What Would Piss You Off More?

Introduction: Choose to Lose

Making decisions is fucking hard. Can I get an "amen" from the congregation? For serious.

It wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't so many of them to make every day. White or wheat? Cream or sugar? Paper or plastic? College or a job? Shrooms or ayahuasca? These are the questions that run endlessly through our collective psyche. Its exhausting.

One of the most unexpected and underexamined* human conditions is the overabundance of choice that has piggybacked on the evolution of modern society -- terrible, horrendous, paralyzing, soul-sucking choice. Okay, this last bit may have been an overdramatization. I will cop to being prone to such habits. But the basic thrust of my point is true.

(*well at least to my extremely limited canon, only Chuck Klosterman has examined it, but I am admittedly ignorant to pretty much all academic work ever created. So others may have touched upon this subject already, and likely with better skill)

As we glide effortlessly along the warm and fuzzy yarn line that is Father Time, I will readily admit that our lives are indeed continually improved by technology, science and human reason. Obstructions to progress and human endeavor are cleared away like fresh snow. Long-standing tyrannies are removed, eliminated.

The tyranny of distance? Gone, thanks first to ocean vessels, then trains, then cars, then airplanes, and then the internet (and hopefully teleportation sooner than later).
The tyranny of schedule? Vamoosed, thanks first to VCRs, then TIVO, and then YouTube. I'll watch kids play around with Diet Coke and Menthos when I want, thank you very much.
The tyranny of aging? A thing of the distant past, thanks to the practice of injecting fucking poison directly into one's fucking face.
The tyranny of small boners? Done, thanks to all those awesome pills I read about every time I open my email.
The tyranny of not knowing what its like to be the drummer for Blink 182, the bass player from KISS, the blonde dude from Backstreet Boys, the not-ugly one from 98 Degrees or the clock-wearing guy from Public Enemy? Kiss it goodbye, thanks to glorious cable programming.

You see don't you? Yes, yes, you do. It is obvious.

Everyday in every way everything is getting better all the time forever and ever and ever amen until the end of time always better. Onward and upward in a perfect heavenly trajectory, reaching our humble but honest hands towards the stars, into the beautiful and immaculate and unwrinkled and large-bonered future.

But, alas, not all is truly perfect. In addition to all the obvious improvement, we've also afforded ourselves the dubious gift of constant decision-making obligations, accompanied by persistent and boner-shrinking anxiety as we ponder what choices to make and then wonder endlessly after the fact if we made the right ones. Thus negating the advances in boner-building technology. Big or small, life is a series of unrelenting choices.

Let's start small. Take food for instance. In the Middle Ages your choices were relatively slim for dinner: gruel or gruel. During the Great Depression, it was cabbage soup or cabbage stew. Nowadays you could eat Red Peppers, Green Peppers, Orange Peppers, Banana Peppers, Jalepeno Peppers, Habenero Peppers, Pepperoncinis, Pepperoni Pizza, or Dr. Pepper. And that's just the pepper family.

Let's think big. Take post-adolesence. In the Middle-Ages your choices for how to spend your young adult life were restricted to metalsmithing or dying of the plauge. During the Great Depression, you could either hop trains or build bridges for a cripple. Nowadays, you could drop out of high school, work retail, sell drugs, go to college, join the armed forces, travel, build gravity bongs, join a fraternity, or play in a shitty band -- each with formative effects on the rest of your life on this planet.

While this staggering explosion of options certainly affords us more opportunity to carve out our own identities, it also eats up most of our time. We spend more time deciding what to do than actually doing it. Its hard to ignore how simple and uncluttered life was back in the proverbial day. The role of unrelenting choice in the postmodern anxiety boom cannot be understated. We are now constantly reminded that we could have had it the other way, the way we didn't choose.

What if I told you, my dear friend, that there was a way to make the correct decision every time, all the time. To avoid this existential paralysis. To always choose the path that leads you to the best outcome, from the tiny to the grandiose. From the question of scrambled vs. poached to the eternal conundrum of whether or not to believe in a higher power.

Always the right decision.

Well, I figured it out. It's a game called "What Would Piss You Off More?" and is relatively easy to play, assuming you have a working knowledge of college-level algebra, a scientific calculator (preferably with graphing functionality) and a little patience. Actually, a lot of patience.

But the rewards will justify the learning curve, trust me. Here's how to play.

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How to Play "What Would Piss You Off More?"

For the purposes of explaining the method, let's just pretend that we are a young, uneducated youth (unless that is already what you are, in which case this will be a relatively easy and salient exercise for you). We have dropped out of high school. We are dumb and/or lazy. College is not an option.

We mull over what to do with our life and have narrowed down our options to two real choices (*note: we are narrowing it down to just two only for purposes of simplicity. Most life decisions will offer you many more options to analyze).

Our options are to a) work at Wal-Mart or b) sell cocaine for money.

Sucks to be us. Obviously, there is no easy answer to this question. Each option seems to have its own pros and cons. With the help of "What Would Piss You Off More?", we will find the decision that best suits us.

