A few days ago, I overheard someone in Management saying something they seemed to consider profound. The saying was that when presented with a situation, the best thing you can do is make a good decision. The second best thing you can do is make a bad decision. The worst thing you can do is make no decision.
I've decided that's BS.
About once a week in my freshman year of college, I'd be wanting to take a nap about the time my neighbor wanted to blare his stereo, and he'd always play the same thing over and over. All I remember is "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
So, "making no decision" is not worse than "making the wrong decision" because there's no such thing as making no decision. Apathy is just another decision! You can't even tell if it's good or bad.
People will argue that doing nothing is always wrong, but that's not true. I bruised my arm a while back, and it's really ugly to look at besides being tender to the touch. I could solve these problems with make-up and pain killers, but I've chosen to do nothing. This is a problem that will go away if I just leave it alone. Those problems are rare indeed, but without knowing anything else, you can't say that "nothing" is worse than "something." In this case, there's not much difference.
My bruise will heal regardless of whether I consciously decide to "treat" it passively. The outcome is the same whether I expend effort on this decision or not.
I heard recently that Congress decided to spend the taxpayers' money to decide whether to buy more bombers. They spent millions to make a decision. The conclusion they came to is, "no, we don't need to spend billions on more bombers." Now, if they'd not bothered to make a choice, we'd be in the same place, but with millions more to blow on hammers and toilet seats. Y'know, important stuff.
Ultimately this is just another instance of people in suits being inscrutable in their reasoning. It's all so senseless.
Votes: 11