A Grain of Salt: Why You Must Make Your Own Decisions

By Daniel Romm

Wisdom is the ability to make good decisions, and this book is about decisions why you must make your own and how to make good ones. The habit of making your own decisions is the subject of the first part. A 12-step process for how to make good ones is the subject of the second part.

Forming new habits is hard to do but the habit of making your own decisions is the key to wisdom. Why? Because accepting opinions and advice at face value from authorities will mislead you more often than not. Before forming a new habit, you must first break the old one. As exemplified by the koans of Zen Buddhism, shock treatment is one effective way. It will be the approach taken. I am going to try to force you to reconsider ideas that you have always taken for granted by challenging some obvious truths in the disciplines of physics, life science, philosophy, law, economics, probability theory and statistics, media communications, politics and theology to see if they hold up under scrutiny. You may come away even more convinced that they are true than you were before, but you will no longer accept them at face value. You will have thought about them and made your own decisions that is the entire point! Whether or not I agree with your conclusions is irrelevant. Besides, having heard and digested my best arguments you are now more likely to be right than I, since I havent heard yours.

Topics covered include a hypothesis for the existence of dark matter, the meaninglessness of the concept "intelligence", the paradoxical notion of omniscience, the root cause of political dissension, how to get rich, euthanasia, extra-sensory perception, the circularity of Einsteins special theory of relativity, the nature of cause, cholesterol, free will vs. determinism, computers, gambling, insurance and genetic engineering. There is something of interest for all: young, old, rich, poor, high school graduates, and college professors. Some of the discussions are weighty, but they dont require any special advanced knowledge. They do, however, require you to think. Many of the arguments are subtle and some of the conclusions may surprise you as mentioned above, this isnt an easy chapter. But the rewards will be worth the effort. All second-hand opinions and advice, including mine, should be taken with a grain of salt, no matter how authentic the credentials of those labeled they in the phrase they say appear to be. Your happiness may depend on it! The decisions you make in life have a great, if not the greatest, impact on the quality of your life, and though a lifetime of good decisions doesnt guarantee happiness, a lifetime of bad ones is sure to lead to misery. Good decisions depend upon accurate facts and reliable theories, hence the need to make your own independent analyses.

The second part contains a straightforward 12-step process for making good decisions, along with some applications. Although the process has worked quite well for me, you may prefer to use another that is better suited to your tastes the important thing is to have a process, any process, so long as it works.

The appendix can be omitted altogether without losing the thread of the message. It contains two papers I have written, both of which require at least an undergraduate background in mathematics. The first paper also requires a solid understanding of modern physics. A knowledge of contract law would be useful for studying the first application discussed in the second paper.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 30, 2004
• ISBN: 9781462826766

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Copyright © 2005 by Daniel Romm.

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Contents

I. Introduction

II. Why You Must Decide for Yourself

1 Media and communications

2 Advertising

3 Politics

4 Law

5 Economics

6 Philosophy

7 Theology

8 Scientific method—cause and effect

9 Physical sciences

10 Life sciences

11 Probability/Statistics

III. How to Make Good Decisions

IV. Appendix

Author’s Biography

Endnotes

Introduction

Wisdom is the ability to make good decisions, and

this book is about decisions—why you must make your own and how to make good ones. Learning how to make them is easy; all it takes is practice. But acquiring wisdom isn’t easy, so it must require more. It does. You also must learn why it is important to always make your own decisions so that you will begin to do it routinely—and, as we shall see, this is very difficult. Having heard this, some of you may want to go directly to part III, which covers how, and skip part II, which covers why. But before you do, I must warn you that the more you are tempted to bypass part II, the more you need to read it. The more urgently you seek advice from another about how to do something, the less you have developed the habit of making your own decisions, which is the subject of part II. If you don’t automatically decide for yourself whether or not I know what I’m talking about before you let me tell you how to do something, then you aren’t ready for part III.

Forming new habits is hard to do—this is precisely what makes part II difficult. The habit of making your own decisions is the key to wisdom. Why? Because accepting opinions and advice at face value from authorities will mislead you more often than not. The mere fact that I have written a book on decisions may suffice to make me an authority, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that I am worth listening to—another reason for reading part II is that it happens to be the only way you can find out whether or not I am.