1) First, we must recognize that all decisions we make have countless possible outcomes. For instance, if we choose to start selling cocaine for money, many different things could happen in the long-term. We could:

a) Be Very Successful And Buy A Lexus
b) Be Very Successful And Buy A Lexus With Spinning 26" Rims
c) Get Busted By the FBI
d) Get Shot And Die
e) Get Shot And Live
f) Leave The Game Unceremoniously And Then Record A Critically-Acclaimed Rap Album About Our Experiences
g) Leave The Game Unceremoniously And Then NOT Record A Critically-Acclaimed Rap Album About Our Experiences

These are just a few examples of possible outcomes to selling cocaine.

2) Second, we must recognize that some of these outcomes are more desirable than others. Obviously, this is a subjective matter dependent on the individual making the decision. But that's okay. That's the point. To play the game properly, every individual should be able to examine a healthy cross-section of the possible outcomes and determine their relative value to themselves. For our purposes, I will personally rank the outcomes described in #1 from most desirable to least desirable. Your rankings may be different.

Leave The Game Unceremoniously And Then Record A Critically-Acclaimed Rap Album About Our Experiences (best)
Be Very Successful And Buy A Lexus With Spinning 26" Rims
Be Very Successful And Buy A Lexus
Get Shot And Live (perhaps aiding a future critically-acclaimed rap album? Think of the glory!)
Leave the Game Unceremoniously and Then Do NOT Record A Critically Acclaimed Rap Album About Our Experiences (meh)
Get Busted By The FBI
Get Shot And Die (worst)

3) Third, we must quantify these outcomes on a numeric scale. How much is Leaving The Game Unceremoniously and Then Recording a Critically-Acclaimed Rap Album About Our Experiences "worth" to us relative to Getting Busted By the FBI? How much more do we want it, numerically speaking? This is called the Desirability Ratio (DR).

DRs are rated on a one-to-negative one scale (1 to -1) and all outcomes rate on this scale. Positive one (+1.00) is the best possible outcome, zero (0.00) is the halfway point where we're relatively indifferent to the outcome, negative one (-1.00) is the worst possible outcome.

I will now give our possible outcomes a desirability score:

Leave The Game Unceremoniously And Then Record A Critically-Acclaimed Rap Album About Our Experiences (0.97, every hustler's dream)
Be Very Successful And Buy A Lexus With Spinning 26" Rims (0.90)
Be Very Successful And Buy A Lexus (0.85)
Get Shot And Live (0.11, would be lower if the possibility of a future critically-acclaimed rap album didn't seem so feasible)
Leave the Game Unceremoniously and Then Do NOT Record A Critically Acclaimed Rap Album About Our Experiences (0.09, meh)
Get Busted By The FBI (-0.49)
Get Shot And Die (-1.00)

It is important to note that the possible outcomes to a life choice do not have to perfectly dovetail with the scale. For instance, getting shot and dying is not only the worst possible outcome of selling cocaine but the worst outcome possible in the entire world, therefore it would rate a -1.00 (lowest possible). But the worst possible outcome for a different decision like choosing to eat a bowl of cereal instead of a slice of toast may simply be an upset stomach due to using expired milk on your Kix, which, to me, would only rate a -0.13 (slightly below indifference, but still not a desirable outcome).

Now, yes, yes, you're right, you could concievably argue that death, the worst outcome in the entire world, is a possible outcome for every decision. This is hypothetically true. You could die from eating cereal by choking on a Kix or some shit. That is why outcome probablity is so crucial to the game. Read on, you impatient jerk.

4) Fourth, we must identify the probability of the various outcomes. These are called Probability Ratios (PR). In this game, probability is measured on a positive one-to-zero scale (1 to 0), and all outcomes rate their probability on this scale. Positive one (+1.00) is the most probable -- there is literally a 100% chance that an outcome will take place if you make the decision. Zero (0.00) is the least probable -- there is literally a 0% change that the outcome will take place. It should be noted that a 0.00 score is merely a theoretical construct. In real life, anything and everything is possible. So you should never score an outcome probability that low. Duh.

I will now give each of our identified possible outcomes to selling cocaine a probability score:

Leave The Game Unceremoniously And Then Record A Critically-Acclaimed Rap Album About Our Experiences (0.02, very unlikely despite the recent success of Clipse and Young Jeezy)
Be Very Successful And Buy A Lexus with Spinning 26" Rims (0.15)
Be Very Successful And Buy A Lexus (0.15)
Get Shot And Live (0.31)
Leave the Game Unceremoniously and Then Do NOT Record A Critically Acclaimed Rap Album About Our Experiences (0.43)
Get Busted By The FBI (0.68, fairly likely)
Get Shot And Die (0.62, ditto)

5) Fifth, we have to quantify the total value of each possible outcome by taking into account both the desirability and probability of each one. This is called the Outcome Value Ratio (OVR), and is scored on a positive one-to-negative one scale (+1.000 to -1.000). Here is the equation:


Using this equation, here are the Outcome Value Ratios for all the possible outcomes for selling cocaine:

