example a poor person buys cheap products because they’re restricted by their finances not their tastes, values or personal beliefs.

QuirkyZen

↪T Clark

I'm quite impressed by you because when I wrote about this topic I was 100 percent sure that what I'm saying is correct and there is no error except that being neutral is also kind of having a belief but after talking to you I got to know how little sighted I was because you pointed out the flaw easily while I was thinking I cant be wrong.

Igitur

↪QuirkyZen

What kinds of beliefs specifically do you think we should aim to suspend?

Tom Storm

For most of the people personal values and beliefs have a lot of influence in their decisions but there are some people who have managed to keep their beliefs at side and make decisions while being completely neutral. — QuirkyZen

Now that you talk about it like that I think you are right and no decision can be neutral and every decision is influenced by personal beliefs — QuirkyZen

Yes.

How could 'neutrality' even work? Our values, goals, and decisions are all shaped by affective orientations, driven by what pleases or satisfies us—by dispositional factors, experiences, and cultural practices. I doubt anyone can escape these influences. What we elevate is always based on subjective preferences, cultural norms, etc, rather than some neutral or objective standpoint. I also suspect that one person's account of neutral is likely to vary from another's.

Is Influence of Personal values and beliefs in Decision Making wrong ?

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