Along Came “The One”

I am a huge advocate of a demanding vetting process when it comes to selecting a car, a house, candidates for public office, or a spouse. There would be less lemons, separations, annullments, and divorces if people would put a little more effort in this process. Or in the case of presidential candidates, less protests, less impeachment attempts, less bickering, less coup attempts, and more opportunities for greater prosperity.

What would you do if you were picking a spot for your residence? Would you choose it by just looking at the exterior? Of course, you wouldn’t. You will walk through it many  times, inspect the rooms, fixtures, lights, have an appraiser come in. You will also look at the neighborhood and check whether its is safe and secure? You will also check the facilities – is there a common recreation area like courts, playgrounds, pools, work-out rooms. You will also check the location whether it is far or near your work. And you will check if you can afford it. You do the same thing when choosing a car. You review its features – efficiency, mileage, safety ratings, warranty, handling. You ask feedback from your mechanic, your friends and family.

Unfortunately, some of of us (presumably, a lot) do not take the same rule of thought to the selection process when choosing a spouse – or for that matter, a presidential candidate.

Shouldn’t the process be more demanding than the procedures we use for selecting a house or a car? Shouldn’t we ensure that our future spouse or candidate is an excellent fit for us and the relationship built together can weather the storms of life?

Each person will have many things to consider, some will have less to consider. Others probably have lists which can be short or long, but the list that I know best is my list. So here it goes. You will easily recognize the items in my list as you may have come across the items sometime in your life, one time or another.

Due Diligence – Find Out Who They REALLY Are

Just like hunting for a house or a car, the only way to find out if you are getting a lemon is if you inspect and do your due diligence in great detail to find out who the candidate REALLY is. Look beyond the headlines, all the media projection might make the candidate look good, when in reality, the candidate is actually a can of worms. When the superficialities are removed and you finally meet the REAL candidate, you may not like them. So, get to know THAT candidate before you vote for them, or in the case of a spouse – before you get married to him or her.

The easiest way to know who a candidate REALLY is, (next to actually knowing and spedning time with the candidate) is to invest time in reading about the candidate, asking friends and family who might know the candidate, even his enemies – as it gives you an idea of how such candidate is seen under the most unflattering of lights.

The election will not be until May 10, 2010 – there is no need to rush into making a choice. Take your time – get to REALLY know the candidates some more.

“Chemistry” – Should Be Someone You Like

Have you ever been in a relationship you don’t like? Sucks doesn’t it? If you vote for a person, shouldn’t you at the very least like the candidate first?

A lot of people vote for candidates they don’t like because they feel the overall person is good. Or to feel “safe”, to be “protected” from a worse candidate who might win if they vote for the candidate they like, thus they choose the second best candidate or even the next to worst candidate as long as its not the worst candidate – they resort to a phenomenon known as satisficing.

Satisficing (a portmanteau of “satisfy” and “suffice”) is a decision-making strategy that attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution. A satisficing strategy may often be (near) optimal if the costs of the decision-making process itself, such as the cost of obtaining complete information, are considered in the outcome calculus.The word satisfice was coined by Herbert Simon. He pointed out that human beings lack the cognitive resources to maximize: we usually do not know the relevant probabilities of outcomes, we can rarely evaluate all outcomes with sufficient precision, and our memories are weak and unreliable. A more realistic approach to rationality takes into account these limitations: This is called bounded rationality. Satisficing in Groups Satisficing occurs in consensus building when the group looks towards a solution everyone can agree on even if it may not be the best. Satisficing in Economics In economics, satisficing is a behavior which attempts to achieve at least some minimum level of a particular variable, but which does not necessarily maximize its value. The most common application of the concept in economics is in the behavioural theory of the firm, which, unlike traditional accounts, postulates that producers treat profit not as a goal to be maximized, but as a constraint. Under these theories, a critical level of profit must be achieved by firms; thereafter, priority is attached to the attainment of other goals. Satisficing in Social Cognition As an example of satisficing, in the field of social cognition, Jon Krosnick proposed a theory of statistical survey satisficing which says that optimal question answering by a survey respondent involves a great deal of cognitive work and that some people would use satisficing to reduce that burden. Some people may shortcut their cognitive processes in two ways: Weak satisficing: Respondent executes all cognitive steps involved in optimizing, but less completely and with bias. Strong satisficing: Respondent offers responses that will seem reasonable to the interviewer without any memory search or information integration. Likelihood to satisfice is linked to respondent ability, respondent motivation and task difficulty Regarding survey answers, satisficing manifests in: choosing explicitly offered no-opinion response option choosing socially desirable responses non-differentiation when a battery of questions asks for ratings of multiple objects on the same response scale acquiescence response bias, which is the tendency to agree with any assertion, regardless of its content Satisficing in Decision Making In decision making, satisficing explains the tendency to select the first option that meets a given need or select the option that seems to address most needs rather than the “optimal” solution.

What am saying is, while a candidate may be adequate, it doesn’t mean they are the optimal or the best candidate.

Shared Values – Values Should be Similar

When you vote for a candidate (or when you decide to get married) you are saying you are willing to work with the candidate (or to become one). This will be tough if your values are fundamentally different, possibly even on opposite ends. The monarchist or fascist will clash with the democrat;  pro-labor will clash with pro-management; pro-land reform will clash with anti-land reform; protectionists will clash with free market advocates, so on and so forth.