Leave The Game Unceremoniously And Then Record A Critically-Acclaimed Rap Album About Our Experiences (0.019)
Be Very Successful And Buy A Lexus With Spinning 26" Rims (0.135)
Be Very Successful And Buy A Lexus (0.128)
Get Shot And Live (0.034)
Leave the Game Unceremoniously and Then Do NOT Record A Critically Acclaimed Rap Album About Our Experiences (0.028)
Get Busted By The FBI (-0.332)
Get Shot And Die (-0.620)

So the net value of all the possible outcomes has been quantified. We multipled the desirability by the probability and whizbangboop there they are. As you can see most of the outcomes have OVRs above zero, which means that their overall values are positive. For instance, even though Leaving The Game Unceremoniously And Then Recording A Critically-Acclaimed Rap Album About Your Experiences is a highly unlikely event, it still has a positive overall value (however small) because of its high desirability.

There are only two outcomes with negative overall values -- Getting Busted By the FBI and Getting Shot and Dying -- but five positive values. Does this then mean that, overall, choosing to sell cocaine is a good idea?

No. It does not. Read on, dipshit.

6) Sixth, we must calculate the Aggregate Total Value Ratio (ATVR) for choosing to sell cocaine for money. This marries all potential outcomes, their respective desirability and their respective probability into one cocktail of genius, giving a final and definitive value metric for choosing to sell cocaine. It is also ranked on a scale of positive zero-to-negative zero (+1.000 to -1.000).

Here is the equation:



For selling cocaine, the ATVR is calculated thusly:


If you're doing the math at home you'll see that the ATVR for selling cocaine is a very low -0.628. That's an extremely negative ATVR. This tells us that independent of any other options we might have at the table, oh we the uneducated youth, that selling cocaine is a not a good idea for us. The simple and beautiful laws of algebra have proven that conclusively.

How can this be when most of the possible outcomes were positive? This can be, my friend, because the two negative outcomes were very low on desirability scores but very high on probability. In other words, the risks involved with selling cocaine are very high, and very likely to occur, enough to negate and overpower any possible positivity. In other words, cocaine dealers are more likely to end up incarcerated or dead than liqudated with bread.

We're not done yet though.

Consider this: yes, selling cocaine is a bad idea. -0.628 of a bad idea, to be exact. But we still haven't measured how bad or good of an idea our other option is: working at Wal-Mart. It could be even worse. We won't know until we calculate the ATVR for it.

I will spare you the gruesomely uninteresting details as you already know the mathematical process. I'll simply tell you that my ATVR for Wal-Mart was -0.435. This means that like selling cocaine, working for Wal-Mart is a bad idea independent of our other options on the table.

But, and this is important, it is a slightly less horrible idea than selling cocaine for money. See here:

-0.435 > -0.628

While both options suck (it is not looking good for us, we the uneducated youth), selling cocaine would ultimately piss us off more. Thus, we say that working at Wal-Mart is the Most Optimal Decision (MOD) because it would piss us off less.

There you have it.

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Conclusion

This is, obviously, a very complex approach to making decisions.

Instituting "What Would Piss You Off More?" into one's daily life would prove difficult and require dedication and, yes, a quality calculator to effectively implement. So, I understand completely and will not be offended if you choose not to utilize this powerful and exciting tool in your decision-making activities.

But really, I think you should consider it. Cause I'm getting sick of you whining about your life.

Ultimately though its no skin off my back. I'm a little busy writing my coke-rap masterpiece to give two shits about you or your little "fear of making decisions."

Take a vitamin or something. I got snow to move.

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Post-Script
Additional Thoughts on Accidentally Plagerizing Economic Theory


I think about stuff sometimes, as you can maybe tell.

I tend to invent odd conceptual frameworks for viewing the world that make sense to me. And I usually do so with no consideration given to the possibility that other people have thought of these things before. Its one of the blessings of reading so rarely and knowing so little about contemporary academic thought.

As such, I will occassionally encounter someone, an established someone, who has written at length about a subject that very much interests me, and with an idea or voice that very much mirrors my own on the subject.

I'm not sure yet whether to feel validated or disappointed when this happens. On the one hand, it means that on my lonesome I came to the same conclusions that well-paid and well-respected people around the world have -- which is sweet because it means I'm a total fucking genius.

On the other, it means that my capacity to become well-paid and well-respected for these ideas has been eliminated because someone has beat me to it -- which is fucked because it means I am a poor and underappreciated total fucking genius. I'd rather be a rich and reknowned total fucking dumbass.

The "What Would Piss You Off More?" idea is one I've used in my own life for some time now, though admittedly in a simpler, internal monolouge format. I fancied it revolutionary, novel, unique, exciting, new. Then I discovered that economists and mathematicians have been discussing and dissecting this type of idea for decades, and have since moved on to greener intellectual pastures. It's called "Decision Theory".

Ha. Hows about that.

This has happened to me on other occasions, most notably in 3rd grade when I inadvertently invented a working model for what would later become TIVO while working on a school project. Naturally, being ten years old, I did not patent this idea, and have since lost out on untold millions.

Which is, to put it quite simply, fucked.