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Jacopo's avatar

I think the reason why we think less hard about big decisions is that there is usually a default solution which is not ideal but we can expect to be far from the worst possible. Trying to improve on that on the individual level will initially increase the variance of the outcome much more than the expected value, and we strongly don't wont important decisions to go disastrously. In addition, it is hard to figure out how much effort is enough to reduce the variance.

Health decisions are the perfect example: "I trust my doctor" can lead to mistakes, but it's way safer than "I did my own research" in the vast majority of circumstances. And even researching which doctor to trust can easily lead you to a charlatan unless you are very careful.

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Chad Mulligan's avatar

To cosign what 5ive wrote: there's no mystery here. We resort to heuristics on these "biggest conflicts" because they are the hardest and messiest, and it's the most difficult to weigh the different interests involved.

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