You don’t want to be miserable, disturbed, and unsettled on the core issues. The trivial issues may vary, but you should be in agreement with regards to the central issues that move you.

Looking in the Same Direction – Life Plans Should be Similar

If one person’s life plan is to live in the suburbs while the other wants to live in downtown or the beach or the forest for that matter, a major conflict will be in the offing because your visions don’t align at all. Thus, it is important to see whether your vision of life matches that of the candidate. For short, you ask what is your candidates “life plan” – what is your candidates platform? Does it have substance? Are his goals measurable and time-bound? Is it achievable?

Are the candidate’s plans relevant to your life’s plan? Does your candidate even have a credible plan at all? If a plan is lacking, you need to seriusly rethink your choice. What if your future spouse turned out to be the Batman or the Ghost Rider or the Joker. Good or bad, do their life plans blend with your plan?  Do you want to go somewhere or do you want to go nowhere. Is that somewhere you have in mind, the same somewhere your candidate has in mind.

If you don’t know your candidates platform, well, this ties into the previous points, you better know. Remember, the platform may look adequate, but it may not be the best – so, take your time, and get to know not just the candidate, know the platform as well.

Monster-In Laws – Able to Get Along With Their “Families”

A lot of people overlook this point, but it is significant as well. Voting for a candidate also means, you marry the “family”, too – Kamaganak Inc., Kabits/Thugs and Company, Mistahs Inc, Cronies et al, and all the vested interests that come with the candidate. If you don’t like your potential “in-laws”, do think twice about voting for the candidate, becuase you will inherit that candidate’s “family” (and all their drama) as well.

For the Mathematically-Gifted – Apply Decision Theory

For the mathematically-gifted, if you you want to go further, Larry Kahn, an MIT alumni has an article on Decision Theory and Selecting a Spouse. In this article, he provides the  different ways by which people seek and interpret  information. Larry provides a short description of the five theories he discusses below:

Image Theory – This theory has three parts (images). The value image consists of the decision maker’s principles; what’s right or wrong, any organizational rules or principles that must be followed, etc. The second image is the trajectory image, the goals that the decision maker wants to achieve. The third image is the strategic image, which are the plans adopted to achieve the goals, including making decisions, evaluating, and modifying approaches based on results. Decisions can be made by screening out candidates because they don’t pass a minimum level, or by doing some sort of combined comparison to rank the candidates in preference order. Recognition Primed Decision Making (RPD) – This model describes how experts make decisions under stressful situations, perhaps due to time pressure or rapidly changing environments. The decision maker uses their expertise and experience to quickly asses the situation and to come up with an acceptable course of action. They then “play out” the course of action to see whether it is feasible or requires modification. If the first choice doesn’t work, they will go back, select another option, and do the evaluation again. A good example is a firefighting captain who arrives on the scene of a burning building. He will quickly recognize what to do and act accordingly, but the situation may change rapidly and he will have to stay on top of the situation, perhaps changing priorities on the fly. One aspect of RPD is that the expert can quickly rule out unimportant information or unusable solutions, almost on a subconscious level, whereas a novice would need much more time to explicitly think through all possibilities. Explanation Based Model – There are two parts to this model: The coherent story and the choices. The theory says that the decision maker will attempt to create a full story from some incomplete raw facts and then match this story against possible choice options to come up with a solution. For example, a jury will try to formulate a full explanation of a defendant’s behavior from the evidence, general knowledge about similar events, and knowledge about story structures in general. With their completed story, they will then try to match that with the choices (verdict categories). If a match is found, they can make a decision, otherwise the process would have to be repeated with additional inputs. Lens Model – The lens model is a part of Social Judgment Theory. It tries to analytically build a model of how well a person’s judgments match up with the environment they are trying to predict. The interface between the two are the cues that represent the environment. An example is a trader trying to predict what the market will do so that they can pick good stocks. Some of the cues might be unemployment rate, price/earnings ratio of the stock, inflation rate, etc. The trader observes the cues and makes a judgment on how to interpret them, then selects stocks. The lens model takes a large number of these trial cases and comes up with equations for how well the trader does, plus other models for how well the cues are judged or how well they represent the environment. Even with perfect information, most task success rates are nowhere near 100%. This is due to many factors, including errors in judgment, insufficient or unrecognized cues, or important cue patterns that are hard to determine. Dominance Testing – There are four major steps to making a decision. First, the decision maker simply screens out alternatives that do not meet minimum standards. After that, if there is more than one choice left, the second step is to select a promising alternative. This can be a fairly subjective choice based on preferences or initial reaction. The third step is to test for dominance. An alternative is dominant if, for all the selection criteria, the alternative has no disadvantages and at least one advantage, it is selected. Often, this is not the case, and the fourth step is entered. This is where the decision maker tries to restructure or reinterpret the information in order to make the promising alternative dominant so it can be selected. This can be good or bad, since if overdone it can mean talking yourself into making a bad decision.

It will be good to let the candidate know that he/she is being evaluated on a whole range of issues – past, present, and future- a process based on merit and not just based on a visceral emotional reaction.

It means you are taking the matter seriously, and you would rather vet the candidate the thoroughly if you are going to bet your life on the candidate. A candidate who does not provide you with the facts which allow you to make a rational informed decision does not deserve your attention at all.

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