Before forming a new habit, you must first break the old one. As exemplified by the koans of Zen Buddhism, shock treatment is one effective way. It will be the approach taken in part II. I am going to try to force you to reconsider ideas that you have always taken for granted by challenging some obvious truths to see if they hold up under scrutiny. You may come away even more convinced that they are true than you were before, but you will no longer accept them at face value. You will have thought about them and made your own decisions—that is the entire point of part II! Whether or not I agree with your conclusions is irrelevant. Besides, having heard and digested my best arguments you will more likely be right than I, since I haven’t heard yours. Topics covered include something of interest for all: young, old, rich, poor, high school graduates, and college professors. Some of the discussions are weighty, but they don’t require any special knowledge. They do, however, require you to think. Many of the arguments are subtle and some of the conclusions may surprise you—as mentioned above, this isn’t an easy chapter. But the rewards will be worth the effort. All second-hand opinions and advice, including mine, should be taken with a grain of salt, no matter how authentic the credentials of those labeled they in the phrase they say appear to be. Your happiness may depend on it! The decisions you make in life have a great, if not the greatest, impact on the quality of your life, and though a lifetime of good decisions doesn’t guarantee happiness, a lifetime of bad ones is sure to lead to misery. Good decisions depend upon accurate facts and reliable theories, hence the need to make your own independent analyses.

Part III contains a straightforward 12-step process for making good decisions, along with some applications. Although the process has worked quite well for me, you may prefer to use another that is better suited to your tastes—the important thing is to have a process, any process, so long as it works. Unfortunately, I am not privy to the process used by other more successful people. The credibility of mine would certainly gain if I were able to corroborate its value by including examples taken from the lives of luminaries; but, alas, I am unable to do so.

The appendix can be omitted altogether without losing the thread of the message. It contains two papers I have written, both of which require at least an undergraduate background in mathematics. The first paper also requires a solid understanding of modern physics. A knowledge of contract law would be useful for studying the first application discussed in the second paper.

Why You Must Decide for Yourself

Perhaps the biggest challenge to today’s society is how to

separate wheat from chaff when trying to digest advice from purported experts. Academicians, professional scientists, medical researchers, business consultants, political consultants, non-fiction writers, lawyers, psychologists, economists, literary critics, theologians, media commentators and other self-proclaimed gurus bombard us daily with their latest arguments recommending what to believe, what to eat, how to be happy, how to succeed in anything, which medicines are good for us and which aren’t, what ethics we should espouse, why we should or shouldn’t believe in God, which books are worthwhile and which aren’t, which products are safe, which environmental practices are essential for survival, how to get rich, which political systems are best, how to run a business, which societies are evil and—in a word—why we should think like they do.

Certainly we should pay attention to what the better educated among us say, but we must be particularly cautious about two pervasive influences that justify a high degree of skepticism, namely the profit motive and the human tendency toward presumptuousness.[1]All professionals today are competing for funding, which ultimately comes from us, the non-professionals. This is especially true in academia, where a publish or perish mentality reigns. Research and results are required for survival. The upshot is that bright people don’t have the luxury of waiting for a good idea to occur to them. Instead, they must presumptuously force premature, often bad, ideas upon the laity. Furthermore, the ideas must be presented with the same air of certitude that a thoroughly researched, well thought out, verifiable theory would justifiably have. Economic necessity requires it.

The circumstances that forced talented early writers[2] to produce large amounts of drivel in order to survive are even more prevalent today. As a result, the turnover rate of accepted theories has increased dramatically. These theories are merely fads, to be replaced every decade or so by the real facts, even though they are presumed to be authentic by those promulgating them. The miracle food has switched from liver, to spinach, to broccoli, to wine, to peanuts in a few short years. The miracle drug has switched from penicillin to vitamin C to aspirin to statins. The miracle cure for heart disease has switched from surgery, to exercise, to non-smoking, to low cholesterol, to weight loss. The list goes on and on. So-called proven research gives way to more recent, irrefutable evidence every decade or so. The reason is evident with a little reflection; every new proven recommendation ushers in a public frenzy to buy new products. This, in turn, encourages those with vested interests to fund new research. Huge profits percolate down through the chain from the manufacturers to the research institutions, and, ultimately, to the individual researcher.

I will point out some ostensible examples of faulty logic, faulty research, questionable motives, and glaring omissions in various areas. The discussions are intended to be sketchy and provocative, not conclusive. They focus on presenting arguments, many of them original, mostly in support of minority positions, in order to help you